Cruise Line Fleet Cuides

There is a great deal of information out there about the ships in the fleets of the various cruise lines. However, I thought it would be useful to put together some charts which would allow readers to quickly see the relative age, size and design of the ships within the different fleets.

Accordingly, I have added what I call "Fleet Guides" to my website. These list the ships in the line's fleet in reverse chronological order by the date in which they entered service.

In addition, the guides list the gross tonnage of each ship. Gross tonnage is a measure of a ship's revenue producing volume rather than its actual weight. However, it is the standard measure used when people are referring to the size of a ship. Thus, with the gross tonnage figures, a person can see the relative size of the ships.

Next, I have listed the class of the ship. Class usually refers to the ship's design. Two ships are in the same class if they were built to the same design, perhaps with some minor variation. Therefore, if one knows the classes of a group of ships, one will know which ships were built to the same design. This can be particularly helpful if one has traveled on one of the ships in a cruise line's fleet and wants to know which other ones are like that ship.

Wherever possible, I have added photographs that I have done of the ships in the different fleets. In addition, there are links to the pertinent section of the site for those ships which I have done a detailed profile.

I hope you find this useful. http://www.beyondships.com/Cruiseshiphome.html

The Crystal Difference

Broadly speaking, the cruise industry can be divided into four categories. First, there are no frills budget cruise lines. These companies tend to have ships that were once used in the more up-scale lines and which have now entered a second life transporting vacationers on no frills holiday. The largest category is the mass market cruise lines. These are the most popular lines including Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International and Norwegian Cruise Line. For those who want more service and a taste of luxury there are the premium market cruise lines such as Celebrity, Holland America and Cunard. Then at the extreme upper end are the luxury cruise lines.

For the most part, the luxury lines offer cruises on small yacht-like ships. The conventional wisdom being that you cannot offer excellent service or have top quality amenities if there are too hundreds of passengers competing for the attention of the staff and trying to use the ship’s facilities. However, one line, Crystal Cruises has for several years been rated a six star plus experience on large ships. Admittedly, the CRYSTAL SYMPHONY and CRYSTAL SERENITY are not mega-cruise ships but at just over 50,000 tons, they do qualify as large ships.

I recently had the chance to go aboard CRYSTAL SYMPHONY and talk with her captain, hotel director and cruise director about how Crystal manages to consistently obtain high ratings in the luxury category. They conceded that it was not a “hardware” advantage. There are some beautiful ships coming out in the mass market and premium categories. In addition, the mass market and the premium lines have steadily improved their facilities and the quality of the experience they offer. Things that were found only in luxury ships a decade ago are now standard on the mass market ships.

Instead, they said that it is the people that Crystal employs that really makes the Crystal difference. The line seeks to take care of its crew and the crew is disposed to provide the best quality service. Of course, they gave some other reasons as well.

I have posted my interviews at http://www.beyondships.com/CrystalSymphony-Interview.html I hope you enjoy the article.

Queen Mary 2 Virtual Bridge Tour

Queen Mary 2 is an amazing sight. Her length of more than a thousand feet and height of 200 feet above the water makes the first time viewer wonder just how anything that big could possibly move. However, the giant Cunard Line ship is one of the fastest passenger ships ever built, capable of doing more than 30 knots. (Most cruise ships max out at 25 knots). In addition, QM2 is very maneuverable, rarely needing the assistance of tug boats to dock or leave the pier.

Because she is such a unqiue physical object, people often wonder how she is operated. Like all ships, QM2 is driven from the bridge. This is a glass-enclosed space running across the front of the superstructure high up on Deck 12. Even with all of the computerized equipment and display screens, the room is remarkably spacious.

There is no large wooden wheel manned by a narled out sailor on QM2. Rather, the small wheel is generally unmanned at sea and the computer is doing the driving along a course input by the ship's navigator. When going into and out of port, the wheel is manned but most of the manuevering is done at a contriol console arrayed with dials and levers.

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch Captain Christopher Rynd take the ship out to sea. He litterally took a hands-on approach to the task. Standing at the control console, he looked like a master musician at the keyboard of a pipe organ. As his hands moved from one dial to the next, the giant ship smoothly left her berth, took to the channel and sailed out to sea.

Over the four years that the ship has been in service I have accumulated some inf0rmation about the bridge and taken several photos up there. To give people an idea of how it operates, I have written a piece about the bridge and linked it to my photographs. It is posted at: http://beyondships.com/QM2-Bridge.html I hope you find it interesting.

Crown Princess in Barbaos

I was in Bridgetown, Barbados last month and in the harbor was Crown Princess. It was one of those days where the weather changed significantly during the course of the day, which in turn changed the light and clouds framing the ship. Accordingly, I took a number of pictures during the day of this always photogenic ship and have posted the best at http://www.beyondships.com/CrownPrincess-Barbados.html

Crown Princess entered service in 2006. She is an evolution of the Grand-class of cruises ships that commenced with Grand Princess. The ship is similar to the earlier versions but is more refined in her lines, having an extra deck and no nightclub suspended over the stern. Inside, the ship is quite sumptuous and more luxurious than Grand Princess.

Freedom of the Seas

I have just added an extensive photo tour of Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas to the Beyondships website based upon my recent visit to that ship. http://www.beyondships.com/FOStour.html Also, I have added some menus and daily programs to the profile page for Freedom. http://www.beyondships.com/FOS.html I think these will be useful for those trying to get a feel for this impressive ship or for those who just want to remember their time on Freedom.
Freedom of the Seas is a larger version of Royal Caribbean International's (RCI) Voyage-class cruise ships. At over 150,000 tons, she is the largest passenger ship now in service. (Freedom's younger sister Liberty of the Seas can make the same claim and a thrid member of the class, Independence of the Seas, will go into service later this year. However, RCI is building two 220,00 ton ships, the first of which is due out in 2010).
The first thing people focus on with Freedom is her size. Yes, she is very big and holds some 4,300 passengers in her 1,817 staterooms. However, by virtue of that size, the ship is able to house an extensive array of facilities. Indeed, the ship has just about every amenity that one can find on a cruise ship and several that are unique to her class including a boxing ring and a surfing simulator.
As the aforementioned examples indicate, the emphasis on Freedom is on action. That is what Royal Caribbean is alluding to with its slogan "Get Out There" - - Freedom and her fleet mates were designed for people with an active lifestyle. The other side of the coin is that intellectual enrichment is not emphasized.
This is not to say that Freedom is unsophisticated. There is an extensive art collection built around the theme of the four basic elements of ancient times - - water, air, fire and earth. For the most part, these are contemporary works including several rather whimsical pop-art style giant statues. The overall feel that they give off is consistent with a young, active lifestyle.
The decor of the public areas adds to this ambience. The focal point of the interior public spaces is the Royal Promenade - - a 445 foot, multi deck high boulevard that runs the length of the ship from the theater to the reception area. It is done in a light-hearted manner and resembles an up scale shopping mall. However, other rooms, such as the Champagne Bar, Boleros, and the Schooner Bar, to name a few, are done in an elegant contemporary style. Finally, the three-level main dining room is a spectacular space done in a grand 19th Century style.
Freedom is clearly not bound by tradition. As seen by the fact that RCI has injected such nautical novelties as skating rinks, rock climbing walls, boxing rings, and surfing simulators to its ships, the criterion for adding a feature is whether it will be fun and popular rather than whether it is a traditional feature of ships. This may appear irreverent but the same was probably said when libraries, movie theaters and other features that are now commonly associated with passenger ships were first introduced on passenger ships. Such evolution is necessary in order for passenger ships to remain viable holidays.
In sum, Freedom is well-suited to do what she was designed to do - - provide enjoyable holidays for people who have an active lifestyle.

A selection of cruise ship photos from Beyondships.com

Carnival Glory

I write about ships, most often about cruise ships. Over the last 20 years, I have done about 100 cruises and visited many more ships. In the course of these voyages, I have interviewed captains and cruise line executives, written articles and taken numerous photographs. Last year, I thought it might be a good idea to assemble what I have done and am doing into a website that would act as a resource for people who are interested in ships. This would include people who are planning to travel on a particular ship or line, people who have traveled on that ship or line and people who find ships interesting.

I have posted on the Beyondships website a section dedicated to Carnival Glory. It includes a profile page with ship statistics, menus, daily programs and other information. http://www.beyondships.com/CarnivalGlory-profile.html In addition, there is a multi-page photo tour and commentary on the ship starting at http://www.beyondships.com/CarnivalGlory-Tour-1.htm

Glory is a Conquest class cruise ship of 110,000 tons. As such, it is a member of the largest class of ships in the Carnival Cruise Lines fleet. It also includes Carnival Conquest, Carnival Liberty, Carnival Valor, and Carnival Freedom.

The Conquest class is an outgrowth of the popular Destiny class. This includes not only Carnival Destiny but also Carnival Triumph and Carnival Victory. The ships are technologically similar and if you know the layout of one class you will not get lost in the other.

One of the fascinating things about Carnival is that it strives to make each ship in its fleet different. It does this primarily by changing the decor of each ship. This does not mean that they simply paint a room blue in one ship and paint the corresponding room in the next ship yellow. Rather, interior designer Joseph Farcus starts with a new theme for each ship and develops that theme throughout the ship. Thus, one ship may be cities of the world and another fictional characters. In the case of Glory, the theme is color and how it has been used in different parts of the world. These themes can develop into a decor that is quite whimisical, almost theme park-like, or into a restrained elegeance. You can see this by comparing the photo tours of the four Carnival ships now featured on the Beyondships website: Glory, Triumph, Miracle and Victory.

The reason to applaud Carnival's efforts in this regard is that ships should have their own personalities. This is both a tradition of the sea and something which makes ones voyage more interesting. If all the ships in a cruise line's fleet were the same, it would be just like an airline where the planes are just a fungible means of transportation. To me, if ships became similarly fungible, it would make cruising much less interesting.