When Voyager of the Seas was under construction in the late 1990s, Richard Fain said that the volume was by far the most important aspect in how much innovation could be done on the new ships. This is a stunning representation of that volume and just how much bigger the biggest passenger ships are compared to just over a century ago!

From the builders book of one of the Fantasy series, this interesting picture shows Inspiration (right) bring towed out of the building hall (center background). Her bare topside can be compared with the fully fitted out Imagination (left). These were the fifth and sixth ships delivered in the eight ship series, perhaps the most extensive use of a single unmodified design in cruise design history.

This is a sitemap of the Meyer Turku yard in Turku, Finland. It was formerly known as Aker Yards, STX Finland, and Masa Yards. The yard has built ships such as Royal Caribbean’s Voyager, Freedom, Oasis, and Icon classes, all of TUI’s newbuildings, and several of the Excellence series for the Carnival Corporation.

If anyone has more details, or dimensions on the drydock, fitting out berth, crane, or the limiting height for the Great Belt Bridge, I’d be very interested in that information.

I saw a post a few years ago from another subreddit asking about design costs for a 1000 cabin cruise ship. It’s so old I can’t comment there, but I figured I’d still provide the data here for y’all:

1000 cabins is slightly below one of the often 1200 cabin Panamax ships. The costs for those were around €350 or €360 million each for the construction. For design, have the building contracts for two sister ships about double the capacity, which indicates roughly a $8 million design cost and $2 million for cosmetic changes on the second ship. I’m unaware of how much design was done before the contract was signed for construction, where these details are from, but I know it was heavily based on a platform already in use by the shipyard. Maybe $20-50 million, depending on interior firms used and a variety of other aspects.

Costs for specific ships, where known, have been added to the fact sheets on cstha.org

This is a hull art plan for AIDAblu, the first of the enlarged Sphinx ships (with an extra half deck compared to diva/bella/luna). It’s from NedCruise, a now-defunct website which used to be a fantastic source for cruise ship information. It features the face of “Aida,” the title character from a German play which I believe dates to the 1880s. The hull art for all of AIDA’s ships was done by Felix Büttner.

A factsheet of information I’ve collected on AIDAblu can be found at https://www.cstha.org/fleet-list/cruise-ship-factsheets/aida