Cruise News

Two signs this week that Fred Olsen Cruise Lines are catching up with rival companies . . . and the 21st Century. They are to scrap the brown envelope system for staff gratuities, and are introducing wi-fi access for computer users. Passengers will find £4 per day added to their on-board accounts to provide tips for cabin stewards and waiters - in response, says the company, to customer suggestions. Some cruise lines, such as Saga, Thomson and Voyages of Discovery include gratuities in the fare; most now use the system which Fred Olsen is adopting, with the option for passengers [...]

The most talked-about feature of the new Disney Dream cruise ship is the unique AquaDuck water coaster, but so far it has been a closely-guarded secret. I saw it on Monday, along with a handful of other cruise writers, but we were not allowed to take pictures, and all anyone else has seen so far are the long-distance shots taken from the quayside at the shipyard. Now Disney have released a video of their crew on the first test runs. They are wearing wetsuits because the ship is currently in Germany and it is almost winter. No protection, other than [...]

The British Travel Awards are the Oscars of the UK holiday industry, and some of you may have caught @CaptGreybeard's tweets from the event last night. It was a particular pleasure to have been invited to join Voyages of Discovery on their table, as they picked up the trophy for Best Niche Cruise Line - "niche" because their 650-passenger ship, Discovery, can cross the oceans, yet is small enough to reach out-of-the-way ports. There was a double success for P&O Cruises, who not only won the category for Best Mainstream Cruise Line, but also picked up the prize for Best [...]

The two new cruise ships which Norwegian Cruise Line has ordered from the Meyer-Werft yard at Papenburg - which this weekend floated out Disney Dream - are still in the planning stage. But an interview which CEO Kevin Sheehan has given to the US edition of Travel Weekly has provided some clues to what we can expect from the ships, which will together cost about £1 billion. We know they will be 143,5000-tons each and will carry 4,000 passengers - slightly smaller than the 153,000-ton Norwegian Epic which launched this summer. The new vessels, as yet un-named, are likely to [...]

Fred Olsen's Boudicca will be going into dry-dock in January for a refit which will leave the 37-year-old ship a little more like her twin sister, Black Watch. Both ships were built in Finland in the 1970s, as Royal Viking Sky and Royal Viking Star, and both have long since been stretched - by the addition of a new mid-section. But whereas Black Watch's fitness centre is high up on top of the ship on the Sun Deck, where passengers can work out gently while enjoying a calming ocean view, Boudicca's has been a gloomy and uninviting space in the [...]