Is Size Important? Part One……

In general new cruise ships are getting bigger and bigger these days, offering more and more attractions on board in a bid to out do each other and attract more and more people. In the early days of my blog I did a post about this, and mentioned that our Company Chairman, Andrew Gardner, had just been on the Oasis of the Seas (225 tonnes). He thought it was fabulous but one day he didn’t actually see the sea at all!  Now this might suit some people, but very often I gets enquiries from people who are looking for their next cruise and they say ‘I don’t want to go on one of those great big things’. They say that they lose all sense of being on a ship or on the sea.

In a series of posts I’m going to try to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of various sizes of ships, hopefully giving you more of an idea what might suit you, especially if you are a first time cruisers, or have done one or two cruises and didn’t feel you were on the right ship for you.
Ship basically comes in four size categories:

Large Resort Ships – for over 1600 passengers (50,000 to 225,000 tonnes)
Mid-Size Ships – for 600 – 1600 passengers (25,000 to 50,000 tonnes)
Small Ships – for 200 to 600 passengers (5,000 to 25,000 tonnes)

Boutique Ships – up to 200 passengers (1,000 to 5,000 tonnes)
Whatever the size of a ship they all provide the same basic services – food, accommodation, activities, entertainment and good service.
It is always looking at the Passenger Space Ratio of a ship as this will give you a good idea as to how spacious or alternatively, how crowded a cruise ship will feel.