* To serve coffee lovers on world's biggest cruise liner
* Starbucks name comes from classic sea story, Moby Dick
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) - Coffee lovers
looking for a bit of sea air flavor in their espresso or
Frappuccino might want to sample the first Starbucks at sea,
which steamed into a Florida port Thursday on board the
world's largest cruise liner.
Seattle-based Starbucks Corp, the world famous
coffee chain, already has a nautical link -- its founders took
the name from Starbuck, the first mate on the Pequod whaler
from Nantucket that hunted the white whale, Moby Dick, in
Herman Melville's famous novel.
The floating Starbucks Cafe is among a panoply of dining
and entertainment options offered aboard Royal Caribbean
's Allure of the Seas, sister of the Oasis of the Seas,
hitherto the world's biggest cruise ship which the company
brought into operation last year.
Royal Caribbean executives say the Allure is almost 2
inches longer than the Oasis.
The Starbucks at sea is being operated under a license
between the world's largest coffee maker and Royal Caribbean,
which will run the Allure and the Oasis from its Port
Everglades base on Florida's southeast coast.
"Starbucks is an example of something that people, when
they move from their daily world to the world of vacation, they
don't necessarily want to leave that behind," Royal Caribbean
International President and CEO Adam Goldstein told CNN this
week.
Like its sister ship Oasis, the 225,285-gross ton Allure
has 16 decks. It carries 5,400 guests at double occupancy,
and features 2,700 staterooms.
The ship offers seven distinct themed "neighborhoods",
which include a tree-lined Central Park, Boardwalk, the Royal
Promenade, the Pool and Sports Zone, Vitality at Sea Spa and
Fitness Center, Entertainment Place and Youth Zone.
Allure will operate in the Caribbean and a special
four-night sailing of the luxury liner on Dec. 1 will call at
the cruise line's private beach destination of Labadee, on the
north coast of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest
country.
(Reporting by Joe Skipper, Pascal Fletcher and Tom Brown;
Editing by Anthony Boadle)
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