Carnival Paradise Profile, Photos, Menus and More

Let me begin by offering everyone best wishes for the New Year.

To begin the new year, we have a new cruise ship profile on Beyondships - - Carnival Paradise. It is the 106^th cruise ship profile to be added to Beyondships including 20 of Carnival Cruise Lines ships.

Carnival Paradise is one of the eight Fantasy class ships in the Carnival fleet. These ships are workhorses providing an affordable cruise experience, usually on a short itinerary (i.e. less than seven days). As a result, they are well-suited for young people and young families. Several are based outside of the major cruise ship ports and provide a convenient means of cruising for people living around the ports where these ships are based.

The Fantasy class ships are not new ships. Carnival Paradise is the youngest of them and she entered service in 1998. However, these ships have been constantly upgraded over the years. I was interested to see how well Carnival has been able to adapt them to new concepts developed and first implemented on Carnival's more recent ships. To illustrate, Paradise has a Serenity adults-only relaxation section, a tasting bar, and a comedy club.

When the Fantasy class ships first entered service, they were considered quite large at 70,000 gross tons. Today, they would be considered relatively small compared to say Carnival Breeze at 130,000 gross tons. While they may not have the space for all the facilities that the Breeze has, they do offer the compensation of being relatively intimate. Also, as above, Carnival has been clever in finding ways to fit size-appropriate versions of its new ideas into the Fantasy class ships.

The Paradise is one of the few ships in the Carnival fleet to have azipod propulsion. Most of her Fantasy class sisters and the newer Carnival ships have the traditional shafts and propellers. While the azipod concept did not catch on at Carnival Cruise Lines, it is preferred by many mariners. Indeed, sister company Cunard has nothing but azipod ships and all the newer ships at Holland America are azipod ships. So much for the notion that all of the Carnival companies move in lock-step.

I found Carnival Paradise to be well-maintained and efficiently run. A teenager but still a first tier cruise ship.

Our profile of Carnival Paradise is at http://beyondships.com/CarnivalParadise-Profile.html

The multi-page photo tour of the ship begins at http://beyondships.com/CarnivalParadise-Tour-1.html

We also have a menus page http://www.beyondships2.com/carnival-paradise-menus.html and a page with daily programs and other information distributed onboard. http://www.beyondships2.com/carnival-paradise-daily-programs.html

Finally, we have a short video showing the ship getting underway. http://www.beyondships2.com/carnival-paradise-video.html

Going behind the scenes on Queen Mary 2

This week we continue with our new series of behind-the-scenes looks at Queen Mary 2.

The first is a conversation with Chief Engineer Brian Watling about how QM2 works from a technical perspective. Brian has served on Cunard ships for 27 years including being Chief Engineer on Queen Elizabeth 2. He also “stood-by” at the shipyard as QM2 was being built o he is uniquely qualified to talk about how the ship works.

In our conversation we talked about everything from the propulsion plant to the azipods and about other areas of the Technical Department’s far-flung responsibilities. The article appears at: http://beyondships.com/QM2-art-Watling.html

To balance this technical discussion, this week I am also presenting an interview with Carol Summers who is the Dance Captain on QM2. This is not the dance team that gives dance lessons in the Queens Room but rather the Royal Cunard Singers and Dancers who perform the production shows in the ship’s theater.

Carol is a professional dancer who performed during QM2’s maiden voyage and subsequently on Queen Victoria and QE2. We talked about how the production shows on passenger ships are put together and what it is like for a team of professional singers and dancers to live aboard a passenger ship. The interview appears at: http://beyondships.com/QM2-art-Summers.html

Royal Caribbean took delivery of Oasis of the Seas on October 30 in a ceremony in a conference room in the shipyard where she was built in Finland. This does not mean that she will go into service yet. Royal Caribbean is taking the approach of using the ship’s transatlantic crossing between Finland and Fort Lauderdale to hone her crew and get them used to operating this colossal vessel. For example, each day during the crossing, a new dining or entertainment venue will be “officially” opened and brought on line. This is an approach that works quite well and is frequently credited as a reason that Ruby Princess opened to such good reviews last year. Oasis will reach Fort Lauderdale on November 11 after which there will be a naming ceremony with seven godmothers cutting the ribbon that will cause a bottle of wine to smash against the ship’s side.

Meanwhile, on 31 October, in Venice Italy, Holland America’s latest ship, the Nieu Amsterdam was floated out of the dry dock in which she was created. The float-out is an important step in a ship’s life equivalent to the traditional practice of sliding the ship down the ways into the water. After the float-out, the ship goes to a fitting out dock where the remainder of the work needed to bring her into service will be done. Nieu Amsterdam is the second Signature-class (Super-Vista) ship to be built and is scheduled to join the HAL fleet on 4 July 2010.

Disney has announced that one f the features on its forthcoming Disney Dream will be a 725-foot long roller coaster. While the new 128,000-ton ship is supposed to be done in keeping with Disney’s existing ships, this feature does not seem at this distance to harmonize with the tasteful (albeit somewhat whimsical) style of those ships. However, Disney is not about to sacrifice its reputation for quality and so it will be interesting to see how they bring this off.