Fantastic Voyage

He also brought the idea for the Royal Promenade, which is a vivid illustration of the complicated creative relationship between Fain and Kulovaara. The men are very different, but they have a clear chemistry. They trust each other's instincts and experience. Superficially, Fain seems to be the outgoing CEO with the ideas and the sense of style, and Kulovaara the more reserved naval architect who speaks with absolute authority about what is possible inside a steel hull. But Fain -- who began his career working for a company that owned liquefied-natural-gas tankers, and who carries a legendary ability to read blueprints -- has a busy mind, so busy that he can be difficult to engage in casual conversation. Kulovaara has a powerful sense of design, and, one-on-one, he is as charming as a ship's captain. The men share a plainspokenness. Kulovaara, who loves the Eagle ships, readily acknowledges that he wishes that they were less stocky. He wanted them 30 feet longer -- to help improve their lines -- but ports imply weren't big enough for a 1,050-foot ship.

The men also share a suspicion of excess reliance on research. "Surveys cannot tell you whether this pool deck or that poll deck is right," says Kulovaara. "You have to use your intuition."

Fain and Kulovaara had no trouble agreeing on the aesthetic and practical value of the promenade. On a ship the size of Voyager, open space helps passengers orient themselves. "You don't want passengers to be confused," says Fain. RCCL put the first atrium on a ship in 1987, and every other major cruise line has copied the design, not only because of the sense of space, but also because people instantly understand where they are when they stand in the atrium. The promenade gives the ship a central place -- a kind of civic square, as its main architect, Njal Eide, describes it. It also provides a way of managing huge pedestrian traffic flows -- the main dining room opens onto the promenade, and the main theater is one deck down. Together, they have seats for all 3,200 passengers on board.

But Fain and Kulovaara disagreed on the proportions of the promenade. The dispute came down to a single meter -- 39 inches. Kulovaara's promenade was 8 meters wide, from storefront to storefront. Eight meters is a standard width of open space in shipbuilding -- anything wider, and vibrations become a significant problem. The two horizontal atria Kulovaara built -- on cruise ferries in the Baltic -- were 8 meters wide.

But for all their drama, the promenades on those ships have always felt a little tight. As you stand in the middle, you can see both walls in your peripheral vision. Fain wanted another meter -- a promenade 9 meters wide.

"Richard pushed hard," says Kulovaara. "It was very symbolic; it was his intuition. He was putting his finger on something very important. He said, 'Harri, we cannot accept it at 8 meters.'"

The shipyard said 9 meters were not technically possible. Fain said that he wouldn't have a promenade at all if it had to be 8 meters.

Kulovaara -- Fain calls him "a genius" -- ultimately came up with a solution. The promenade is 9 meters -- except on the fourth story. There, the bay windows of the cabins angle inward, so that at the ceiling, the promenade is 8 meters wide. That, with some structural compensations, provided the stiffness the ship needed to accommodate Fain's 9-meter space.

"His influence is all over," says Kulovaara. "He knows the ship better than I do."

Fain gets away with a style that almost seems like micromanaging for a simple reason: He is so often right. Says Cecilia Kinnison, 39, an interior architect from Tillberg Design AG who designed Voyager's elegant main dining room, "The pushing, the cornering he does improves things. The ideas he comes up with aren't stupid, so I don't consider it meddling."

If Fain were mostly wrong, he'd be micromanaging the ships. But because he's so often right -- only because he's so often right -- his style works. And he clearly revels in the abundance of the ships.

But Fain could not possibly be having more fun than Kulovaara. "I have had one dream -- to become a naval architect," says Kulovaara. "I love ships. I only want to build and operate them." He has nearly a million gross tons of ships under construction -- worth more than $4 billion. "We put our soul into the design. Clearly, we don't build these ships just to make money."

Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com) is a Fast Company Senior Editor. When he was nine years old, he took a cruise on Royal Caribbean's First cruise ship, Song of Norway, which was barely one-seventh the size of Voyager of the Seas. To learn more about the cruise-ship industry, visit Royal Caribbean on the web (www.RCCL.com).