Fantastic Voyage

Such a setting is not one that Wilson had encountered in other assignments. "It's not for the faint of heart," he says. "You have to come in confident of your design, prepared to explain and to defend it. If it has a fundamental flaw, you better have found it, because otherwise they will."

The meetings also set a standard for the design's intensity, care, and quality. "Richard tries to get the best out of people by asking awkward questions," says Eric Mouzourides, 40, cofounder of London-based Designteam, which created the shops, Egyptian lounge, library, and cigar club on Voyager. "He's really giving you order and direction when he's asking questions. He's testing the strength of your convictions, and he's very rarely wrong."

If the CEO of a $2.6 billion company is going to ask about sneeze guards and couch tassels, even in passing, then you'd better get those things right, along with the capacity of the dining room and the lighting in the theater. In your own space, you must become Fain and Kulovaara, because they will eventually be in your space.

It's Royal Caribbean's unconventional organization of such an enormous project that makes it possible to create and maintain such an incredible level of intensity. The steering-committee meetings are backstopped by shipboard inspections of relentless detail. Instead of two huge bureaucracies -- Royal Caribbean and the shipyard -- pushing against each other, Voyager has a dozen small design companies with only a few spaces each. Those firms give their spaces extraordinary attention and insist on proper construction -- because they really care about those spaces, because they know RCCL really cares about them, and because many future ships, with many future design contracts, are hanging in the balance.

"The quality of the details creates the quality of the whole," says Kulovaara. "These things are much more important on vacation than they are in normal life: that you live like royalty, eat the best food, stay in a comfortable cabin, and sleep in a properly made bed. If you want the perfect experience, every detail is important. That's what amazes you. That's why you'll take another cruise."

The Top Team: Double Vision

Fain and Kulovaara are having a tug-of-war over columns. Fain looks up from the blueprints of the main dining room that is in another group of ships called Vantage. "Can we take out this column, this column, and this one?" he asks Kulovaara, drawing Xs on the sheet with his finger. The columns block the flow of guests near the entrance.

Kulovaara follows Fain's finger, then gazes into space for a long moment. You can almost see detailed drawings of the ship flashing before his eyes -- decks and machinery below, decks and machinery above, stress, loads, vibration. "These" -- Kulovaara points to two of the columns -- "no problem. This one" -- he points to the one nearest the entrance -- "must stay."

"But that's the most important one to get rid of!" Fain protests.

"It's a vibration problem. We can't take it out if you want to maintain comfort."

"No, the question isn't vibration." Fain has the beginnings of a smile, more for the steering-committee audience than for Kulovaara. "It's how you solve the vibration problem. Harri, you always complain, and you always fix it in the end."

Many people at Royal Caribbean see the creation of Voyager of the Seas as a corporate achievement -- a vessel inspired by the data of the marketing department, given form by the ideas of the designers and operations people, made possible by the savvy of finance, and made real by the determination and problem solving of the new-building group. Every phase of the Eagle ships requires armies of staff to execute, and progress is overseen by a committee.

That, too, is the official line: Royal Caribbean created the largest cruise ship in the world through teamwork. But nothing so dramatic can be the product of a committee; the heart and spirit of Voyager come from Fain and Kulovaara. Their decisions shaped the ship -- literally and figuratively. "The ship," says David Stanley, 52, RCCL's longtime head of casino operations and shipboard revenue, "is the ambition of Richard Fain and Harri Kulovaara." Indeed, Voyager is as much the product of the relationship between Fain and Kulovaara as of their individual visions.

In the 12 years since Fain became chairman of Royal Caribbean, the company has grown dramatically: Sales are up by a factor of 5, profits are up by a fact of 10; RCCL went public in 1993 and bough the high-end line Celebrity in 1997. Fain and Kulovaara have known each other for years, but it was not until April 1995 that Fain hired Kulovaara as the head of shipbuilding. Kulovaara came on board not only as Royal Caribbean began planning another huge fleet expansion, but also as the company became mired in the worst pollution scandal in U.S. cruise-ship-company history. Kulovaara brought with him an impeccable reputation, along with expertise in both building and running ships.