The cruise industry's newest record-holder
offers entertainment and recreation attractions.

SUSAN R. POLLACK

Special to the Jewish News

IV

hen Dennis Lieberman board-
ed Royal Caribbean
International's Voyager of the
Seas in Miami last month, he
was a pot-bellied, 46-year-old pharmacist
from New Jersey whose daily exercise typi-
cally ranged, as he puts it, from "counting
pills" to flipping the TV remote control.
By cruise's end, fellow passengers called
him "Spider-Man."–Somewhere around
the Bahamas, after watching his wife climb
first, Lieberman screwed up his courage,
strapped himself into a safety harness and
clawed his heart-pounding way nearly
halfway up the ship's 30-foot-high rock-
climbing wall. The imposing edifice —
first on the high seas — is 200 feet above
sea level, looming over the ship's full-
length basketball court, miniature golf
course and inline-skating track.
"It's exhilarating!" Lieberman declared,

Susan R. Pollack is a travel writer who
lives in Huntington Woods.

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triumphantly peeling off his white safety hel-
met and rubber-soled, green suede climbing
shoes. "Now, we'll climb Mt. Everest!"
Lieberman and his travel agent wife,
Michele, were among the first passengers to
become human flies aboard the enormous
Voyager, launched Thanksgiving week on
seven-day sailings of the western Caribbean.
"Our kids aren't with us so we thought we
could be a little daring," Michele said.
It's the kind of over-the-top experience
passengers might expect on the world's
largest cruise ship, a nearly $700 million
vessel that strives for superlatives and does
everything in a big way. Designed to dispel
the myth that cruising is confining, the
Voyager aims to attract the active set and
first-timers.
It stretches 1,021 feet and weighs in at
142,000 tons (more than triple the size of
the Titanic and a third larger than the dis-
placed record-holder, the Grand Princess),
and is part of the cruise industry's fleet of
luxurious new mega-liners.
It has room for 3,114 passengers.
"It's incredible — beyond belief. There's
no way brochures could ever convey how

beautiful it is," observed cruise specialist Jane
Martin, owner of International Tours &
Cruises in Grand Rapids. Over breakfast in
"Carmen," one of Voyager} trio of opera-
themed main dining rooms connected by a
dramatic, three-deck grand staircase, she
adds: "This ship is absolutely elegant and
very sophisticated in colors and design. They
obviously used their imagination."
That imagination comes to life in
Voyager's Bourbon Street-style Royal
Promenade, an eye-catching, four-story
shopping arcade — three football fields long
— that cuts through the center of the ship
with sidewalk cafes, designer boutiques,
trendy bars and Mardi Gras-style parades.
The top three decks boast the cruise
industry's first inside staterooms with a view.
passengers may gaze from their balconies at
the festive street scene below, where the
ambiance gradually shifts from day to night
via special lighting and theatrical effects.
"Most ships have just a little collection of
shops," noted Alan Wilson, publisher of an
Internet-based cruise newsletter for con-
sumers. "When I turned the corner and saw
this for the first time it just blew me away."