Cruise Ship Gets Sliced In Half For Extreme Makeover

In this video we will learn about the most extreme makeover that a cruise ship can go through. We will take a look at the Silver Spirit being cut in half, pulled apart and having a whole new mid-section added to create a bigger, longer and more glitzy ship!

Come behind the scenes of an extreme cruise ship makeover like no other. Gary takes you on a journey as Silversea Cruises cuts the Silver Spirit cruise ship in half, pulls the ship part and inserts a new 49-foot mid-section. Come along to the Fincantieri shipyard in Palermo and see and hear about the process of this dramatic cruise ship makeover. See the ship undergo this drastic procedure and find out why Silversea are doing it.

Being on the ship site is a magnificent sight, we see the Silver Spirit in the dry dock and along side it is an already made mid-section, 49 foot long, 10 decks high, that is going to be inserted into the middle of the ship. It is an incredibly fast process, too!

The ship arrived in the dry dock about 5-6 days before what you are seeing here now. A process that we attended to see it was the last bit of cutting. Once it was cut, there was a series of little trolley devices underneath the front of the ship which then takes the full weight of the ship and begins to move slowly, pulling apart the ship. It takes almost a day to actually move the ship apart, because they have to do it really, really slowly. Once the pieces are far enough apart they then bring all these motorized tracks, bringing in the mid-section, which they slide into the middle of the ship! They push it back together and then they begin welding back the ship! How cool is that!

The mid-section addition will bring 34 new passenger cabins, 20 new crew cabins, but it will also increase the number of restaurants from 6 to 8, completely renovating the spa and the pool! With the middle section the ship looks longer and slicker. So you may wonder why on earth, don’t they simply build a new ship? Because, the refurbishing process will cost only around $70 million! That might sound like a lot of money, but building a new ship can cost up to $500 million and above! So, it makes a huge difference, don’t you think?