JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Who says a small city can't find the space to house more than 100,000 Super Bowl zealots? Jacksonville had only to look as far as the St. Johns River.
The city signed contracts with three cruise lines, and paid $11.7 million to rent five ships to use as temporary hotels along the river, which runs through the heart of the city.
"This is the epitome of what we were hoping for - and that was a big ship in our downtown skyline," said Tom Petway, co-chairman of the Jacksonville Super Bowl Host Committee.
Petway was one of the first to board one of the ships, the Radisson Seven Seas Navigator. Exploring his 1,100-square-foot suite Wednesday, he declared: "This is really exceptional."
The Navigator and four other cruise ships moored along the St. Johns sealed the deal for the smallest city to ever land the Super Bowl.
When Petway and others went to the NFL in 1999 and asked to bid on a Super Bowl, they were told to forget it. Jacksonville didn't have enough quality hotel rooms to accommodate the crush.
That's when Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver came up with the idea to use cruise ships, which had been done at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was part of the deal that helped Athens land the Games.
"We had the answer running right through the heart of our city out to the ocean," said Petway, an insurance executive and part of the ownership group that founded the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The group went back to the NFL in 2000 and convinced Commissioner Paul Tagliabue that by adding more than 3,600 rooms on cruise ships, Jacksonville could meet the minimum 17,500 rooms the NFL requires.
The Super Bowl committee worked with cruise ship meeting planners Landry & Kling, which wrangled the five ships from three lines - Radisson Seven Seas, Carnival and Holland America - that have become part of the week's Super Bowl scenery.
Landry & Kling co-founder Joyce Landry said the project involved finding ships that were available, could fit into the required spaces - and then making sure the infrastructure could sustain them for four days. The largest ship, the Carnival Miracle, cleared a permanent power line in the river by only 6 feet.
Mayor John Peyton, who has been spending the week answering reporters who still question the city's fitness for hosting one of the world's biggest events, said incorporating the cruise ships into the game plan was a natural for what's being called "Super Bowl on the River."
"This is the place we come to gather in Jacksonville," he said of the St. Johns. "It's great to share this space with the rest of the world."
