How big can they really get?

Several customers of mine have just come back from the Oasis of the Seas, and yes I was very jealous, as I can’t wait to get out and see this ship for myself. For those of you don’t know she’s enormous, the biggest cruise ship currently at sea. Speaking to one woman she told me she couldn’t believe how big it was and couldn’t imagine anything bigger.

Which got me thinking;
How big can they go?
Is there anything that limits their size?
Are there plans for anything bigger?
And most importantly do people want bigger? (Yes, yes, yes from me, I love huge cruise ships).
Currently when designing a cruise ship, two things have to be considered. The height and the width, or the beam in nautical terms. The reasons for this are fairly simple, build a ship two high and it normally wont be able to get out of the dry dock it was constructed in. For instance NCLs new Epic barely made it under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the entrance to New York harbour for it’s naming ceremony. The bridge at 228 feet only just let the Epic under, and interestingly the shape of the funnel of Cunard's Queen Mary 2 was significantly altered so the ship could use the port - essential for a liner making regular transatlantic crossings.
Obviously this is where a bit of forward planning and technology should come into play, case in point the Oasis of the Seas and her sister ship the Allure of the Seas, which either, do or in the case of the Allure, will have retractable funnels to ease problems like this.
However the big problem for cruise ships is the width, or beam.
A cruise ship will typically stay in one particular area for a season doing a big loop over either 7,12 or 14 days before sailing to another destination. Doing the Mediterranean in the summer, for example, before moving to the Caribbean for the winter.
Quite often re-positioning cruise ships like this will mean using the Panama Canal and all of her locks, meaning any ship wanting to navigate it can be no more than 106 feet wide and 965 feet long.
Or if a ship isn’t being re-positioned it might be on a world voyage, obviously a thought in all our minds at the moment with the P&O cruises, 2012 world voyages being released next week.

Clearly when the canal was built back in 1915 no one was thinking about the behmoth cruise ships currentley under sail.
Some cruise lines simply decide to ignore these restrictions and not use the Panama Canal, RCIs Voyager and Freedom class ships, for example, and vessels like Carnival Dream and Norwegian Epic can spend part of the year in the Caribbean and the rest in the Mediterranean, but would have to go the loooooooooong way round to get to Alaska!
Work is under way on a $5.25 billion project to increase the size of the canal and double its capacity by 2014. The maximum size of ships able to use the Canal will increase to 160 feet beam and 1,200 feet length.
All leaving us with the question, how big can they get?
How big should they get?
What will fill them up?
Clearly nobody wants to see these new breeds of ships with just hundreds of extra cabins squashed into them, but what else could be done with the space?
Personally I’d like to see a full sized football pitch so that before I die I can see the world cup hosted at sea. With ships that size the only real thing that can hold us back is our imaginations.
So, this is where I want to hear about your suggestions, the wackier the better, what do you want to see at Sea next?
If I get enough suggestions I'll even forward them on to the cruise lines for you.
As always let me know your ideas or any other thoughts you may have on this subject here.

Happy Cruising