Cruise News

If the picture above looks familiar, then you are probably one of the millions who have seen the film Titanic. It shows a re-creation of the ship's central staircase which is a focal point of the Titanic Belfast exhibition opening at the end of this month. Almost 80,000 tickets have already been sold for the exhibition, which has been under construction for three years - the same time it took to build the Titanic - and which will open to the public on March 31, days before the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking on its maiden voyage. Built on [...]

The unmissable Cruise Show returns to London's Olympia next weekend (March 24 and 25) and if you mention my name when booking tickets, you can get two for the price of one. Just quote "Captain Greybeard" when booking online at www.cruisingshow.com or when calling the ticket hotline at 0871 620 4024 between now and 1.00 pm on March 23. Normal prices are £10 each on the door, or £6 in advance. There will be plenty of rewarding cruise deals available from the top lines attending the show, and there's a chance to win a seven-night holiday in an MSC Yacht [...]

Almost 700,000 British holidaymakers took their first cruise last year, many of them leaving from a UK port, according to figures compiled by the Passenger Shipping Association (PSA). While the number of Brits booking a holiday abroad was the lowest this century, they took a record 1.7 million cruises. One in every eight package holidays booked is now a cruise; nine years ago, the figure was one in 25. While retail prices were rising at about five per cent, the price paid for a cruise rose by less than one per cent - the average fare was up from £1,421 [...]

Fans of television's Love Boat are mourning the loss of the ship which was the setting for the 1970s series. The one-time Pacific Princess (above), which has been laid up in Genoa, Italy, since 2009, is to be scrapped. The 1971-built vessel has been sold for €2.5 million (£2.1 million) and will be towed to Turkey to be broken up. Cheesy as the TV series was, it was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic from 1977 to 1986, and is responsible for turning a generation of holidaymakers into cruise passengers. Gavin MacLeod, who played Captain Merrill Stubing, [...]

It's Royal Caribbean's turn to announce another cruise ship operating from the UK - Adventurer of the Seas will be based in Southampton from May next year, operating alongside Independence of the Seas, which is already in its fourth summer there. Although Independence has been pulled from the UK for the winter season, Royal must be confident of the summer business - they'll need to fill another 3,114 berths a week on Adventure, in addition to the 3,634 of its bigger sister. The Voyager-class ship, which was launched in 2001, has the signature features of a shopping mall Royal Promenade, [...]