Paul Ash climbed aboard the Harmony of the Seas — him and 6,700 other guests — and left singing its praises

S is for Size'Wow," breathed an awed fellow reporter on our bus as he gazed at the massive, gleaming cruise ship snugged tight to the quayside in Southampton docks. "Wrong ship," I said and pointed out to another giant moored on the other side of the harbour."That's the Harmony of the Seas. Over there.""Oh," he sighed in a rare display of British exuberance. "Double wow."You won't forget the first time you see one of Royal Caribbean's "Oasis-class" ships. I first saw the Harmony of the Seas under leaden skies in Southampton, England. She dwarfed everything in the harbour. She dwarfed the city itself.Noah may have not had the muscle of the STX shipyards behind him and, yes, his only shipworkers were his probably feckless and unwilling sons Ham, Shem and Japheth, and they didn't have any power tools, but, quite frankly, look at an Oasis ship and you understand the Ark was the work of amateurs.I stood on the quay and looked up. "Wow." I said. This is what the animals must have felt when they saw the Ark for the first time. Except, a herd of giraffes could walk up the gangplank and into the Harmony's giant atrium - open to the skies - and they would have had not only headroom to spare but real trees on which to graze.As I trudged up the gangplank and into the sweet welcome of the ship, I remembered a line from the Julian Barnes novel History of the World in 10½ Chapters (which starts with Noah): "They put the behemoths in the hold for ballast." That was a misuse of the word. This 1,188-foot-long, 227,000-ton, 24-deck floating city... this is a behemoth.H is for (floating) HotelModern passenger ships have three divisions: hotel, deck and engines and the latter two are really just support systems for the first."Hotel" is pretty much what these ships are, floating resorts packed with amenities. "We designed these ships to be better with more amenities and more things to do," said Royal Caribbean Cruises chairman Richard Fain, who had joined us on the shakedown cruise. "Our ideas keep outpacing the scale of the ships."mini_story_image_hleft1I found my way - surprisingly quickly - up to my stateroom on deck 14, pausing only to stare at the art, starting with Czech artist David Cerny's gleaming Head, five tons of slowly revolving steel plates powered by internal motors. (Every Royal Caribbean ship has an art committee which, years before a new ship enters service, selects artworks that fit each vessel's character and personality. Harmony's 3,000-piece collection was created for the ship by artists from more than 60 countries, inspired by the theme "Wonder of the World, The World We Live In" - an art stash worth $6.5-million.)There are 2,747 staterooms on the ship; mine - like 1,768 others - had a balcony, where I spent many hours gazing at the English Channel, listening to ship's foghorns in the night. My cabin had that new-ship smell. It is nice to be the first person to christen a hotel bed. Indeed, we sailed from Southampton with many workmen still aboard.I knew this because, late in the evening, someone was hammering away one deck up. It sounded like a party at the pool until there was a loud bang followed by an embarrassed silence. "Oh dear," shouted a man in a workmanlike tone of voice. Power tools: love 'em.She's a big hotel, too: there's accommodation for 6,780 guests, whose needs are attended to by 2,100 crew. All told, they consume 12,000 eggs a day. Surely it will be chaos, said the landlubbers. Imagine the queues, the noise...As it turns out, sharing with nearly 7,000 other passengers is less of an issue than the landlubbers have mooted. Build a floating city weighing nearly a quarter of a million tons, with 20 restaurants - including fine dining at 150 Central Park and a very pleasant Jamie's Italian (as in Jamie Oliver) and you'll find there's plenty of room for everybody.I is for InnovationShipspotters like to gush that the Harmony of the Seas is bigger than a US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. But even the USS Nimitz, with all its firepower and jet aircraft and nukes in the engine room, starts looking more like something the Noah boys would have hammered together over a long weekend when you stack it up against the Harmony of the Seas.mini_story_image_hright2I bet the USS Nimitz doesn't have an air lubrication system that pumps out air bubbles underneath the flat bottom of the hull to make the ship easier to push through the water. I bet the carrier can't turn around on her own axis, as we did leaving Southampton - without even using the bow thrusters. Captain Gus Andersson was immensely proud of that."Handling the ship is fantastic," he said. "I guess that's why most sailors went to sea in the beginning, to drive ships. To do that with such a fantastic ship as this, with all the power and all the possibilities that we have...". He sighed in contentment.Passengers will find innovation all over the ship. Not blessed with an outside cabin? Some staterooms have virtual balconies streaming live seascapes and sunrises, others overlook "Central Park" - one of the ship's seven "neighbourhoods" - with its trees and greenery tended by four permanent gardeners on board.One of the big ideas - along with the bar, where robots mix and serve your drinks - is the Ultimate Abyss, a 10-storey slide, the tallest at sea, down which passengers plunge on a rollercoaster for one. Expect impressive sound effects, mostly coming from you, as you hurtle down the tube on your special mat. Go-Pro cameras are your friend here.P is for PlayCruises are about having fun and the Harmony pushes the, er, boat out on this: 23 swimming pools, Flowrider surf simulators and two climbing walls. There are hot tubs by the dozen and a casino for those wanting to spend the kids' inheritance. full_story_image_hleft3There's shopping on The Promenade and relaxing afterwards in The Rising Tides elevated bar that travels from there to Central Park.Being the English Channel in spring, it rained and the three Perfect Storm water slides - Typhoon, Cyclone and Supercell - went unrequited. Instead, we played miniature golf to a backdrop of shrieks and thumps from passengers hurtling into the Abyss.That night - before hitting the disco, because I like to squeak a takkie and even if the DJ did play Hokaai, stoppie lorrie, apparently for my benefit, he did not disappoint - we were treated to a fine stage version of Grease. Rydell High never looked so good and Greased Lightning itself made a sparkling appearance. Sandy was not so plain and Danny Zuko sang harmony. Which, when you think about it, was pretty perfect.Ash was a guest of Cruises International..