The ''Icon'' class (formally Project Icon) is a planned class of

cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on Tourism, tours know ...

s ordered by

Royal Caribbean International Royal Caribbean International (RCI), also formerly known as Royal Caribbean Cruise Line (RCCL), is a cruise line brand founded in 1968 in Norway and organised as a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Group since 1997. Based in Miami, Flor ...

and to be built by

Meyer Turku Meyer Turku Oy is a Finnish shipbuilding company located in Turku, Finland Proper. The company is fully owned by German shipbuilder Meyer Werft GmbH. The main products are cruise ships and cruiseferries. The shipbuilding facility is Perno shi ...

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

. Royal Caribbean plans to have 3 ''Icon''-class ships by 2030.

History

On 10 October 2016, Royal Caribbean and Meyer Turku announced an order to build two ships under the project name "Icon". The first two ships are planned to be delivered in the second quarters of 2022 and 2024. The ships will be classified by

DNV GL DNV (formerly DNV GL) is an international accredited registrar and classification society headquartered in Høvik, Norway. The company currently has about 12,000 employees and 350 offices operating in more than 100 countries, and provides ser ...

. Royal Caribbean applied to register a trademark for "Icon of the Seas" in 2016, which was at the time suggested as an indication of the name of the first ship. On 2 July 2019, Royal Caribbean announced an order for a third ship in the "Icon" class. The third ship is planned to be delivered in 2025, one year after the second "Icon" ship. Steel-cutting for ''Icon of the Seas'' began on 14 June 2021, and the keel was laid on 5 April 2022. Steel-cutting for the second "Icon" class ship began on 15 February 2023.

Design

The ships will employ

fuel cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...

technology, to be supplied by ABB Group, and be powered by

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the v ...

, with a

gross tonnage Gross tonnage (GT, G.T. or gt) is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage. Neither gross tonnage nor gross register tonnage should be confused with measures of mass or weig ...

of 200,000 GT. Ships will contain other alternative energy features, like the use of fuel cells to produce electricity and fresh water. It will have a capacity of 5,600 berths. In 2020, the director of projects and facilities at Nassau Cruise Port said that the specifications for the Icon class indicate it would be larger than the . Later, in May 2022, Royal Caribbean confirmed that ''Icon of the Seas'' would be bigger than the ''Oasis'' class.

Ships

References

Cruise ship classes Proposed ships Royal Caribbean International {{Cruise-ship-stub