Tom Stieghorst
Royal Caribbean International’s giant Oasis of the Seas has just about every experience available at sea, but one thing it doesn’t have is something called the vertical theater, now playing in several revitalized Royal vessels.
The VT is a four-story aerial show, featuring duos, trios and quartets of acrobats, doing Cirque du Soleil-type maneuvers in the central atrium of certain older Royal ships.
I attended a performance last week on the Grandeur of the Seas, freshly arrived in Miami from Europe. That I had not seen the show wasn’t surprising, but Royal President Adam Goldstein hadn’t seen it, either.
Goldstein said Royal had carved out a one-night sailing for travel agents, media and past guests because it was the first opportunity to show a U.S. East Coast audience what the Grandeur’s new Oasis-style improvements look like.
The most memorable of those was the show staged in the Grandeur’s Centrum. Built around a “four seasons” theme, it opened with performers descending from the heavens, draped in white, while “snow” flurries drifted down through a shaft of blue light.
Singers and dancers on the floor of the performance space fought for attention with the bungee-equipped entertainers in their midair harnesses above. It was great spectacle, and all the more so because it was occurring in such an informal theatrical setting.
Crowds gathered at the railing encircling the Centrum on Decks 5 and 6, as well as around the R Bar at the base of the space. There were early and late shows that lasted about a half-hour each.
The only drawback I could see to the VT is that since it isn’t planned as a dedicated theater, it has no seats. Viewers had to drag bulky club chairs to the railing to sit down, although standing was the best guarantee of a complete view of the show.
On a full cruise, it could be a problem, but on this cruise with about 1,500 on board there was plenty of room.
The Centrum was also the site for an 11:30 p.m. champagne toast that kept Goldstein up past his bedtime.
“I thought all of you were gathered here to propose a toast to me for staying up this late,” Goldstein quipped, “which almost never happens, or maybe never happens.”
The toast went to the ship, but it could just have easily gone to the visionary who saw the hidden entertainment potential of the Centrum. The VT is available on three of Royal’s 11 Vision- and Radiance-class ships but will be installed on all of them eventually.
Be sure to catch it if it plays in an atrium near you.
Correction: A previous version of this Insight misspelled the name of the Grandeur of the Seas in the headline.