All the latest cruise news from the man in the know

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 [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:01+00:00 11 September 2011|Cruise Destinations, Cruise Entertainment, Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

How hurricanes and art led to a series of right Royal blunders

UPDATE: See below for latest response from Royal Caribbean's Adam Goldstein The damage caused by Hurricane Irene was not limited to uprooted trees, wrecked buildings and flooded streets in a swathe from the Caribbean to New York - it also blew a huge hole in the reputation of giant cruise company Royal Caribbean. While rival Carnival has won praise for the way it dealt with stranded passengers, Royal is still struggling to recover from the bad call it made right at the start of the storm's devastating passage. As Irene headed for the island of Puerto Rico, the authorities at [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:01+00:00 3 September 2011|Cruise News|2 Comments

Toothless Watchdog is off-target

Funny old programme, BBC TV's Watchdog. It was back on our screens last night with its usual random collection of consumer complaints, but each item seemed to fizzle out without reaching any proper conclusion. And I'm still trying to erase the memory of Anne Robinson's embarrassing flirting with newly-betrothed Chris Hollins. Eeuch! There was an excellent investigation into a rogue valet parking outfit at Heathrow which uncovered some truly disturbing and undoubtedly illegal practices but then limped to a finish with presenter Matt Allwright cordially shaking hands with the evasive proprietor. Furniture giant IKEA, which had dishonestly used Watchdog's name [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:01+00:00 2 September 2011|Cruise News|0 Comments

Voyager joins Discovery and Hebridean takes to the rivers

Roger Allard, executive chairman of All Leisure Holidays, must have been cursing accountants Grant Thornton this morning. Nothing to do with money, but they deprived him of one of the best views in London. Roger, whose company is the biggest British-owned cruise operator with Voyages of Discovery, Swan Hellenic and Hebridean Island Cruises under its wing, had booked a 12th-floor room overlooking Tower Bridge for a press conference. He proudly showed pictures of luxury cruise ship Hebridean Princess, and new acquisition Alexander von Humboldt both passing under the raised bascules of the bridge, but the view we had out of [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 1 September 2011|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Sky’s the limit for Noble Caledonia

Expedition cruise line Noble Caledonia announced today that it has acquired a new ship . From next May Caledonian Sky will join sister vessel Island Sky and will spend much of 2012 in the waters around Britain - and north to the Arctic - before heading for South America, Australasia and the Pacific Rim. Both ships once sailed together in the 1990s as Renaissance VI and Renaissance VIII. Six later became Hebridean Spirit (above), but was sold in 2009, reportedly for £4 million, to be converted into a private yacht. Island Sky carries 116 passengers and 66 crew; as Hebridean [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 31 August 2011|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

New role for QE2’s anchor

The centrepiece of Southampton's QE2 Mile, a pedestrian route linking the city's Cenotaph with the waterfront at Town Quay, will be unveiled tomorrow. A 13-ton anchor from the ship has been set in the walkway at Holy Rood Place, outside the church which has been a memorial to Merchant Navy sailors since 1957 Councillor Royston Smith, Leader of Southampton City Council, said: "Cunard's generous gift has finally been given an appropriate home in Southampton. Not only will it add an important heritage site to the city, it will also raise the profile of the QE2 Mile and ultimately attract more [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 31 August 2011|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|0 Comments

Spirit goes back to being Berlin

Life is not over for plucky little cruise ship Spirit of Adventure. After the 350-passenger vessel finishes her winter season in the Far East and sails her farewell cruise next April from Cyprus to Rome, she will reappear in a new guise - or more accurately, an old one. For the 9,570-ton ship, which has been operated by an arm of Saga Cruising since 2006, is going back to being called MS Berlin, and will sail a series of Mediterranean voyages for Germany's fifth-largest travel company. Some details of the new operation have appeared on an FTI website, together with [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 31 August 2011|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|1 Comment

Any port in a storm? Not this one for Adonia, thank you very much

Adonia is the smallest vessel in P&O's fleet; a medium-sized cruise ship by modern standards, it can get to where its larger sisters cannot go. According to Captain David Perkins it's "the small ship with a big heart" and P&O boss Carol Marlow is fond of the phrase "pathfinder ship" to differentiate it from Azura, Arcadia, Aurora and the others. On this cruise to the Norwegian fjords it has called at Skjolden, Bodo and Alta, all destinations which are off the beaten track and which do not feature on most Norway itineraries. But there's a reason why some small ports [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 29 August 2011|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|0 Comments

Marco Polo travels to final victory

It's all kicking off in Norway. If I had been in Bergen a few days earlier, I could have watched a fleet of cruise ship teams battle it out for the right to be called champions. The occasion was the grandly-titled Bergen Cruise Ship League Cup. In the semi-finals a team from Cruise & Maritime Voyages' Ocean Countess saw off the Discovery crew 2-0, and Marco Polo beat P&O's Ventura 1-0 to complete an all-C&MV line-up for the final, from which Marco Polo emerged the 2-0 winners. Winning team captain James Hadley, from the cruise staff on board Marco Polo, [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 27 August 2011|Cruise News|0 Comments

Irene has cruise ships on the run

The glorious weather I enjoyed in Andalsnes on Friday couldn't last. Rain was obscuring the windows of Adonia's Sorrento restaurant before I had finished dinner last night, and we woke to a a grey, cloudy and inevitably wet Bergen this morning. But our discomfort was nothing to that which cruise passengers in the Caribbean have faced this week as their holiday itineraries have been disrupted by Hurricane Irene. The facilities at the cruise port of Grand Turk, and the private island of Half Moon Cay haver both suffered substantial damage, and ships from Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and Holland America [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:02+00:00 27 August 2011|Cruise News|1 Comment