Cruise Ships - Page 52 of 57 - Captain Greybeard

Oprah’s £6.5 million cruise treat

She's the queen of the chat show in America, and now she has shown herself to be the most generous boss in the world. Oprah Winfrey (left) is taking her staff, and their families, on a 10-day cruise of the Mediterranean. All 1,700 are sailing from Barcelona to Rome, Messina, Santorini, Izmir and Istanbul in Turkey, Athens, and Valletta, Malta. on board the cruise ship Norwegian Gem (below). Oprah's giant 55th birthday party started with everyone staying for three days at the Poble Espanyol resort, a reconstruction of a Spanish village with shops, bars and restaurants. The cost is estimated [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 22 June 2009|Cruise Gossip, Cruise Ships|8 Comments

Equinox makes a spectacular entrance

The Meyer-Werft shipyard at Papenburg in Lower Saxony, north Germany, is surrounded by flat, green fields. Apart from the giant construction sheds – the largest covered dry-docks in the world – the nearest building of any size is a greenhouse as big as a football pitch. It’s 26 miles from the open sea, and possibly the last place in the world you would expect to see a giant 122,000-ton cruise ship gleaming white and bright in the weak June sun. Those 26 miles present a huge logistical problem for the shipbuilders and for Celebrity Equinox. How do you get a [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 20 June 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Royal Princess cruises cancelled

After the engine room fire on board the cruise ship Royal Princess, owners Princess Cruises have announced that the ship is being taken out of service for repairs. Passengers who were half-way through a 12-night voyage to the Holy Land when the fire broke out as the ship was leaving Port Said in Egypt have been taken to hotels in Cairo, and arrangements are being made to fly them home. The 30,000-ton ship's current cruise, and the next voyage due to sail on June 25 have been cancelled, but there is no news yet on the cause of the fire, [...]

By John Honeywell| 2009-06-20T22:44:44+00:00 20 June 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|5 Comments

Engine-room fire on Royal Princess

A fire broke out in the engine room of the cruise ship Royal Princess (above) as the ship was leaving Port Said in Egypt this evening. The boutique-style ship, carrying 733 passengers and 393 crew, is in the middle of a 12-night Holy Land cruise from Rome to Athens, and was due to dock at Ashdod, in Israel tomorrow, for excursions to Jerusalem. A Princess Cruises spokesman said: "At approximately 8:10 pm local time, an engine room fire broke out aboard Royal Princess, as the ship was departing Port Said, Egypt. "The fire is now extinguished, and the ship is [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 18 June 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

New ships put on the Italian style

Back to those two new Costa ships which were christened together this time last week. I've told you about the extravagant naming ceremony, but what about the ships themselves? Well, they are Italian, so appearance is important. You know that if they pull up alongside a modern glass-fronted terminal, they'll be checking out their reflections before they tie up to the quay. Costa Pacifica, 114,500 tons and carrying up to 3,700 passengers and 1,100 crew is the sister ship of the fleet's Concordia and Serena, quite angular at the bow and stern. Costa Luminosa, smaller at 92,700 tons, and with [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 12 June 2009|Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Is this the first picture of P&O’s Azura?

On his way to the Costa naming ceremony where I met him last week, cruise director and blogger John Heald had been visiting his new ship, the Carnival Dream, in Fincantieri's Monfalcone shipyard near Trieste, Italy. He posted some pictures of his pride and joy - he's almost as proud of her as he is of his new baby daughter, Kye - on his latest blog. But the picture that caught my eye was of P&O's new 3,100-passenger cruise ship, Azura, under construction in the same yard. Looks like work has been proceeding at a rapid pace since the keel-laying [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 9 June 2009|Cruise Ships|5 Comments

Balloon goes up for Oasis of the Seas

The first pictures of the largest cruise ship afloat undergoing her initial sea trials have been released by Royal Caribbean. The 220,000-ton Oasis of the Seas has left the shipyard at Turku in Finland and will undergo three days of stringent tests. And yes, that is a blimp tethered to the ship's stern. Whether it will still be there when the vessel enters service in December is another matter. RCI chairman Richard Fain says it is an experiment which has a less than 50 per cent chance of succeeding. He says: "If we don't use it on the ship, I [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 8 June 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Could Carnival go for Diversity?

There is speculation among some cruise experts that Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle might be the godmother for the launch of Carnival Dream in September. Myleene Klass was Carnival's choice for the launch of Carnival Splendor at Dover last year, and SuBo is thought to be an appropriate choice because of her success with the song I Dreamed A Dream. But I've got another suggestion. The 3,646-passenger Dream - Carnival's biggest-ever ship - is still four months away from completion at the Fincantieri shipyard near Venice (above), so maybe there is still time to change its name to Carnival [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 3 June 2009|Cruise Ships|0 Comments

Double celebration for Costa Cruises

Friday will be a big day for Costa Cruises - they are launching not one, but two new ships simultaneously at a spectacular ceremony in Genoa. Costa Pacifica and Costa Luminosa are the ships waiting for the bottles of Prosecco to be smashed on their bows. And two ships obviously need two godmothers. Israeli singer Noa, who sang Ave Maria for Pope John Paul in 1994, will name Pacifica. Appropriately enough, the 114,500-ton, 3,780-passenger ship is musically themed throughout, and even has an on-board recording studio. Fencing champion Valentina Vezzali, who has won five Olympic gold medals for Italy, will [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:42+00:00 3 June 2009|Cruise Ships|0 Comments

First sea trials for MSC Splendida

Here's something that's not been seen before - the shiny new cruise ship MSC Splendida undergoing her first sea trials off the Atlantic coast of France at the weekend. The 133,500-ton vessel carries 3,000-plus passengers and will - like every other MSC newbuild - be christened by screen legend Sophia Loren. The ship is scheduled to leave the STX shipyard at St Nazaire on July 4 and will sail to Vigo, Lisbon, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Marseille, before arriving in Barcelona for the ceremony on July 12.

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T16:00:43+00:00 26 May 2009|Cruise Ships|0 Comments