Colossal cruise ship to have lush Central Park

Talk about huge, even obese! Royal Caribbean's latest yet-unnamed incarnation, a Goliath of a vessel dubbed the Genesis Project, will weigh in at 220,000 tons and nab the title of the largest cruise ship built when it debuts in November 2009.

It's so broad (154 feet wide), it won't fit through the Panama Canal.

It's so long (1,180 feet), you could fit nearly four football fields inside. It's actually bigger than the world's largest container ship in service today (155,000 tons), and it's even longer than the world's largest warship, the USS Ronald Reagan (1,092 feet), according to Popular Mechanics magazine.

It carries so many passengers (up to 6,400), it's estimated it will take four hours to get everyone off the ship. In fact, on disembarkation day, you'll have to sort through more than 18,000 pieces of luggage to find yours.

Indeed, this humongous, $1.2 billion vessel is so enormous, it's too big to fit into some ports. For example, Fort Lauderdale's Port Everglades, where the ship will homeport, has to ante up $37.4 million to upgrade a terminal for the ship. San Juan is adding an airport-style screening facility at the head of the dock to alleviate back-ups at the gangway. Finger piers in St. Maarten must be widened to 60 feet because Genesis overhangs will touch the neighboring ship in a typical 40-foot-wide dock.

Royal Caribbean and Haiti's government are teaming to build a dock to enable this ship to come alongside at Labadee, the line's private island, and a new port is being developed at Falmouth in collaboration with the Port Authority of Jamaica.

What will Royal Caribbean do with this pricey "real estate”?

Apparently, when you've got as much space as a small city, it's tempting to build a town center with surrounding neighborhoods and plenty of restaurants, and even a small tropical park the size of a football field at its core. And, yes, we're still talking about a ship!

Dubbed Central Park, the line boasts that the park is "a revolutionary design in which the center of the ship opens to the sky and features lush, tropical grounds.” Central Park will offer passengers "an exquisite public gathering place featuring serene pathways, seasonal flower gardens and canopy trees.” A few hundred rooms with a view — half balcony aeries — will soar six decks above the open space.

This garden of Eden on the sea could be a horticulturist's heaven: There will be plant life among the sculpture gardens and other tranquil hideaways — such as drifts of calla lilies amid giant elephant ears, red ginger, rabbit-foot ferns and zebra calathea that beckon to be discovered.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services