Although they will not be to everyone’s taste, Celebrity Solstice certainly has some ‘original’ decor. The link below features many excellent images of this exciting newbuild:
http://www.depping-design.de/test/thumbnails.php?album=92
I think the main dining room is stunning . I’m not decided about the turf, as yet. Does it take away valuable deck space, I wonder? Comments welcome
In June 2007 Cunard Line announced the sale of Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) to ‘Dubai World’, in a US$100 million deal which will turn the ocean liner into a tourism destination in Dubai.
QE2 will embark on her ultimate journey from Southampton, England to Dubai in November 2008. From 2009, the vessel will be berthed at a specially-constructed pier to create a luxury floating hotel, retail and entertainment destination at The Palm Jumeirah, the world’s largest man-made island.
QE2 was launched by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 1967. She is the longest-serving ship in Cunard’s 168-year history and was the line’s longest-serving flagship. Since she entered service in 1969, she has undertaken 25 world cruises, has crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times and has carried more than 2.5 million passengers. In 1982 she served in the Falklands War as a troop ship.
Although many loyal passengers were shocked by the news of the QE2’s retirement, how much more service could we realistically expect from her? In fact she has been living on borrowed time since she was withdrawn from the scheduled transatlantic crossings and Queen Mary 2 became the Cunard flagship. She has effectively already been replaced by two ships. QM2 has taken over her Transatlantic crossing schedule and Queen Victoria will offer itineraries and world cruises which QE2 would have offered in the past.
Without a doubt QE2’s external physical appearance remains unique and appears to be well preserved. After all, she has probably undergone more expensive refits than any other ship afloat.
Unfortunately, even all of these refits were not enough to stop the march of time and her aluminum superstructure is no longer structurally as sound as it once was. Additionally, despite all of the upgrades and refurbishment, she still lacks many of the features that are now regarded as standard on modern ships. Some of her lower grade staterooms are very small and feature bunk-beds. In general, the smallest staterooms on any modern ship are larger and more comfortable than the smallest onboard QE2. She also does not have many balcony staterooms which are now and extremely popular on newer vessels. In addition QE2’s biggest suites have been surpassed in size and facilities on most new ships. Her public rooms and dining rooms are a little dated. For example, her show lounge cannot compete with today’s Hi-Tech multi-deck theatres that passengers have become accustomed to. She has no observation lounge.
Cunard’s original press release stated that the new owners in Dubai would maintain the ship’s authenticity and recreate her original interiors. This suggested that they would make her a time capsule of 1960’s décor. Does this mean that we can look forward to a reincarnation of the ‘Double Room’ with its twin chrome staircases, the circular and rather surreal ‘Midships Lobby’ with its trumpet shaped column and the much missed ‘Lookout Bar’ on Quarter deck etc?
While this is a nice idea, I must say that I find it hard to imagine how QE2 can be converted into a luxury hotel and still maintain her authenticity. After all, Dubai has some of the newest and most luxurious hotels in the world, including the sail-like Burj Al Arab, which is the world’s only six-star hotel. How can QE2 compete with the likes of that?
Such projects as the conversion of a ship to a static hotel are always shrouded in a certain amount of secrecy. However, it now seems the remodeling of the QE2 for her new role will be very extensive. There are rumors circulating. It is said that five decks of cabins will be stripped out to create more generous hotel rooms. An extra deck will be added at the stern and the lifeboats will all be removed. The funnel will be removed and replaced with a glass one, housing a five deck a penthouse housed and pool.
Of course the new owners are in a no-win situation. If they simply renovate the ship, she is unlikely to satisfy the needs of the guests. Alternatively if she is preserved as some sort of floating ‘museum’, she would satisfy the ship-fans, but it is unlikely that she would appeal to the general hotel guest market that she will have to attract in order to survive.
I originally had concerns about how successful the QE2 would really be in her new role. I was worried that the QE2’s retirement to Dubai might not be a long term project but a short stay of execution.
After all, Hotel ships just do not tend to be ‘cash cows’. Even Cunard’s breathtaking original Queen Mary, berthed at Long Beach California since 1967, continues to struggle. Over the years, she has had a number of different owners and her upkeep has proved both difficult and very expensive. However, I’m now feeling more confident about the QE2’s future as I believe she will have more money pumped into her that any previous hotel ships. In turn, she will command high room rates, becoming a popular destination and will continue to be well maintained.
However, we must accept the fact that the QE2 Ocean Liner that many people grew to know an love will soon be history, but elements of this great ship will remain and hopefully survive for some time after she is reborn in a completely new form in Dubai.
Malcolm Oliver
October 17, 2008
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
In a parting embrace under the lady lighting the harbor, the Queen Elizabeth 2 slipped beneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at dawn Thursday to pay a last visit to New York and a grander new sister ship, before sailing into history after nearly 40 years of luxury transatlantic travel as the fastest passenger ship afloat.
For her final visit — her 710th — the venerable liner, which was sold last year for eventual use as a floating hotel in Dubai, was joined by the four-year-old Queen Mary 2, the latest flagship of the Cunard fleet and a throwback to a golden age of ocean travel before jets, when, as the company slogan had it, getting there was half the fun.
With shrill blasts from its three Tyfon whistles and a 39-foot-long paying-off pennant streaming from the mast — a foot for each year at sea — that traditionally marks the end of a ship’s commission, the Queen Elizabeth 2 (only the actual monarchs warrant Roman numerals, not the ships named for them) split the predawn darkness to begin a day of festivities and souvenir photos by the Statue of Liberty and berthed at Pier 90 at 53d Street on the Hudson River, where the ship tied up around 6 a.m.
As she entered the harbor, she was trailed by the grander Queen Mary 2. The two queens paraded to the Statue of Liberty before the Queen Mary 2 split off to return to its dockage at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.
By afternoon, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was due to depart for a final Atlantic crossing back to her home port — Southampton, England — and then two week-long European and Mediterranean cruises, before sailing in November to a final resting place in Dubai, the oil-rich Gulf sheikdom. National investors there bought the ship for $100 million and intend to install her as a permanently moored hotel and entertainment complex and museum at the Palm Jemeirah, billed as the world’s largest man-made island and beach resort.
“It’s very sad, but it was inevitable,” said Peter Knego, founder of a ship buff’s website, midshipcentury.com, and co-editor of another website, maritimematters.com, who sails the world preserving bits of nautical history.
“After nearly 40 years of service, she’s wearing out,” he said. “Her day has pretty much come and gone.”
But Mr. Knego, who writes out of Moorpark, Calif., said devotees had expected Cunard to keep the Queen Elizabeth 2 in service for several more years, and are distraught over Dubai’s makeover plans, including, he said, the loss of her 7-story-tall funnel. “If you’re not going to preserve her,” he said, “scrapping her would be a more dignified end.”
“The Q.E. 2,” he said. “will be nothing like the Q.E. 2.”
Thursday’s ceremony was a reprise of sorts, nine months after the first encounter of three queens — the Elizabeth and Mary ships plus the latest Cunard liner, the Queen Victoria, launched last year — in New York harbor last January. The Cunard fleet, the only line still providing regular transatlantic passenger service, is to be joined by a new Queen Elizabeth in 2010.
On the final six-day crossing of the Queen Elizabeth 2, Cunard said, the ship is sailing full, with 1,877 passengers paying fares ranging from $25,445 for a duplex grand suite with verandah, to $2,992 for a plain inside single room. They consume daily — or commonly did, according to company figures, before the financial crisis hit — more than 6 pounds of caviar, 116 pounds of lobster, 200 bottles of champagne and 41 boxes of cigars.
The farewell to New York, to be marked by fireworks salutes and toasts by dignitaries, comes two weeks shy of 40 years after the ship’s predecessor, the Royal Mail Ship Queen Elizabeth, departed New York for the last time, bound for what would turn out to be an ignominious fate: It was initially sold for use as a hotel and resort attraction in Port Everglades, Fla., along the lines of the decommissioned Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif., but the project foundered financially and the ship was resold to a Hong Kong tycoon, C.Y. Tung, who planned to use it as a floating university. But during conversion work, the ship caught fire, perhaps from arson; it capsized in Hong Kong harbor and was scrapped in 1972.
Her successor, the Queen Elizabeth 2, displacing more than 70,000 tons and stretching 963 feet in length, was built in the late 1960’s in Clydebank, Scotland, at a cost of almost $70 million (about $460 million in today’s money), and over the years it underwent more than $675 million in retrofits and refurbishments.
She was named for Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the queen mother; she was the wife of George VI, who took the British throne in 1936 on the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, in 1936, and ruled until his death in 1952; their daughter succeeded him as Queen Elizabeth II.
The QE2 collected superlatives. It is the longest serving ship in Cunard’s nearly 170-year history, now powered by a diesel propulsion system that turns out 130,000 horsepower, using 80 tons of fuel an hour, as much as would fill six swimming pools. (The ship itself has two pools, one indoor and one outdoor.) It has a tennis court, a golf driving range, a 13-car garage, a Harrods department store, a theater and a synagogue. Its crew of 1,016 includes 107 cooks, 4 fitness instructors, a disk jockey and 10 “gentlemen hosts” to escort unaccompanied women. (There are no female escorts for unaccompanied men.)
The company grew from a packet ship line founded by the Englishman Samuel Cunard in 1839 to carry the Royal Mail to Canada and the United States. In 1912 Cunard’s liner Carpathia rescued survivors of the White Star Line’s Titanic in the North Atlantic. In 1915 the company suffered its own catastrophe when a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania off the Irish coast, with the loss of 1,198 lives.
In 1934, Cunard launched the Queen Mary, followed four years later by the Queen Elizabeth, and both ships were pressed into service ferrying troops in World War II. By the 1950s, Cunard had 12 ships in service, carrying one-third of all transatlantic travelers. But by 1959 with the advent of jet travel, more people for the first time crossed by air than by sea.
Four years after the line launched the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1967, the company was sold to Trafalgar House, and then sold again in 1996 to a Norwegian conglomerate, which resold it two years later to Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise holiday group, with some 80 ships.
In 1992, the Queen Elizabeth 2 ran aground 10 miles west of Martha’s Vineyard, forcing evacuation of 1,815 passengers and most of the 1,000 crew members.
The line was joined, in 2004, by the Queen Mary 2, the largest transatlantic liner ever built, costing close to $800 million. The new ship weighs nearly 151,000 tons, more than twice the weight of the Queen Elizabeth 2, and is capable of carrying almost 2,600 passengers. The $522 million Queen Victoria, at 90,000 tons, was added to the fleet in 2007.
2008 The New York Times Company
Looks more like the QM2 to me!
According to Nakheel, the real estate company in charge of building the development in Dubai where QE2 will end up in November, the former ocean liner will serve as the anchor of a luxury marina development on the eastern trunk side of Palm Jumeirah.
Purchased last year by Nakheel’s parent organization Dubai World, QE2 will embark on her ultimate journey from Southampton, England to Dubai in November. Nakheel will commence construction on her eventual home in September.
Plans for the QE2 include its transformation into an ultra-luxury floating hotel, featuring public promenades, retail outlets, cafes and restaurants, as well as a heritage museum displaying artifacts from the QE2 and maritime history.
It will be interesting to see how much of the current QE2 surives the conversion into a “ultra-luxury floating hotel”.
“The arrival of QE2 is one of the most anticipated events of the year and Nakheel is proud to be the custodian of such a historic treasure. The world’s most famous ocean liner will form the focal point of an exciting new development that will be a must-see attraction on Palm Jumeirah,” said Johann Schumacher, Director of Palm Jumeirah.
Reclamation for the pier is expected to finish by the end of 2008, with the entire project scheduled for completion in 2011.
(From Cruise News www.tarvelpage.com)
My online freind, Tom Burke, has an interesting wordpress P&O Ventura blog here:
http://tomtotley.wordpress.com:80/previous-cruises/cruises-in-2008/ventura-cruise/
The F3 Keel Laying ceromony
NCL have made some subtle changes to the ’signature’ of their press releases:
20th August:
NCL is building two new third Generation Freestyle Cruising (“F3″) ships for delivery in 2010. NCL
30th September:
NCL is building a new third generation Freestyle Cruising project known as F3, for delivery in 2010.
Malcolm says: I don’t see how NCL can just walk away from the first F3, which is 25% complete, without an expensive legal battle and the likelihood of paying Aker Yards big compensation. This would seem like an expensive ‘change of mind’.
Aker Yards France is in a dispute with the cruise vessel operator Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) over the costs of the construction of a cruise vessel. Aker Yards France is in a process to find solutions to the dispute, including a dialogue with NCL and its involved subsidiaries with the objective of establishing an agreement.
The dispute relates to the ongoing construction of the vessel currently named C 33. This is the first of two vessels ordered by NCL in 2006, with a total value for both ships of EUR 1 470 million. The vessels are scheduled for delivery in 2010. The dispute is not related to the second of the two ships, named Hull D 33.
