PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. — When Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas departs a Florida dock east of Orlando for its first scheduled sailing with revenue passengers today (Friday, July 19), one of the 18-deck cruise ship’s attractions will simulate meals in a railroad dining car, with video of passing countryside visible through the windows.
The travel and hospitality company bills the “Royal Railway Utopia Station” as “the most immersive dining experience at sea” offering “a cross-country trek through the American Frontier without even leaving the ship.”
What a concept!
The three-day weekend and four-day weekday Bahamas cruises on the brand-new Utopia — which can carry up to 5,668 passengers with a crew of 2,290 — charge an additional $119.99 for a five-course meal ($59.99 for children) of “American favorites with an upscale twist as the sights, sounds and flavors of the Wild West unfold all around you.”
Royal Caribbean’s website says the initial historical western theme depicts a “digital landscape” of what train travel might have been like in the late 1800s, rather than what a camera can capture from a current train like the California Zephyr. The video theme will change periodically.
“Subwoofers in the seats simulate vibrations from the non-existent tracks,” according to a tech website, although it is doubtful the system can (or would want to) effectively recreate sloshing coffee experienced on rough BNSF Railway track east of Denver.
The restaurant seats 48, the capacity of many now-retired streamlined heritage diners built in the 1940s and 1950s. A Royal Caribbean blogger says the experience “feels like you are on a classic train,” a nod to the fact that a majority of the ship’s patrons may not realize they could experience the real thing today on Amtrak.
Knowing passengers have little to look at outside of the ship’s windows, Royal Caribbean has latched on to one of train travel’s unique selling points. In fact, rather than going to the trouble to digitally conceptualize the next Royal Railway diorama, maybe the company could simply point a camera out the window of the Lake Shore Limited as it tools up the Hudson. Of course, cruisers who want to relive the experience on a real train will likely be disappointed in the food Amtrak currently offers — or, with a ticket in coach on some routes, to find that access to a dining car is possible on a ship, but not on a train.
The photo of the Lakeshore dining car meal got me remembering my trips in the 1970’s. I wonder if these ship designers could come to my house. Turn my bedroom into a simulation of riding an Amtrak sleeper across New York State in winter. Waking up at each station because the vibration stops, the window ice-cold because it’s ten below zero outside, the Mohawk Valley buried in snow, the train running six hours late, the footsteps and loud talk in the aisle with people boarding or deboarding. I’d love it!!!!!! I’d feel half a century younger!!!!!!