A cruise ship arrived in Halifax Thursday morning, breaking the record for the largest cruise ship to visit and carrying the most passengers with approximately 4,200 people.
“When you’ve got that many people together and going from here into the downtown, taking those tours, taking those excursions, you can feel the electricity in the air,” said Lane Farguson, a communications adviser for the Halifax Port Authority.
Officials say the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines’ Anthem of the Seas has a capacity of 4,900 passengers and weighs a 167,800 tons, making it one of the largest cruise liners in the world.
The Quantum Class ship has everything from bumper cars and rollerskating to a circus school and four swimming pools, along with more than 2,000 staterooms.
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“It’s a third of a kilometre long,” added Farguson.
Although summer is getting closer to ending, he said that it’s still early in the cruise ship season.
READ MORE: Record-setting cruise liner visits Halifax
About 220,000 passengers visited Halifax last year. This year, he said the expectation is that there will be fewer visits by cruise ships but, because of the ships’ bigger sizes, there will be five to eight per cent more passengers.
With files from The Canadian Press
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