Archive for September, 2005
Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle
A Princess In Her Prime
Celebrating 40 years of operation, Princess Cruises awaits its new crown.
Ten years ago, Princess Cruises was gearing up to introduce the 1,950-passenger Sun Princess. The new ship, which made its debut in December 1995, trumpeted not only the start of the race to build ever bigger cruise ships (Sun Princess would be the world’s largest cruise ship to date) but also the dawn of a new era: the birth of the balcony stateroom.
While other cruise ships could boast balcony staterooms (after all, Princess pioneered balconies with the introduction of 150 on Royal Princess in 1984), never before had cruise ships seen balconies in such abundance. On Sun Princess, 70 percent of its outside staterooms featured cruising’ newest luxury.
The line’ ground-breaking efforts reinvented balconies as an affordable pleasure for many passengers instead of a luxury for just a few. By the end of 2006, the company’ worldwide fleet will feature more than 8,000 cabins with balconies (more than 54 percent of the fleet’ total outside cabins).
While some might argue otherwise, some key executives say that Princess’ introduction of balcony staterooms was the greatest thing the company ever did. “The greatest advantage we ever had is we started the balcony revolution,” P&O Princess CEO Peter Ratcliffe told Cruise Week last August. “It’s the best thing Princess ever did. And with the Sun, we started this idea of having alternative dining and small spaces. So we don’t need to spend anything on retrofits, because the ships are very consistent. Literally, you can go from ship to ship, and they have the same theme. There’s always that small ship feel.”
A Princess Is Born
Princess Cruises’ modern balconied fleet is a far cry from the cruise line that started life with a single 6,000-ton ferry chartered from the Canadian Pacific Railway. During the winters of 1965 and 1966, Princess “Pat” operated cruises to Mexico’s West Coast. Those proved wildly popular, despite a few hiccups. On the ship’s inaugural cruise, for example, passenger laundry went shoreside in Acapulco, because the ship wasn’t large enough to have its own laundry on board. The laundry left the ship carefully tagged and bagged but was returned in bulk with only one name on it: “Princess Patricia.” The crew had to set up tables in the lobby to display the laundry so that passengers could claim theirs.
Princess Cruises’ Founder Stanley B. McDonald had chartered Princess Patricia and liked the name so much so that he named his fledgling new cruise company Princess Cruises. The run to Mexico proved to be popular, and after two seasons, Princess chartered an Italian newbuild (the builder went bankrupt; Princess chartered from the controlling bank), naming the ship Princess Italia. Business chugged along, and Princess chartered another ship that it named Princess Carla in 1968.
All the while, Princess was establishing a brand identity, at least on the U.S. West Coast. The logo for the company – a character with a sombrero painted on the stack – fitting for the Mexico focus of the cruise line but not for a focus that would soon include the Panama Canal (1967) and Alaska (1968). So in 1968 McDonald commissioned an artist to develop the seawitch that still characterizes the Princess brand today.
Barely a decade old, Princess was attracting attention when in 1974, the company entered into negotiations with London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, the world’s largest and oldest shipping company. Those negotiations culminated in P&O’s acquisition of Princess.
The Love Boat
Much of the company’s success, however, – and indeed the cruise industry’s success – can be attributed to a single event in Princess’ history: the long-running television series, The Love Boat, a moniker that today is still synonymous with the company.
The series began when television producer Douglas S. Cramer, who had created the popular television series Love American Style, decided to transfer his popular comedy vignette series from its studio setting to a cruise ship. The weekly hour-long series was launched on September 24, 1977 and aired every Saturday night until 1986.
At the height of the original Love Boat’s popularity, Princess built Royal Princess (1984), with all-outside cabins and an unprecedented 150 balconies. Two years later, the addition of P&O’s Sea Princess expanded the Princess fleet to five ships. That number would surge when in 1988, Princess acquired Sitmar Cruises and with it, Fair Princess, Sky Princess and Dawn Princess.
In 1989 Star Princess, which was originally under construction for Sitmar, joined the Princess fleet, and in 1991, the line’s Sea Princess was returned to parent company P&O to serve the European cruise market.
The introduction of two new 70,000-ton “superships” — Crown Princess in 1990 and Regal Princess in 1991 — launched yet another era of sea-going innovation, with their distinct dolphin-like exteriors designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano, of Pompidou Center fame.
This new spate of shipbuilding ushered in a modernization program that saw a number of changes to the fleet, including ships that were retired or reassigned. In 1993, the chartered Golden Princess joined the Princess fleet, replacing the retiring Dawn Princess. Its sister ship, Fair Princess, left the Princess fleet following its 1995 Alaska season and was repositioned to P&O Australia. Golden Princess was retired from the Princess fleet in 1996. In fall 1997, the line’s popular Star Princess was renamed Arcadia and turned over to P&O for British market cruising. In Spring 1999, Island Princess was sold to enter the Asian cruise market, and the original Pacific Princess left the fleet in 2002.
Bigger, Better, New & Improved
In 1995 the line entered a new era of innovative ship design. A new concept in cruising, introduced as Grand Class Cruising and subsequently named Personal Choice Cruising, redefined the idea of a cruise vacation by offering passengers a greater range of dining and entertainment options, introducing the concept of 24-hour dining, and making the luxury of a private balcony an affordable amenity for all.
Beginning with the 77,000-ton Sun Princess, the company began introducing ships featuring multiple dining and entertainment venues and hundreds of balcony staterooms. The shipbuilding program continued with a number of sister ships, including Dawn Princess in 1997, Sea Princess in 1998, and Ocean Princess in 2000.
The most dramatic step in the line’s newbuild program came with the 1998 introduction of the 109,000-ton Grand Princess, which debuted as the world’s largest and most expensive cruise ship. The ship featured three main dining rooms and entertainment lounges, a greatly expanded number of alternative dining venues, and an array of new features, including a wedding chapel, a dramatic nightlclub 15 decks above the ocean and more balconies than on any other cruise ship. This ship proved popular and spawned a new class of ships that incorporated these features — Golden Princess (2001), Star Princess (2002) and Caribbean Princess (2004).
The Princess fleet expansion continued with the introduction of two new ship designs based on these models but on smaller vessels that could transit the Panama Canal: Coral Princess (2003) and Island Princess (2003) were conceived to offer many of the Personal Choice features of Grand Princess. The Grand Princess design also inspired Diamond Princess (2004) and Sapphire Princess (2004).
Princess’ fleet also saw the addition of two smaller vessels, Tahitian Princess and a new Pacific Princess, which were purchased in 2002. Formerly sailing for defunct Renaissance Cruises, these 670-passenger ships diversified the Princess fleet.
During this period, several Princess ships, including Sky Princess, Crown Princess, Sea Princess and Ocean Princess were moved to other companies within the P&O corporation, giving Princess its current fleet of 14 ships. In 2005 another ship, Royal Princess also moved to P&O Cruises and Sea Princess returned to the Princess fleet.
In 2003, Princess’ corporate ownership changed with the merger of parent company P&O Princess Cruises, plc (which had de-merged from the Penninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company in 2000) and cruise giant Carnival Corporation. With this new chapter, Princess joined the ranks of the “World’s Leading Cruise Lines.”
Looking Ahead
Celebrating 40 years of operation this year, the Los Angeles area-based company ranks as one of the largest cruise lines in the industry. Highlights for 2006 include a new ship, Crown Princess; a new embarkation port (Red Hook, Brooklyn), a new Caribbean port of call (Turks and Caicos), and new itineraries.
For the first time, Princess will offer 10-day roundtrips from San Juan, nine-day cruises from New York, and 11-day cruises from San Francisco. 2006 also sees Princess largest deployments ever in Asia and in the Caribbean.
A new generation of ships isn’t on the horizon until at least 2010, but don’t expect anything too dramatic. The company has gone on record saying that Princess will not compete in the battle to boast the biggest ship. Expect an evolution, not a revolution. Why change ? Princess is in her prime.
Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle
Theme and Quirky Cruises
No matter what your obsession, there’ a theme cruise for you. Star Trek fan? Charles Datin, whose father built the models for the original Star Trek series, operates Cruise Trek, billed as “The Premier Trek Vacation Featuring Trek Actors & Guests.” Feel free to dress for his New England and Canada Cruise Trek, beginning June 24, 2006. “We see purple hair, strange-looking ears and full Klingon and Ferengi outfits,” Datin says. Expect 300 to 750 fellow Trekkies to be on board with you.
Want to learn more about computing or digital photography? Neil Bauman of Geek Cruises has operated 28 computer-related cruises over the past five years. Though some of his geek cruises get into the intricacies of scripting and programming, most focus on everyday use of Macintosh computers, combined with digital photography and Adobe Photoshop workshops. “Cruises are a better learning environment than land-based destinations, because at sea you’re undisturbable,” Bauman says. “There’ no cell phone vibrating in your pocket. You’re not plugged in to the real world. You walk away with skills you can put to work when you return home.” Next cruise: September 25, designed for Ipod fans.
Not a Trekkie or an aspiring geek? Check these out: nude cruises, NASCAR cruises (departing December 4 on Carnival Valor), cruises for poker players and cruises for the Red Hat Society (motto: “greeting middle age with verve, humor and elan. Or to “rejuvenate mind, body and spirit,” step aboard Carnival’s Mind/Body Cruise, departing Los Angeles October 23 on Carnival Pride.
Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle
Cruise West To Cruise East
Small ship operator Cruise West launches its first-ever Japan itineraries in 2006. The new “Japan Unveiled” itinerary will run March through October on the company’ all-suite flagship, Spirit of Oceanus. The 13- and 16-night cruises begin at $5,349 per person, double occupancy and promise to take passengers behind the cultural curtain to the “insider’s Japan ““ the coastal ports and feudal castle towns that shaped the island nation.”
Cruise West Chairman and CEO Richard West traveled extensively in Japan to choose the places and activities that would give passengers the best possible experience. “Seeing Japan by small ship relieves the language barriers as well as travel by train and bus to get to some of the significant sites,” West says. “We visit sites during the day, some accessible only by Zodiac, then return to the ship for a steak or a hamburger. The next morning you wake up in a new destination.”
Among the activities and experiences: ancient tea ceremonies, tours of Buddhist temples and Zen gardens, and a bullet train ride from Nigata to Tokyo.
Posted on September 2, 2005 - by Ralph Grizzle
Ship Shape
What becomes apparent after only a few minutes of talking to the people who design cruise ships is that they are dreamers. After all, a decade ago, who but the dreamers would have imagined that cruise ships today would feature rock-climbing walls, bungee trampolines, human gyroscopes, waterslides, ice-skating rinks and even a planetarium? The dreamers were conjuring up those ideas back in the mid-1990s.And they have many unrealized dreams for cruise ships to come. Joseph Farcus, Carnival Cruise Lines’ chief designer, is still pushing to put a roller coaster on the top deck of a ship. “It would be a very sculptural thing,” he explains. Much like Carnival’s signature waterslides, which spiral down from the upper decks of Carnival ships.
Designteam, a London-based company that contributed to the interior spaces of Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 and other ships, still hopes that some cruise line will see the wisdom of its proposal: a 250-meter ski slope wrapped around the ship’s funnel and sloping to the back of the top deck.
An “inflatable roof” would keep the manmade snow from melting in the Caribbean, says Designteam co-founder Frank Symeou. The roof would be removed when cruising cold-water destinations such as Alaska. “It’s perfectly feasible,” chimes in Symeou’s partner, Eric Mouzourides, “although the weight of the snow was one concern.” Not a safety issue, he explains: The additional weight adds to fuel costs.
If only the cruise line bean counters, those penny-pinching CFOs and accountants who wield power over every cent spent, would loosen the purse strings, the designers could bring even more activities and features previously unthinkable on cruise ships. “Nobody wants to be innovative anymore because of budgetary constraints,” Symeou laments. “Since 9/11 the trend has been to repeat what you’ve already done and done well. The only innovation is to see who can build the biggest ship.”
And that’s just what’s on the horizon for future cruise ship design: bigger ships, with the biggest of them all coming in the spring of 2006.
Bigger, Better, New and Improved, Again
Readers who turned to these pages a decade ago (Hemispheres, October 1995) would have witnessed the beginning of the large-ship battle. At that time, Princess Cruises was gearing up to launch the world’s largest cruise ship, the Sun Princess. But poor Princess would see her tiara tarnished after only a few months, when Carnival Cruise Lines announced that it would launch an even larger ship, the Carnival Destiny.
Princess volleyed by announcing that it would build a bigger ship, the Grand Princess. A line was drawn in the sand, and the battle was just heating up when in 1998, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. blew the battling cruise ships out of the water by announcing it would build a ship more than a third larger than either the Carnival or Princess ships.
Measuring 142,000 gross tons (that’s right, “measuring” — we’ll get to that in a moment), Royal Caribbean’s Voyager series — five ships carrying 3,838 passengers each — submerged the competition and won the large-ship battle. The new series of ships would be nearly double the size of Sun Princess, at 77,499 tons. Gross tonnage is important to designers because it is a measure of interior space, not an indication of actual weight. The term dates back to 1347, when a tun was a large wine cask with a capacity of 252 old wine gallons. Edward III of England levied a tax, known as tunnage, of three shillings on each tun of wine imported by ship into England. Today, a gross ton is equal to 100 cubic feet of enclosed space.
At 150,000 gross tons, Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2, put into service by parent company Carnival Corp. in 2004, eclipsed Voyager series as the largest cruise ship afloat. The press ballyhooed the Queen Mary 2’s sheer size, and probably no other ship has received as much media attention as Queen Mary 2.
“There’s no question that big ships have a great public relations value,” says Carnival’s Farcus. “There are still so many people who have not cruised, and big ships bring new people to cruising.” Partly by the new features that big ships can accommodate, such as rock-climbing walls on Royal Caribbean and waterslides on Carnival, but also because of the media raucous that big ships create.
Where Big Began: Baltic Sea Ferries
Today’s large cruise ships got their start in the Baltic Sea, where ferries began to test the limits of size in the late 1980s. It’s no coincidence that one of the region’s newest and largest ferries, Color Fantasy, resembles Royal Caribbean’s Voyager-class ships. All have promenades, a main street of sorts, down the center of the ship, and all were built from similar blueprints at the same shipyard in Finland, today known as Aker Finnyards. Because it is more ship than ferry, Color Fantasy no longer bills itself as a ferry. The vessel has morphed into what the company calls the “first-ever cruise ship with car decks.”
Birka Paradise, which entered service late last year, made headlines because it was a “full-blooded cruiser without car decks,” an Aker Finnyards press release read. That ship features a glass-covered sun deck with sun lamps to create “tropical warmth in the Baltic” on the ship’s winter sailings between Stockholm and Finland’s Aland islands. So while Baltic Sea ferries have inspired today’s ship design, so has ship design, or at least the concept of cruising, inspired the Baltic Sea ferries.
Royal Caribbean International now has contracts with Aker Finnyards for three 158,000-ton ships to debut in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Those ships, which will be the world’s largest, will carry 4,370 passengers when fully loaded. Plus 1,360 crew. Not to be outdone, Carnival Corp. intends to build a 180,000-ton ship, internally dubbed the Carnival Pinnacle project.
“We’ve seen some serious competition between the larger operators to make the headlines with their new ships — the so-called “˜wow’ factor,” Designteam’s Symeou says. “That’ likely to continue as an effective way of drawing attention to both ship and brand, and attracting those all important first time customers.”
A new line has been drawn in the sand between two ever-battling companies that practically control the cruise industry: Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which operates 29 ships under two cruise brands, Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises; and Carnival Corporation, which operates 80 ships under 12 cruise brands: AIDA, Carnival Cruise Lines, Costa Cruises, Cunard Line, Holland America Line, Ocean Village, P&O Cruises UK, P&O Cruises Australia, Princess Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, Swan Hellenic and Windstar Cruises.
Anything Land Can Do, Cruise Can Do Better?
“The fundamental shift in design over the last 20 years has been from vessels designed primarily for travel to vessels primarily designed for entertainment,” says Carl Gustaf Rotkirch, vice president of cruise ship sales for Aker Finnyards. “The cruise industry does a good job of scanning the entertainment industry to stay on top of trends, so much of what cruise lines do emulates what land-based entertainment does.”
The idea, of course, is to make cruise ships destinations in their own right — a ship so full of activities that passengers don’t care where the ship takes them. They may not even want to disembark at ports of call, which would probably suit cruise executives just fine, as the only limitation to how large they can build ships is port capacity. Ever larger ships are challenged with not only how to disperse an immense number of passengers and crew ashore but also how to keep them on board. With a smaller percentage of passengers disembarking, the thinking goes, port capacity becomes less of an issue.
“Are cruise ships getting too big?” asks the summer issue of Seatrade Cruise Review, an industry trade publication. With no fewer than 20 post-Panamax (too large to squeeze through the Panama Canal) ships in service and more than a dozen others under construction, port destinations — particularly in the Caribbean, Europe and the Mediterranean where post-Panamax vessels are limited to cruising — certainly will feel the strain to handle an ever increasing number of passengers. Indeed, U.K analyst Peter Wild says that nearly 300 ports worldwide will need upgrades totaling $3.5 billion to handle larger cruise ships during the next decade.
Slice And Dice Ships
With size being the primary platform for design innovation, even some existing ships are being made larger. In June, Royal Caribbean stretched its 8-year-old Enchantment of the Seas. At Rotterdam’s Keppel Verolme shipyard, workers cut the ship in half and inserted a 73-foot midsection, built at Aker Finnyards and barged to Rotterdam via the North Sea. For a fraction of the cost of building a new ship, the midsection added 151 staterooms, and perhaps more importantly, suspension bridges, a “vitality course with four fitness stops,” an interactive water fountain play area and the first bungee trampolines at sea.
These latter features were partly inspired by Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. “Every new ship we build forces us into revitalization for the older ships,” says Peter Fetten, Royal Caribbean’s vice president of fleet design and newbuilding. “Somewhere between 10 to 14 years, ships need mid-life revitalization. Tastes have changed, and the branding is no longer there.”
Next spring, Celebrity Cruises’ Century, 10 years old, will undergo revitalization to add 314 new verandas to existing staterooms and other features to bring that ship up to date. At a cost of $55 million, roughly the same outlay as for the Enchantment stretch, revitalization is cheaper than building a new ship (Queen Mary 2 was built at a cost of $800 million).
After 25 years, a ship has typically run the course of its life. “At that point, it is usually not cost effective to keep putting money back into the ship,” Fetten says. “So 90 percent of the old ships will end up as razor blades.” Old ships go to India, where they are taken to a scrapyard known as “The Breakers” for the labor-intensive disassembly process.
The Life Aquatic
The current war among new ships is being waged between Royal Caribbean International’s Freedom series, which the company hails as “our largest and most impressive” ships yet, and Carnival Corporation’s Pinnacle series, which, says designer Farcus, “will help expand the entire cruising market by vitiating the number one market resistance in my opinion: claustrophobia, or some form of it.”
Certainly, these super-size ships appear less like ocean-going vessels and more like resorts with design innovations aimed at making people feel less confined. Thus, such far-fetched notions as ski slopes and roller coasters. “Without extreme ideas, it can be very hard to get people motivated to cruise,” says Designteam’s Mouzourides.
From preliminary plans, Freedom of the Seas, on the top deck at least, appears that it will be one giant water park. When it debuts in May 2006, the ship will boast a combined pool area that is 43 percent larger than on the company’s largest existing vessels.
Of the three pool areas, one will feature “interactive” water features such as squirting fountains and a circular pool with a river-like current for drifting. The second pool area features a sports pool for basketball, volleyball, jousting tournaments, water golf and synchronized swimming. The third pool, a jungle-themed Solarium for adults only, will feature two large hot tubs extending 12 feet from the sides of the ship and 112 feet above the sea.
Freedom will also introduce 20 new categories of staterooms designed primarily for families and groups, the largest being the 1,215-square-foot Presidential Suite. With four bedrooms, its sleeps 14 and features an 810-square-foot balcony with a private Jacuzzi.
Carnival’s Pinnacle project, still on the drawing boards, will be large enough to accommodate features that until now designers have only dreamed of —a roller coaster perhaps?
“We have heard time and again over the years about the promise of a new and very different ship,” says Susan Parker, editor of Lloyd’s Cruise International, “but I am still waiting to see something that really does appeal to middle-aged professionals with money to spend.”
With the new features that designers are dreaming up, her wait may soon be ending.
Sidebar: Are Ships Safe?
You may have read about the 60-foot rogue wave that hit the Norwegian Dawn in April. Though the media hype suggested otherwise, the ship sustained minimal damage — a few broken windows. And that wave was a ripple compared to the 95-foot one that in 1995 hit the bow of Queen Elizabeth 2 head on. Although the wave’s crest hit bridge level, none of the 1,200 passengers were injured, and damage was minimal. Cunard’s transatlantic liners have sustained swells of more than 100 feet in the past.
Ship designers and architects shrug off concerns of rogue waves. That’s because shipyards build durable ships. Could a wave damage the structural integrity of a ship — or worse yet, sink it? “No,” says Aker Finnyards’ Carl Gustaf Rotkirch. “It could break windows, but that’s about it.”
