I had the opportunity to visit Allure of the Seas last week in Turku. Although I always enjoy visiting the shipyard, it is definitely a nicer experience in June than in July. The only trouble is you can’t really sleep because it is light almost all the time.
We are roughly 125 days from delivery and overall the ship looks amazing. I couldn’t believe how much further along she seemed to be than Oasis at this time last year. The scaffolding is down in the Royal Promenade, and we are already laying the tile. In most areas, the carpet is installed as well. It was also great to see some of the new venues taking shape, including Rita’s Cantina, the Boardwalk Doghouse, and the Guess store. There were a few more that are also taking shape, but we haven’t announced those, so I can’t spill the beans yet.
We had several operational meetings with Captain Hernan Zini, who will be the Master on Allure, as well as the hotel start up team, lead by Raimund Gschaider. The team is very pleased with how the inspections are going, as well as the operational planning. Because we are taking delivery a few days earlier than originally planned, we need to compress our training schedule based on when the crew charter flights arrive, so we are reworking that plan.
We also have to rework our plans to plant Central Park upon arrival in Port Everglades, as the staging of the plants and the crane can’t interfere with the Oasis turn, so we have to ensure we have this planned out to the minute.
A unique new operational challenge we discussed is where we are going to store all the DreamWorks costumes. Storage space on a ship is what we often refer to as “Space – the final frontier”, so we are trying to get creative to see where we might be able to house the large number of costumes for this exciting new partnership.
It was a great visit, and we are all looking forward to welcoming our guests onboard Allure. We now say she is just like Oasis – only newer!
