Travelog | A look at the new Norwegian Bliss cruise ship

Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest ship, Norwegian Bliss, has begun its U.S. inaugural tour with stops in New York, Miami and Los Angeles before a christening in Seattle kicking off a season of cruises to Alaska.

The ship’s seven-day cruises to Alaska begin in June and will include one port call in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

The ship’s features include a race course for electric go-karts, laser tag, a waterslide with a tube that swooshes you along the side of the ship and an observation lounge for enjoying Alaskan scenery. It’s also got a mojito bar, cigar lounge, brew house, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville At Sea and Q Smokehouse, a Texas barbecue restaurant.

As it repositions from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it will become one of the largest ships to ever navigate the Panama Canal. Norwegian Bliss measures 41 meters wide and 333 meters long (135 by 1,093 feet), while the canal is 50 meters wide and 400 meters long.

Norwegian Bliss is the largest ship in Norwegian’s fleet, with 20 decks and a capacity of about 4,000 passengers. As cruise ships go, however, at least a half-dozen other ships are larger. Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas, which also set sail this spring, is the world’s largest, with a passenger capacity of 6,680.

The hull of Norwegian Bliss features images of whales and other sea creatures designed by the artist Wyland, who is known for his depictions of marine life.

Hotel rooms by the hour – or the minute

Most hotels already offer quick checkout. Now, a growing number are selling briefer stays, too.

Through an app called Recharge, some 50 hotels in San Francisco and New York offer rooms by the minute — at 40 cents to USD2 per minute, depending on demand and time of day. That means the opportunity to take an hour nap in a comfortable bed for $24 to $120 before the usual taxes and other fees collected by hotels.

That isn’t exactly a bargain. For instance, two of the participating hotels recently were offering full-night stays for $269, before taxes. That works out to about $12 per hour, assuming a regular check-in and check-out time.

But it’s a savings over the full-night rate for those who don’t need the full night. Recharge says its app has drawn interest from travelers needing a nap after an overnight flight and from nursing mothers looking for some privacy and comfort.

Although the hotel still needs to pay for cleaning and administrative tasks, it’s extra money for a room that might otherwise be empty during the day.

Recharge plans to expand to Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington this year. Another digital service, Byhours, offers “microstays” at about 3,000 hotels worldwide, but only four are in the U.S., all in the New York area.