By CEO Richard Fain
A number of people have asked about the history of the Rising Tide Bar. As I hope you all
know, the Rising Tide Bar is a bar holding 35 people which is also certified as an elevator.
It goes between the Royal Promenade and Central Park and guests can ride up and down enjoying
the changing view and sipping their Piña Coladas.

Its development is interesting but there was nothing like it in the original conceptual layouts for
the ship. The development of the bar related to the functionality of The Royal Promenade and
Central Park. These two areas are not only interesting and exciting venues in their own right,
they are also an integral part of the fluidity of the ship – they help orient people
instinctively to make the ship easier to get around.

We knew from an early stage that it was important to link these two areas by an easy and dedicated
mechanism. The early designs therefore included a couple of small passenger elevators that
went between Royal Promenade and Central Park. These two glass elevators were affixed to the
side wall going directly between the two levels.

In looking at the plans, it seemed to me that these elevators were highly functional . . . but very
prosaic. They met the need, but they were boring and these spaces deserved better. At that
point, I sent an email to Tom Wright from Atkins (the architects who designed the Royal
Promenade and Central Park) with a plea for help.

Tom responded within an hour with his reaction to my question and a proposed solution. He said he
was in Hong Kong, but he agreed that the spaces cried out for something exciting to link them
and he attached a WAV file of his initial idea. When I opened the attachment, it was a short
video of a man wearing a jet pack and flying off into the atmosphere. I got a good laugh out
of that and enjoyed seeing such a terrific imagination at work and at play.

Somewhat later he came back with a slightly more pragmatic solution. This time, they envisioned an
enormous teeter-totter (or seesaw) patterned after a child’s playground toy. The idea was
there would be a small platform at either end of the teeter-totter; when one end was on the
Royal Promenade, the other would be at Central Park and visa versa. It really was an elegant
solution and the mechanism they developed was quite beautiful. It reminded me of one of those
fancy Swiss watches were you could see the gears turning and the escapement ratcheting. We all
liked the idea in concept and marveled at the engineering work they had done to make it
feasible. Unfortunately, it required so much space and it carried so few people that we
concluded it just wasn’t practical.

Back to the drawing board.
Somewhat later, Tom and the Atkins team came back with another terrific idea which became the
Rising Tide Bar. Now they proposed a moving bar which could hold a significant number of
people and allow those guests to drink while they ride. To do this, it had to be certified as
an elevator which is no mean feat. As you could imagine, the safety requirements for licensed
elevators are quite high, but they had prepared all the engineering and safety systems that
made it possible. Our entire team took one look at it and actually applauded at the end of the
meeting.

We all knew immediately that this was a winner. Now that we’re seeing it in place, we are even
more excited about it.