Cruise Ships

Disney Fantasy is a sister for cruise ship Disney Dream, and there's little more than a year between them, so it would be reasonable to assume they are almost identical, right? Wrong. Seen from quayside, they might be almost indistinguishable - apart from the gold-embossed name on the side and the figure of Dumbo at the stern instead of Sorcerer Mickey Mouse. But inside there's a host of differences. Some were born out of the experience of what worked best on Dream and what wasn't quite perfect; others have been made to adapt the ship for longer cruises. It may [...]

Say hello to Disney Fantasy, inching out from a construction shed into a grey and chilly day at the Meyer-Werft yard in Germany. The new 130,000-ton cruise ship - a sister for Disney Dream - will be launched to an adoring public in a warmer and sunnier Florida at the end of March, but before then there are still thousands of man-hours of work needed to complete construction and fitting out. I'll be taking a look round the ship later this week. Fingers crossed, Disney will allow me to take some pictures for you as well. Top picture courtesy pazzoperilmare.com [...]

The distinct aroma of new carpets still hangs in the air on P&O cruise ship Oriana, back home briefly after its first cruise since the recent multi-million pound re-fit to adapt it to an adult-only vessel. The kids' club is gone, replaced by 27 new cabins, two of them dinky little singles at the stern. It was interesting to discover that not all the fittings from the club ended up in a skip at the Hamburg shipyard where Oriana's dry-dock refit took place; a few "heritage" items have been placed in storage, and some pieces of equipment have gone to [...]

My item about P&O's 2012 calendars excited a bit of interest, not least from Cruise Critic, who pounced on the mention of the male strippers (below) who were threatening to have Adonia's name changed to Adonis, and promptly got hold of a copy to give away in a competition. I hope they coughed up a £10 donation to Help For Heroes. A number of you asked where they could buy a copy of the heritage calendar depicting 175 years of treasured P&O memories, and I'm afraid I have to report that although copies have been sent to members of the [...]

Security has been stepped up to prevent a repetition of the mysterious damage to Disney Fantasy, but there is more cheering news from the shipyard, with the installation of a giant-sized Dumbo the Elephant on the vessel's stern. Take a look at the video to see how the character was created.