Two great ladies of shipping history are scheduled to meet next week in Long Beach, California. The meeting of Cunard Lines´ Queen Mary 2 and her namesake, the original Queen Mary, will take place at noon next Thursday, February 23.
“This is an historic moment,” said Joseph Prevratil, president and CEO of Queen´s Seaport Development, Inc., and the skipper of the Queen Mary. “The Queen Mary 2 is coming to salute her predecessor. That doesn´t happen very often. It will generate national, even international, publicity.”
This summer Silversea´s ultra-luxury, all-suite ships Silver Cloud and Silver Whisper will offer an exclusive collection of 16 voyages showcasing the art, history and grandeur of some of Northern Europe´s most celebrated destinations.
From Rostok to Reykjavik, St. Petersburg to Stockholm, Silversea bridges the distance between dreams and the world´s most luxurious travel experience, traveling to places where most mass-market ships are simply too large to venture to.
A four-lane bowling alley is the latest attraction to be added to a cruise ship. Norwegian Cruise Line´s Norwegian Pearl will feature bowling as part of a sports bar and nightclub complex when the ship enters service next year.
The NCL innovation follows Royal Caribbean adding a surf park to soon to be launched Freedom of the Seas, ice rinks on its Voyager-class vessels and rock climbing across a range of ships.
Celebrity Cruises is to order a second 118,000 gross-registered-ton ship. Delivery of the first ship is planned for autumn 2008 and the second ship in Summer 2009.
The German shipbuilder Meyer Werft will build the new tonnage. Celebrity also announced names of both new ships. The first new ship will be called Celebrity Solstice, and the second ship will be named Celebrity Equinox.
Four cruise ships with just over 3,700 passengers and 1,800 crew visited St Kitts on Thursday, the Marine Division of the St. Christopher Air and Sea Ports Authority said.
The Constellation arrived from Barbados with 2,035 passengers and 930 crew members and the Maasdam with 1,226 passengers and 607 crew also arrived from Barbados. Both docked at Port Zante.
The well-traveled readers of Condé Nast Traveler have cast their votes and awarded Crystal Symphony and Crystal Serenity with the coveted No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the magazine´s 6th annual “Best Cruise Ships in the World” readers´ poll. Crystal Serenity´s score of 96.2 and Crystal Symphony´s rating of 95.0 put the two ultra-luxury vessels at the top of all 80 cruise ships recognized in the magazine´s February 2006 issue on newsstands now.
While the poll divides ships into categories of large, medium and small –with Crystal ships considered medium-size- the two Crystal ships earned the highest scores of any ship in all three categories.