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How do shipyard workers complete seemingly impossible tasks, such as painting the ship's bottom or making adjustments to propellers? Every two (or three) years, a ship goes "off the grid," so to speak, making a pilgrimage to a shipyard for maintenance. In industry parlance this process is called "dry-docking" -- which, as the term suggests, means that a ship is actually taken out of the water and hoisted onto blocks in a big, waterless basin.
Most ships visit dry dock (well-known sites include Hamburg's Blohm + Voss and Freeport's Grand Bahamas Shipyard) for regular, mechanical upgrades or maintenance. However, every once in a while a cruise line will commit to a major refurbishment that includes significant alterations to passenger areas, too. Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Constellation underwent just such a revitalization this year.