To call The World by ResidenSea a cruise ship may be doing it a disservice, because, in the truest sense, The World is not a cruise ship, but the largest privately owned residential yacht on Earth. The World was launched in 2002 and features personalised 165 private luxury apartments. Each of these apartments are owned by those known as the Residents,who collectively own the ship, and because of this, every sailing of The World is effectively sold out.
So what else is so special about The World? Well, it features concierge and room-service, several high end restaurants, a cinema, a world-class spa and a medical centre. As well as this, it also has two swimming pools, a tennis court, a nightclub, an art gallery, casino, library, jewellers, a jogging track, exercise classes and equipment and a retractable marina for water sports. It also features the only real grass putting green at sea.
The one thing that each of the privileged passengers of The World say that attracted them to parting with a considerable amount of money to purchase part of the ship is the privacy. A ship of its size would usually carry around 1800 passengers, whereas the average occupancy of The World is about 150. Because of this, the ship often feels eerily empty, even when its at full capacity.
You may think that all of the wealth surrounding The World might mean that its detrimental to the environment. This couldnt be further from the truth! The World is one of the greenest cruise ships ever built. The engines of The World dont burn heavy bunker oil like most ocean-going ships. They burn common truck diesel fuel, resulting in far less pollution. The ship features the unique Scanship wastewater cleaning system in which wastes are filtered by means of a flotation system. Solid waste is separated by flotation, then dried twice and incinerated. Waste water remaining after the flotation process is then ultraviolet filtered, and the residual water is clean enough to be used as technical water. The World is the only passenger ship approved to dock in places such as Monterey, California, which applies the strictest pollution controls in the United States on large cruise ships.
Rather than sticking to set destinations like a regular cruise ship, there is a democratic process that goes into choosing the itinerary each year. Destinations tend to be selected based on world events. For example, it might land in Monaco for the Formula One Grand Prix, Rio de Janeiro for the Carnival, Scotland for the British Open Golf tournament or Cannes for the Film Festival.
