What an exciting month April 2008 was for both British and global cruise ship enthusiasts:
On April 7th P&O’s ‘Ventura’ (the largest cruise ship dedicated to the British market) arrived at her home port of Southampton for the first time. Ventura was officially christened by actress Dame Helen Mirren with some help. Two SAS Marines repelled down the bow of the ship and manually broke a bottle each, ensuring no embarrassment from a bottle of bubbly bouncing off the side of the ship.
On April 15th Royal Caribbean revealed some features of their forthcoming Ultra-ship ‘Genesis’ which includes ‘Central Park’ (an open area with real grass and trees) and the ‘Rising Tide bar’, a bar which rises vertically into the air (Speaking for myself, when a bar starts to move, that’s when I stop drinking and leave.)
On April 22nd we had a ‘twice in a lifetime’ moment when the three Cunard Queen’s (Queen Elizabeth 2, Queen Mary and Queen Victoria) met at Southampton for the first time. However it wasn’t a “first” first as the three Queens had previously met in New York on January 13th.
On April 25th the world’s biggest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s ‘Independence of the Seas’, docked at Southampton to prepare for her season of cruises from the U.K. She made the QE2 which was also in Southampton that day looked like a tender.
Each of the above events received significant media coverage on TV, radio and in print. However on April 24th we received some interesting news from the Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) which was not so well publicized. Never the less, NCL’s announcement was quite significant for ship aficionados. That is because the news concerned details of the staterooms to be featured on board NCL’s two ‘F3′ newbuilds. Towards the end of the decade, NCLwill be competing directly with Carnival and Royal Caribbean by introducing their first two mega ships, Each ship will be 150,000gt vessels, and will offer 4,200 lower berths when they are delivered in 2009 and 2010.
NCL president and CEO Colin Veitchhad tantalized the media at the Miami ‘Seatrade’ show earlier in the year by saying: “The ships will have no main dining room, no theater, no Lido Café and be without a traditional cruise ship cabin”. At the time everyone was trying to guess what all this meant, but in last week’s announcement NCL shed some light on their new cabin design.
The cabins on board modern ships are relatively similar to each other in design, irrespective of which cruise line you choose. Sure there are some variations in the size and décor but essentially the majority os standard grades are rectangular rooms.
in recent years NCL have demonstrated that it more than capable of ‘thinking outside the box’. This statement became literal when they announced that the staterooms on the F3’s will be based on a ‘New Wave’ concept which feature more curves than ‘Beyonce’.
According to NCL, the “New Wave” cabin walls will be a curve shaped rather than the straight lines that make up the cabin walls of just about any other ship. Even the dressing units and beds will have curves.
NCL revealed three basic grades of cabins: the New Wave standard, New Wave balcony and New Wave deluxe.
Some of the cabins have an interlocking design where one cabin is the mirror image of its partner, a design feature which was common place on the ships of old (albeit with straight lines), but not so common now. The décor is rather toned down compared to NCL’s other newbuilds, or as NCL put its “…a sophisticated earth-tone palette accented with a splash of colour and rich, dark wood”. There will also be concealed contour LED lighting and back-lit domed ceilings to generate a relaxing atmosphere. However, the most radical design feature is the fact that they have separated the shower/or bath tub and water closet (toilet) either side of the entry “hall”. It’s not clear how big the two bathroom spaces will be or what type of doors or dividers that they will have (possible opaque glass sliding doors). However a hanging curtain is available to separate these two areas from the rest of the cabin. In addition, within the main cabin space, there will be a vanity sink. This is a throwback to the past, as many of the great Ocean Liners, like the ‘Queen Mary’ of 1934 had sinks in some of the higher class cabins outside of the bathroom. (There has been some critisim on hygine grounds about the sink being away from the toilet, but I’m not clear if these are really valid).
All of the 1,415 outside cabins will have balconies, but there will be inside cabins too.
Following NCL’s announcement there has been significant debate about the level of privacy available in the F3 cabins given the fact that anyone entering or leaving the cabin must pass through the bathroom spaces. Of course this design has the great advantage in that the different cabin occupants can perform different bodily functions all at the same time. There is no information to how big the various cabin grades will be but given the fact that the F3’s will be relatively high density ship, we can expect the standard grades will b relatively small. The ‘curves’ may well be a clever way to make the cabins feel more spacious. We are also expecting multiple dining and entertainment venues on board the F3’s. The external appearance of these ships is still a secret, but ‘Pride of America’ was no beauty and rumor has it that the F3’s may well be the ugliest ships afloat!
It is interesting to note that when Celebrity Cruise Lines was boasting about the stateroom design on board their new Solstice-class ships, the revealed that they had asked a panel of five women to help design the staterooms. I have seen an artist’s renditions of Celebrities ‘Aqua-Class’ staterooms and they do look very nice, but on the face of it they do not look particularly different in layout and décor from those on board any other modern ship. Maybe the devil is in the detail? However NCL have stolen Celebrities thunder and have come up with something which is genuinely different from the current norm.
Let the battle for the high seas commence.
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