Adora Magic City 爱达邮轮官方网站 (adoracruises.com)
SHANGHAI, Jan.2 (Xinhua) -- After several whistles, China's first domestically-built large cruise ship, the Adora Magic City, left a port in Shanghai on Monday afternoon for its commercial maiden voyage, opening up a new chapter for the country's shipbuilding and cruise industries.
Carrying more than 3,000 passengers, the ship set off from the Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal and is expected to reach Northeast Asian tourist destinations, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, before returning on Sunday.
The Adora Magic City is 323.6 meters in length, has a gross weight of 135,500 tonnes, and can accommodate up to 5,246 passengers across a total of 2,125 guest rooms, according to its builder, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., Ltd (SWS). It has 16 floors and 40,000 square meters of public living and recreational space.
Building large cruise ships like the Adora Magic City marked a leap in China's overall shipbuilding capacity, said Chen Gang, general manager of the SWS. After eight years of scientific research and five years of design and construction, the ship was delivered in November. China has become the fifth country, after Germany, France, Italy, and Finland, able to build large cruise ships.
The design and shipbuilding contract was signed at the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai in November 2018. Over the past five years, the SWS has cooperated with 361 tier-one suppliers and 1,105 tier-two supporting enterprises, with over 5,000 engineering technicians from 30 countries joining in the shipbuilding. A series of core technologies related to the power system, cabin environment, vibration noise and other sectors have been tackled.
The interior design of the "Adora Magic City" has integrated Eastern and Western aesthetics, combining traditional and modern styles. The "Maritime Silk Road" route and other medium- and long-distance routes will also be launched in the future to provide a variety of travel choices combining short-, medium- and long-haul services.
In the evening of January 2, 2024, all guests boarded the ship, and Adora Magic City was ready to set sail. The crew and the inaugural guests waved to the shore and started the 7-day 6-night cruise to Jeju, Korea, Fukuoka and Nagasaki, Japan. At present, there are 1,292 crew members from nearly 30 countries and regions in various functions on the cruise ship.
China's first domestic large-scale cruise ship Adora Magic City is 323.6 meters long, with a gross tonnage of 135,500 tons, 2,125 luxury rooms and suites, and can accommodate 5,246 guests at full capacity. Blending the aesthetics of the East and the West, and integrating diversified ideas and innovative concepts, Adora Magic City is dedicated to creating new scenarios on the sea, such as artisanal delicacies, immersive entertainment, trendy shopping, and creative spaces. Guests can enjoy global delicacies in the specialty restaurants with a collection of world cuisines, enjoy exciting performances in the 1,000-seat theater, shop for global goods in the large duty-free store, and enjoy an immersive experience in the first-ever Industrial Art Café Space.
According to reports, after the cruise ship out of the dock, the project team will continue to carry out equipment system debugging and internal installation work in the dock, and two sea trials will be carried out in July and August 2023.In more than 3 years, the cruise ship project team has conquered 3 core technologies, such as weight control, vibration and noise reduction and safe return to the port, and a series of scientific and technological innovation achievements have been formed. The number of cruise ship parts reaches 25 million, which is equivalent to 5 times of the 919 airplane and 13 times of the “Fuxing” high-speed train. The total cable length of the ship reaches 4200 kilometers, equivalent to the distance from Shanghai to Lhasa.
In terms of hardware facilities, the ship is equipped with a 16-story, 40,000-square-meter public area for living and entertainment, with rich leisure facilities such as theaters, specialty restaurants, shopping plazas, art corridors and water parks. In terms of safety and security, Adora Magic City is equipped with 20 double-decked lifeboats, with a length of 13.35 meters, a width of about 5 meters, a height of about 4 meters, and a capacity of 314 people.
In terms of software settings, it is the first 5G cruise ship in the world. The communication network consists of 5G, WiFi and communication satellites to form an integrated network of heaven and earth, and in the offshore waters where 5G signals can cover, passengers on the cruise ship can enjoy free switching between 5G and WiFi6, with a peak rate of more than one gigabit. When the cruise ship travels to the distant sea area that cannot be covered by 5G signals, due to the construction of shipboard 5G base stations on the cruise ship, coupled with the localized computing power deployment of the lightweight core network, it can greatly save the satellite backhaul bandwidth, and a variety of omni-directional multimedia real-time interaction scenarios can be realized in the offshore sea area.
Social comment:
"China has the ability to simultaneously build aircraft carriers, large liquefied natural gas carriers, and large cruise ships, gathering the 'three pearls' of the shipbuilding industry." -- Li Yanqing, Secretary General, China Association of the Shipbuilding Industry (CASI)
"Adora Magic City breaks through a series of key core technologies, forms the capability of large cruise ship design and construction and complex giant system engineering management, and continues to build a Chinese standard system for the cruise ship industry." --Chen Gang, General Manager, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co.
To create "floating in the golden waterway on the golden industry". "Because of the long industry chain and strong driving force, the cruise industry is known as the 'golden industry floating on the golden waterway'." Chen Gang, general manager of China Shipbuilding Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding and chief designer of the large cruise ship project, said that a large cruise ship can create more than 5,000 jobs just by assembling and building, and the pull ratio of cruise ship manufacturing to economic development can reach 1:14.
Large cruise ship is a veritable giant systems engineering, "Adora Magic City," for example, the number of ship parts 25 million. The large amount of engineering materials, high technical difficulties, supply chain coordination complex, making the design and construction of large cruise ships is extremely difficult, has long been monopolized by a few European shipyards.
For this reason, China has organized dozens of units to carry out technical research, and successively broke through the key technologies in the fields of weight center of gravity, vibration and noise, and safe return to port, as well as 22 technological difficulties such as deformation control of thin-plate welding, which has strongly guaranteed the smooth progress of the construction of China's first large-scale cruise ship.
In August 2022, the construction of the second domestically produced large cruise ship began, and China took an important step towards the batch and serial construction of large cruise ships. "China is gradually forming a number of cruise ship local standards and technology systems, which will strongly support the development of China's cruise ship industry, and lay a solid foundation for the realization of completely independent design and construction of cruise ships." Chen Gang said.
Data from the China Association of the Shipbuilding Industry Industry shows that in 2022, China undertook more than 30% of the global order share of large LNG carriers, a record high; from January to July 2023, China undertook 18 large LNG carriers, accounting for 35% of the global total, and the market share was further increased. From January to June 2023, China's shipbuilding completion, new orders, and hand-held orders grew comprehensively; the construction and delivery of high-tech, high-value-added ships increased significantly, and a series of high-end ships and marine engineering equipment, such as 22,000 cubic meters of ultra-large ethylene carriers and the world's first M350 floating production storage and offloading tankers, were successfully delivered. In addition, China's ship enterprises also vigorously promote the digital transformation of shipbuilding.