Stage school at sea for starlets

Plenty to come soon from my fascinating four days on board Aegean Odyssey and especially the visits to Pompeii and Herculaneaum in the company of Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard. First, time to catch up with a few items of cruise news from while I was away, starting with my column from Saturday’s Daily Mirror:
Not content with launching talent contest Showboaters, which debuts on Sky One on Tuesday, Thomson Cruises is now setting up an on-board stage school for its younger passengers.
Star-struck children who can’t get enough of the X-Factor and Strictly will be able to enrol for classes on all the line’s ships – Dream, Spirit, Destiny and Celebration – throughout the winter.
The courses, aimed at five to 16-year-olds, will give the budding starlets three different two-hour workshops during a seven-night cruise. For £35 a course, a good option for mums and dads who want some quiet time for themselves by the pool.

THE FINAL hull section of Disney’s newest cruise ship was hoisted in position this week. The 265-ton bow of Disney Fantasy, complete with the familiar gilded decoration was welded into place in a German shipyard. That’s it in the picture above, and the time-lapse video below.
Fantasy, a twin sister for Disney Dream, will make her maiden voyage next March from Port Canaveral in Florida and will sail seven-night voyages to the Caribbean and the Bahamas – all of them including a visit to Disney’s private resort island of Castaway Cay. The ship carries up to 4,000 passengers – many of them excited children desperate to get a soaking in the Aqua Duck watercoaster.

ROYAL Caribbean’s appropriately-named Voyager of the Seas will be sailing in unfamiliar waters next year. The vessel, which carries 3,100 passengers, will be the first mass-market cruise ship plying regular cruises to China, Japan and Korea, as well as Thailand and Vietnam.
Cruises will depart from the Bund waterfront in Shanghai to ports such as Tianjin for excursions to the Great Wall of China, and Beijing. Itineraries range from five to 18 nights, beginning from May 26 and with seven-night fares starting at £1,849 including return flights from London.
From October 2012 until March 2013 the ship will be based in Australia.