Royal Caribbean International will introduce Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, featuring 125 different flavors of Coke products, on its fleet in 2013, with a few ships scheduled for installations in 2012, and the Majesty of the Seas being the first, getting her machine this past June.
In a blog post, Director of Fleet Beverage Operations Bob Midyette explained that “using medical micro dosing technology, flavor cartridges just slightly larger than those of the standard ink jet printer opened a world of flavors never available before.”
He said that Coca-Cola and Royal Caribbean began the effort three years ago to integrate the changes needed for the machines to work onboard the ships, which included a few health code modifications for a marine environment as well as the addition of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to use with souvenir soda cups.The RFID cups allow guests to serve themselves for the period of their voyage and automatically expire after their voyage.
