1. hull
   funnel
2. deck

Think of the hull as the base of the ship. It's usually constructed first, on dry land, to form the bottom of the boat and give builders a base layer to build off of.

1. penthouse
   aft
2. superstructure

The portion of the ship above the main deck is known as the superstructure. On modern ships, it can be more than a dozen stories tall.

1. in dry dock
   in a calm part of the ocean
2. in water, but not salt water

Most mega ships are built in facilities known as dry docks. These are areas where a ship can be constructed, then the area is filled with water so the completed ship can be floated out to sea.

1. the hull is filled with air
   using engines that point down
2. by displacing water

Huge cruise ships float just like any other floating object; the weight of the ship is the weight of the water in tons that the vessel must displace to stay afloat.

1. they have the widest hulls
   they have super skinny hulls
2. they are built without hulls

The hull is the bottom part of the ship. On the largest cruise ships, the hull is built extremely wide so the ship can stay afloat without hitting shallow sea bottoms on creating a lot of drag under the water.

1. 3 years
   30 years
2. 300 years

A standard cruise ship is built with an eye towards a 30-year life. Despite this, most North American cruise ships are sold after 15 to 20 years. After 30 years, it often becomes so expensive to maintain the ship that it is no longer profitable to operate.

1. China
   Europe
2. Florida

There are only around four shipyards in the world capable of building cruise ships valued at $500 million or more, and three of them are in Europe.

1. on an assembly line, like cars
   one at a time, one floor at a time
2. one pair at a time, once the ship is in the water

Cruise ship cabins are modular and are built in an assembly-line fashion before they are inserted into the nearly-completed ship like stacks of blocks.

1. $300 million
   $750 million
2. $1.5 billion

Royal Caribbean has the top three biggest ships in the world in 2017. The largest, Harmony of the Seas, came with a $1.5 billion price tag.

1. 3,500
   6,500
2. 9,000

The biggest cruise ships on the planet weigh 226,000 tons and carry more than 6,500 passengers -- not to mention thousands of crew members -- as of 2017.

1. decks
   cabins
2. suites

Cruise ship floors or stories are called decks and are similar to the stories in a tall building. The biggest ships can have 20 decks or more -- making them taller than the Eiffel Tower.

1. in the funnels
   deep in the hull
2. on the bridge

The engines and other heavy equipment on a cruise ship are placed deep underwater within the hull. This keeps the weight of the boat low, helping to stabilize the vessel while it's at sea.

1. keening
   tipping
2. heeling

The motion of the waves can rock a cruise ship side to side, a motion known as heeling. Modern cruise ships are built with anti-heeling stabilizers, or wings, that prevent passengers from feeling excess heeling.

1. draft
   aft
2. port

The draft is the depth of a boat below the waterline, while air draft is the distance from the water to the top point of the boat. As modern cruise ships are built taller and taller, air draft climbs to new heights.

1. 100,000 hours
   10 million hours
2. 40 billion hours

Building a mega ship is no small matter. The 2,500 workers who built Harmony of the Seas spent 10 million man hours crafting the vessel between 2013 and 2016.

1. cost of building
   port access
2. hull thickness

Design and industry experts interviewed about the ever-increasing size of cruise ships typically site port access as the primary factor against building bigger ships. For many, the ship must be agile enough to access standard ports, which gets more difficult as ships get larger.

1. sprinklers
   fire extinguishers
2. backup power

After a fire destroyed the Splendor's engine room, the ship was left adrift for several days. Because of the incident, all cruise ships built since 2010 must have sufficient backup power to get the ship safely back to shore in this type of emergency.

1. wood
   thermoplastic
2. steel

The construction of the modern cruise ship starts when sheets of steel are cut with lasers, then welded together to form a tough hull that forms the bottom of the boat.

1. one room at a time
   one deck at a time
2. in pre-fitted panels

Just like the cabins themselves, the electrical and plumbing networks on modern cruise ships are installed in panels, which are constructed on shore. The panels are then brought onto the ship and fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

1. front
   center
2. back

Typically, once the hull is complete, the vessel is built from the center out toward each end. That means a central atrium will be put in place before an amphitheater at the back of the boat, for instance.

1. steam
   coal
2. diesel

Most cruise ships use diesel electric engines. That means diesel fuel generates the electricity, which is then used to power the engines or generators. On the very largest Royal Caribbean ships, for instance, the vessels rely on three 25,000-horsepower diesel generators.

1. 300 feet
   1,200 feet
2. 20,000 feet

You need a huge warehouse to build a modern cruise ship. The longest ships -- like Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas -- ring in just under 1,200 feet and weigh around 230,000 tons.

1. funnel
   anchor
2. propeller

Modern ships use cutting edge propulsion technology. Thanks to Azipods -- those are propellers mounted on pods with engines inside -- the captain can generate thrust in almost any direction, which is particularly useful when pulling into port.

1. hull staging ceremony
   keel laying ceremony
2. port side ceremony

The construction of every new cruise ship starts with a keel laying ceremony. The keel is the very bottom part of the boat and forms a point down the center of the hull.

1. engine rooms
   muster stations
2. sun deck

The muster station is where you gather in an emergency to board your lifeboat. The first day you board a new cruise ship, you'll have to attend a muster drill and scout out where your assigned lifeboat is located.

1. adding to the middle
   adding extra decks
2. adding to the front of the boat

When cruise companies want to make a ship larger, they typically stretch the boat. That means cutting the vessel in half while it's in dry dock and adding a newly-built section before welding the vessel back together. This process takes only a few months, compared to building a new ship, which takes much longer.

1. from the bottom up
   from the top down
2. from bow to stern

The concept of building cruise ships in an assembly line process and linking sections like blocks is fairly new. Until the late 20th century, builders constructed these ships like you'd probably expect -- one layer at a time, starting from the bottom and working their way to the top.

1. 2 years
   8 years
2. 15 years

Thanks to computers used for planning and design, even the largest ships take less than two years to build on average.

1. 15 inches
   6 feet
2. 20 feet

Thanks to advanced thrusters that work in virtually every direction, the captain can use a simple joystick to steer a large ship to within 15 inches of accuracy.

1. $3 million
   $174 million
2. $1.2

It cost about $7.5 million to build the famous Titanic in 1911. That's around $174 million in today's dollars. Considering that today's ships are five times the size of the Titanic and cost around five times as much to build, the price for the doomed vessel may have been right on track for the time.