Comments on: World’s Biggest Passenger Ships

By: PE Burns

PE Burns — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:23:05 +0000

My wife and I just finished a cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Absolutely awesome regardless of its gas mileage. I will drive a hybred to make up for it. Royal Caribbean has cruising down to a fine craft.

By: myquealer

myquealer — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:51:23 +0000

James,

The 27 mpg is per passenger, so if those boats that get 2.9-3.2 mpg have 8 or 9 people on board then they are getting about the same 27mpg per passenger.

Comparing it to the gas mileage of a car is not fair unless you consider the passenger capacity of the car (since you are using the passenger capacity of the ship), usually at least 5 seats in a car, getting the gas mileage up around 100 mpg per passenger, depending on the car. This makes sense because a wheel on hard ground has a lot less resistance than a ship in water.

By: Chet

Chet — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:22:13 +0000

Its not docked at either port but the Irish Ferries Ulysses is the “Worlds Largest Car Ferry” It is 209m long with a gross tonnage of 50,938.

It sails between Dublin, Ireland and Holyhead, Wales.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:40:32 +0000

In regards to the “ownership” of the islands by Disney or Carnival or Royal Caribbean, we were on a cruise last summer and went to Carnival’s “private island” in the Bahamas, Half Moon Cay. They told us that they do not actually “own” the island — rather, they lease a portion of it from the Bahamas to make their little resort area (beach, cabanas, pavilions for lunch, etc.) and the large majority of the island is left undeveloped to preserve it.

By: James B

James B — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:18:02 +0000

To respond to Lars initial comment above, looking at it in MPG is a very interesting way of doing it, but 27 MPG is *fantastic* for a boat.

[i]At wide-open throttle (WOT) the engine was turning 4800 rpm and gulping down 11.9 gal. of gas per hour (gph). That’s 2.92 mpg. At a more relaxed speed of 20 mph, it returned 3.23 mpg to give a cruising range of 274 miles.[/i]

That’s for a consumer-sized engine on a consumer-sized boat. Granted, some of the boat engine companies (Yamaha etc) have come up with new technology recently to improve boat MPG, but boats are still far less fuel efficient than cars.

By: James

James — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:32:44 +0000

@julian: You must have been seeing into the future!

By: julian

julian — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:33:17 +0000

My RSS feed says Colombian Water Slide. But no sign of the post. What gives? Like the boats above by the way. I rate this one 4 out of 5.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:28:02 +0000

@Timothy,

According to Wikipedia, “size of civilian passenger ships is measured by gross tonnage.”

The Queen Mary 2 is 345m in length, maybe you had the QE2 confused with the QM2? The Queen Elizabeth 2 used to be in Los Angeles harbour, but it seems to have moved in the latest image update…

Cheers!

By: Timothy

Timothy — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:18:26 +0000

How can you claim that the RMS Queen Mary 2 is longer wider and taller but not bigger?
Surely you mean the “heaviest” in the world and not the “largest” when referring to MS Freedom of the Seas?

Wikipedia says the QE2 is 294 m long and not 345m.

I have seen the QE2 in cape town a few years ago.

By: dsmtoday

dsmtoday — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:48:41 +0000

The difference between the land they own in Orlando and the land they own in the Bahamas is the later happens to border an ocean on all sides. How does this make such ownership disturbing? It shouldn’t be a problem unless Johny Depp and his band of pirates was involved…