Cruise News

Sailing from Tallinn to Copenhagen over the last couple of days, Olav Sovdnes, master of Balmoral, told us a couple of times during his twice-daily broadcasts over the ship's Tannoy that he had altered the planned course to avoid heavy swells and the worst of the weather in the Baltic, seeking shelter in the lee of the Swedish island of Gotland. What a shame we weren't there a day or two earlier, for we might have been fortunate enough to see Allure of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, undergoing her first sea trials. Royal Caribbean chairman [...]

April 2012 will see the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and it's beginning to look like the spot where the doomed liner went down is going to be a little crowded, with the announcement that a second cruise ship will make a memorial voyage to the site. Enterprising UK agent Miles Morgan Travel has almost sold out places on board Balmoral, coincidentally the ship on which I am currently returning from a cruise to the Baltic. The 1,350-passenger Fred Olsen ship will leave Southampton on April 8 next year, following the Titanic's original course and calling at [...]

If you could include Venice, New York and Barcelona on the same itinerary, with a detour to the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights and a whale or two, you would have the recipe for the perfect cruise. Especially if Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean was at the controls. That's the result of a survey commissioned by the Passenger Shipping Association to mark National Cruise Week, which starts on Sunday. Venice topped the list of favourite cruise ports for the second consecutive year. Also high on the list were Luxor - which is a good three [...]

It's the latest viral video sensation - the internet is buzzing this week with footage taken on board a cruise ship getting a frightening battering in stormy seas. Furniture, guests and crew are repeatedly sent hurtling across a room as the ship is tossed about during a storm, and it certainly looks like a very scary ride. In another clip, taken by a camera in a storage area below decks, a forklift truck is tossed about like a toy, with almost calamitous results. The incident happened 400 miles off the coast of New Zealand as the Pacific Sun was returning [...]

On Allure of the Seas last week, Captain Hernan Zini made much of the fact that his vessel will claim the title of biggest cruise ship in the world - by all of 5 mm or three-tenths of an inch - from older sister Oasis. His boss, Royal Caribbean's chairman Richard Fain, has measurements on his mind as well, although in this case, he is referring to the crew rather than the ship. As the vessel is being prepared for her first sea trials this weekend, arrangements are being made to transport thousands of crew members to Finland by charter [...]

The Finnish shipyard where I saw Allure of the Seas nearing completion last week has a long and proud history of designing and building the biggest - and some of the most innovative - cruise ships the world has seen. But the STX yard at Turku is going to be a very different and much quieter place after Allure sails away, heading for Florida, on October 29. There are no other ships under construction in the yard; the giant dry dock is being used only to store Allure's lifeboats, and the fabrication sheds are filled with empty packing cases instead [...]