Just as on-board roller coasters and ziplines once added to a ship’s appeal, now it’s interior designers with broad name recognition and experience in hospitality design. More recently, cruise lines are tapping celebrity designers to reach a more design-savvy market. To maintain an air of exclusivity, luxury lines skew smaller, sailing with 400-1,200 passengers and more curated amenities. More recent vessels are double the size and can hold over 5,000 passengers, climb 18 decks, and feature amenities like IMAX theaters, boutiques, and water-slide parks. Still in service today, that ship is 880 feet long and has a capacity of 2,850 passengers. The 1980s saw the development of the first megaships when the MS Sovereign of the Seas from Royal Caribbean took its maiden voyage in 1988. "With the arrival of the Aaron Spelling production, Americans started thinking about cruises not as something from a 1930s, high-society drama set aboard a grand ocean liner, but as a vacation for the average person," writes Mark Orwoll in Conde Nast Traveler. The cruise ship itself and its onboard amenities and entertainment became the point of the journey, a shift crystallized by the popularity of the 1977 show, The Love Boat. For instance, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2, designed by James Gardner and Dennis Lennon, debuted in 1969 with exterior detailing resembling a yacht, and sunken green leather sofas and plenty of Formica and chrome inside. The interior designs were sharply modernized. Companies either converted liners into cruise ships or sold them. After World War II, once commercial airplanes made crossing the ocean much quicker than traveling by ship and the glamorous ocean liners of the past were too costly to operate, the industry had to reinvent itself.
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