Tom Stieghorst
The go-cart track unveiled on Norwegian Bliss this weekend at Virtuoso Travel Week has to be one of the most exciting activities ever to be offered on a cruise ship, even if it is one of the most ungainly.
Renderings show a black, serpentine, two-level roadway that looks like a python or a piece of intestine, engineered onto most of the aft end of the Norwegian Bliss, edged by safety fencing like a stock car oval.
Elegant it isn't. But fun it must be. I haven't tried its predecessor on the Norwegian Joy, but colleagues say it is a blast. So the arrival of go-carts at sea represents another triumph of activity over elegance, a shift that shows no signs of ending.
The trend took off close to 20 years ago with the arrival of Royal Caribbean International's Voyager of the Seas, a ship that managed to be both elegant and active. It included, for the first time, an ice skating rink and a rock climbing wall.
Royal Caribbean's signature up to that point had arguably been the Viking Crown Lounge, an observation platform fastened to the ship's funnel that was said to have been inspired by the Space Needle at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.
The Viking Crown Lounge's futuristic circular shape gave Royal Caribbean ships a distinct profile, a kind of super crow's nest that served up stylish cocktails and panoramic vistas in one package.
In appearances, it was the opposite of a rock climbing wall, a rather wrinkled, ugly form that didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the architecture of a Royal Caribbean vessel. But the rock walls were popular, and functioned as a kind of inoculation to the charge that cruises were sedate, boring and inactive.
The wall begat a litany of Mountain Dew-style activities on all the contemporary lines, meant to impress potential passengers that what was on offer was more than just your grandfather's cruise.
Some of the activities added to cruise ships since the wall include basketball, bowling, boxing, billiards, bumper cars, bungee trampolines, mini-golf, paddle tennis, roller skating, ropes courses, sky cycling, skydiving, surfing, volleyball and ziplining. And that leaves out water attractions and simulators.
Some of these activities -- billiards or bowling, for example -- didn't take up much real estate. Others required a lot more space -- generally on the top deck, which gradually came to look like a midway at the state fair.
It isn't that cruise lines are trying to make the ships look awkward. But if the fun activities detract from the sleek, streamlined appearance that came to be associated with cruise ships in the 1930s, then so be it.
And of course, if anybody's that worked up about elegance, there are a number of small, luxury-style ships that have no carnival-like attractions and almost make a virtue of their tranquility.
Norwegian has made its own nod to tranquility by making the go-carts the noiseless electric variety rather than the raucous gasoline-powered type. Myself, I'm eager to see how it feels to drive around 16 decks up, and I can't wait to see what extreme activities the cruise lines will bring to sea next.