Now You Can Race Go-Karts Over Two Levels Of A Cruise Ship

If you’re one of those people who thinks that a go-kart track is all the better for being in a weird and/or wonderful location, you’re in luck

Matt Kimberley

26 Nov 2018

We all love karting, right? The fight over the fastest kart (there usually is one), learning a new track, a bit of friendly bumping of slower karts… it’s all good fun.

Well, now you can partake of a little go-karting action on the top deck of a new cruise ship called Norwegian Bliss. The two-level track is the first of its kind ever to be built on a ship, and is 40 per cent longer than the one on Bliss’ sister ship, Norwegian Joy.

The karts are electric and can apparently reach as much as 30mph. Barriers should stop anyone going all Hollywood and crashing overboard into the Pacific, although we can’t deny it’s a pretty rock n’ roll mental image. Speeds are remotely limited at first, while everyone gets used to the karts.

It costs $9.95 for just eight laps around the almost multi-storey car park-esque circuit, so it’s not exactly cheap compared to land-locked tracks. On the other hand, the views alone make it a key experience for anyone travelling on the boat.

Based in North America, out of Seattle in the summer months, the five-engine Breakaway Plus-class ship sails to Alaska. In the winter, it switches coasts to run routes to the Bahamas, Florida and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Via: Miami Herald/CarScoops

Comments

Switch that electric garbage for a real engine and you have my money

I was on this ship a few months back while it was in Alaska. While the article mentions the view, there’s no view to speak of when in the kart, as the walls are too high to see anything other than what’s in front of you. Being outdoors, they do close the track if it’s too windy or wet, which in the ocean/Alaska will be a significant amount of time. And being electric, there’s the whole throttling thing that can get annoying when you’re in the groove and some scrub spins out elsewhere on the track. They’re not all that quick and they have a boost button that may or may not do much of anything. The track is pretty uninspired and unfortunately they don’t track historical lap times :/

If it were anywhere else, it would be nothing to write home about. But karting is karting and it was a fun thing to say I did in the middle of the ocean.