Cruise News

How best to occupy spare time when not at sea? One way is by reading about cruising, or planning the next voyage. And a useful friend for doing that arrived in the post this morning. The April/May issue of Cruise International dropped through the letter-box, and I began devouring its 100 pages immediately. Launched only in December, the glossy mag is essential reading for veteran sailors and cruise virgins alike. The latest issue includes a fascinating look at life on board the Queen Mary 2 by Gary Buchanan, and a glorious account of a river cruise on the Rhone by [...]

Propulsion problems finally repaired, Aurora left Auckland just after 5.00 pm local time today, and is now racing across the Pacific. Despite cancelling calls in Tahiti, she will be a day late arriving in San Francisco, and is now scheduled to arrive there on March 24. There will be one brief stop on the 6,500-mile journey - at Honolulu - for re-fuelling and to take on provisions and fresh water. Many of the 1,700 passengers will be leaving the ship in San Francisco, and P&O will be re-arranging their flights home. Similar changes will have to be made for passengers [...]

I was fascinated to read reports today that James Taylor will be performing two concerts during a Transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton on Cunard's Queen Mary 2 in June . . . fascinated because I first reported the story here on February 4

There are many cruise passengers for whom food is an obsession, and Holland America's Eurodam caters for them all with impressive ease. The quality and the variety of the cusine on offer is among the best I have experienced at sea, probably surpassed only by Cunard's Grills Class restaurants. Take breakfast, for example, in the Lido buffet restaurant. Orange juice is freshly squeezed, a rarity these days when volume caterers seek to cut costs by offering reconstituted concentrate. You can order fried eggs any way you want, or any sort of omelette imaginable, freshly-made; There's a whole station devoted to [...]

There’s a treat for fans of Cunard’s QE2 on television on Saturday, with an hour-long TV documentary about the classic liner in BBC2's Timewatch series. QE2: The Final Voyage, joins the ship when she left her home port ofSouthampton for the final time last November, and follows her to Dubai, where she is to be converted into a floating hotel. There is archive footage of the ship’s construction and launch on the Clyde, and an interview with Tony Benn, who as Minister for Technology in the ‘60s, played a major part in ensuring construction went ahead. Look out too for [...]

Cruise websites like this blog are invaluable for holiday planning. Don’t just take my word for it, listen to P&O’s managing director, Nigel Esdale. Writing in Carnival UK’s annual Cruise Report, he acknowledges that there is “deep suspicion

At 220,000 tons, and carrying 5,400 passengers, Oasis of the Seas will be by far the biggest cruise ship in the world when construction work is completed and she carries passengers for the first time by the end of this year. Royal Caribbean’s latest giant will be a third as big again as their record-breaking Freedom class of ships. But rumours are sweeping the travel industry that there might not be enough money to pay for it. The gossip is based on the small print in a report filed by RCCL in which they detail their $6.5 billion dollar commitment [...]