God of the Seas

There’s no swimming pool, bottomless brunch or stand-up comedian on board when we cruise with God across the waters. He’s offering something much better.

Twenty decks. Six water slides. Seven swimming pools. More than 250,000 gross tons. It’s the biggest cruise ship ever built.

Called Icon of the Seas, this Royal Caribbean vessel can accommodate 7,600 guests. That’s like gathering up the population of the average American small town and putting it on the water.

Gary Shteyngart was a passenger on the ship’s inaugural voyage and wrote about the experience in The Atlantic (May 2024). He says that the ship “looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots.”

And the food? Gary reports, “The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes — marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws — but every animal tastes tragically the same.” If you want a drink, you can visit the “Swim & Tonic,” which is “the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world.”

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