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Tech

The High Tech Cruise Ship Apparently Designed to Troll David Foster Wallace

"There's no way this turns into a nightmarish blood bath at the mega-powerful hands of these robots; it just isn't possible."
Image: Quantum

In one of the late writer's most loved essays, David Foster Wallace describes taking a cruise, upon which he was constantly pampered and offered every luxury. He basically hated the whole thing. As part of his suspicion of a society oriented towards comfort and entertainment—further elucidated in the collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and of course, Infinite Jest—DFW's article appeared in Harper's in 1996 under the title "On The (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise."

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But all of the rich foods and conga lines and corpulent dining companions on DFW's Celebrity luxury ship are nothing compared to what's coming next in the cruise world. Judging from both its name and its ad copy, the Royal Caribbean's high-tech barge, the 'Quantum of the Seas', is going to allow you to experience pleasure in two places at the same time. It promises pampering on a scale undreamed of in standard-model cruise ships: It's got robots tending bar, and entertaining you, while you drive bumper cars, and simulate skydiving.

The craziest thing DFW got to do on his cruise was shoot skeet. The craziest thing you can do on the Quantum is go outdoors at all.

The whole thing is beyond the scale, really. According to Business Standard, the first Quantum-class ship will leave port in November, "sailing mostly in China, and the second Quantum-class Royal Carribbean ship would come in 2015." By cruise ship standards these things are massive—167,800 tons, 1,141 feet long, space enough for over 4,000 passengers. As a point of comparison, the Titanic was 882 feet long and had somewhere between 3,200 to 3,500 people on board.

According to the Countdown to Quantum, the website priming the world for the great ship's arrival, we're still 83 days away from the day when "the new Quantum of the Seas® is setting sail for a global journey from New York to Shanghai, bringing never-before-seen WOWs to four continents and incredible destinations. A nearly two-month, epic journey around the world via the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean."

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Should you suspect that single, all-caps WOW was a mistake, Quantum doubles down, promising, "A one-time-only voyage. A once-in-a-lifetime WOW."

They're not kidding. Check this shit out:

The whole thing sounds like someone read DFW's essay and decided that the way to prevent future depressive literary journalists from skewering their product was to ramp everything up to a million, in hopes that the journo would either submit in the face of maximum pleasure, or be driven so deeply into insanity that he or she never has the opportunity to share the experience with the world.

While a two-month epic journey spanning four continents, two oceans, a sea, and pirate country should be enough, I guess a lot of that time is just sitting on a boat, which in normal circumstances could get tedious. No chance here. The Quantum cabins don't just have USB charging ports, they also have "virtual balconies." There's a 30-foot rock climbing wall; a FlowRider® surf simulator; even simulated skydiving with the RipCord by iFLY®, apparently the first of its kind to be put on a boat.

Lest you worry that the technology-to-pampering ratio is getting uneven, there's of course a "Royal Babies® and Royal Tots® program," because all children need to feel like divinity on Earth, as well as "Go SMiLE Tooth Whitening," which promises to brighten up your whole face. You'll be pampered. Oh. You will.

That's what people said about the Titanic.

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Still, we're on a tech site, and this ship is a 167,800-ton marvel. Check out the Vistarama, an idea basically straight from Fahrenheit 451, but which is nevertheless something I want to see rather badly. Set up in the Two70° room, which I assume is something like a lounge or theater or I guess whatever you want it to be, I can't possibly top how the website describes it:

An awe-inspiring innovation engineered especially for Quantum of the seasSM, Vistarama transforms Two70°'s floor-to-ceiling sea view into any scene, real or imagined. Picture it: 18 projectors combine to create an ambient surface over 100 feet wide and over 20 feet tall. Across this vast expanse, impromptu digital shows come to life in stunning 12K resolution, a pixel-perfect industry first.

One gets tired of floor-to-ceiling sea views, I guess. Vistarama's description ends with a kicker that boasts of doing exactly what DFW worried television did to us: "It looks as real as the world you know—but with fantastical scenes like nothing you've ever dreamed."

Note the accordion fish! Image: Quantum

Not only does QotS boast robot bartenders—an idea straight from Futurama—but Two70° has a (terrifying/amazing sounding) robot floor show of "six agile Roboscreens® that stage surprise performances throughout your vacation. Measuring over seven feet each and controlled by mega-powerful robotic arms, these massive bots are delightfully nimble—soaring, twisting and spinning out scenes as they scamper solo or unite as one."

Six nimble seven-foot robots with agility and mega-powerful robotic arms, and a room that can turn into anything. The best thing about concern-trolling this boat is that when people say "There's no way this turns into a nightmarish blood bath at the mega-powerful hands of these robots; it just isn't possible," you can just reply, "That's what people said about the Titanic."

In DFW's piece, as in much of his work, there was something sort of distastefully classist about a lot of DFW's attitudes and observations towards the middle Americans around him. As this ship departs from a rich megacity in the world's richest country, for a rich megacity in its second largest economy, maybe that won't be a problem. Anyway, you'll be at the Two 70˚, kids tucked away with the Royal Tots®, watching robots dance for your delight. What cares will you have for the world beyond the deck?