When STX released these renders last week I dove into some of the changed that they plan to make. Here’s one more that I just realized.
After looking at the rendering more there’s another difference I noticed. If you look just forward of the lifeboat, it seems to be designed slightly different. In fact, it’s one of the alterations they did with the Allure and Oasis.
If you look at this promo image (larger version here), you can see they set the lifeboats back and away from the bow on the Allure compared to Oasis.
This is because the forward boat on Oasis got damaged on her transatlantic crossing.
If I recall correctly it was lifeboat 2 on the port side. They then added an extra protective deflector a few weeks later to prevent it from happening again. Allure was then redesigned to set the boats further back.
This brings us to the present and the STX render of the third Oasis class ship. Its rather difficult to tell from the image, but it’s definitely something different. Whether it’s just a design element or something more, it’s too early to tell.
It looks like it could be some balconies. That would make sense as it’s traditional for newer ships in a fleet to launch with more cabins than their predecessor. After all; more cabins, especially ones with balconies, mean more revenue.