Róisín Ingle takes a tour of the Queen Mary 2, the super- luxurious cruise ship due to visit Waterford next year.
The longest, tallest, widest and most expensive passenger ship ever built looks nothing short of majestic even when seen from the grey Manhattan docks on a rainy September morning, so when the Queen Mary 2 sails into Waterford next June, it will be a sight worth watching out for. Outside the glamorous younger sister of the QE2, a group of bleary-eyed passengers load vast suitcases onto coaches and cabs. Some are stereotypical cruisers, sporting matching tracksuits and well-coiffed grey hairdos. Others are a surprise - like the young couple, tanned and immaculately groomed, who step into a waiting chauffeur-driven car and are whisked away into the city.
Luxury cruises, say those in the industry, are no longer the preserve of the retired or the fabulously wealthy, with increasing numbers of honeymooning couples and young professionals opting for floating, five-star holidays. The best way to illustrate the overwhelming luxury on board this one is to tell the story of one of the group of winners of the Dream Ticket, the National Lottery's scratch card competition last September, which allowed 50 lucky Irish people and their partners to sail to Manhattan aboard the Cunard ship. One competition winner, after stepping on board, was so overcome by the grandeur of it all that she burst into tears and didn't stop crying until the Southampton dock was left far behind.
That passenger may have been the sensitive type but even the most anti-cruise visitor, the kind of person who would rather spend a wet weekend in a B&B in Bray than share an all-you-can-eat-buffet with Mr and Mrs Cruise, would be impressed by the facilities on board the 1,132 feet-long vessel.
The six-storey Grand Lobby, the first area passengers arrive into after boarding, features the kind of staircase you could imagine first-class Titanic passengers swanning down in all their evening finery, past the stunning works of art and tapestries, three million dollars worth, dotted all over the ship. The interior design, which mixes old-fashioned opulence with a contemporary feel, is set off by the sumptuous fixtures and fittings fashioned from marble, leather, polished oak and crystal.
Cruise ships can have a reputation for tackiness but unless you count the WELCOME spelt out on the scrabble board in the sizeable games area where giant jigsaws await the next lot of passengers, tackiness is hard to find on the QM2. The Love Boat, this most certainly is not.
For me, the most impressive part of the tour comes when we enter the 20,000 square feet Canyon Ranch SpaClub, a place so serene it had many of the party looking out for places to stow away. The 1,347-seater Britannia restaurant - one of several eating venues - which spans the full width of the ship is a jaw-droppingly impressive room while a total of 14 bars and clubs, a casino, golf simulator, theatre, ballroom, jogging track, cinema and planetarium keep passengers amused.
The books on the shelves of the well-stocked library - 8,000 hardbacks, 500 paperbacks, 200 audio books at last count - hint at the type of passengers who can afford the cruise ticket, which starts from £999 sterling for a basic room with no balcony and go up to £26,000 for the fanciest suites on a six-day transatlantic cruise. No surprise then that tomes such as The Art of Profitability, What to Do With Your Money Now and $uccess $tories nestle among the romance novels found on the library shelves. Swotty passengers can also visit the ConneXions education centre, where classes in everything from computer training and seamanship, art and wine appreciation, languages and photography are conducted by onboard instructors during voyages.
A couple of hours was not long enough to see everything onboard, but during lunch we did get to meet a Co Kilkenny born chef who works 15-hour days conjuring up feasts for those passengers who have access to the poshest restaurants on the ship. We missed out on a full tour of the deck with its four swimming pools and exercise areas, putting greens, giant chessboard and basketball court. There is also a haven for nature lovers in the Winter Garden, where there is a waterfall and something called aroma management to keep the year-round blooms in sensory check.
But never mind the luxury, the following are the kinds of statistics worth pondering as we await the QM's inaugural visit to Ireland Waterford dock next year. The weight of the pineapples used each year by the catering staff matches the weight of 50 SUVs. And the toilet tissue used on board is enough to wrap around the earth almost five times. So now you know.
Róisín Ingle travelled to New York as a guest of the National Lottery.