littlesteelo

1 hour ago, AL3XCruise said:

 

I can't be sure, but I doubt that is the issue.  Not only are modern azipods far more reliable than older models, they are largely independent of each other.  Viking sky appears to have the Promas system, which is an integrated steering system but not a traditional "pod design"

 

Someone with ship handling experience can correct me, but I believe even in rough conditions one propulsion unit would be able to maintain control of the ship.  Two are required for high speed cruise, but a single unit is fairly capable on its own.

 

Regardless of the cause, I hope for a swift resolution that enables the safest outcome for the passengers and crew!

The propulsion motors on a ship like Viking Sky are independent of each other as well. Promas is just a product name for a propeller hub and rudder design to increase efficiency. 

The problem with Viking Sky is that if they have only one generator running, it won't be able to provide enough power to run the propulsion motors, steering gear and all of the essential services onboard. You have to remember that it isn't just a simple case of starting a generator - you have to power fuel and lub oil pumps, purifiers, heaters, cooling water pumps, compressors and starting air systems etc. 

To answer your question, yes the ship can run with just one propeller. 

Have they finally gone mad? $1500 NYE seats, near-doubled drinks prices, more and more surcharges by the week... This is all going to implode at some point, someone at RCI is going crazy with the onboard revenue and needs to remember quickly that not everyone who cruises with them can afford this.

I think it's a real shame that they keep adding all these charges and putting up the prices of things. I first sailed with RCI not all that long ago in 2010 and in that 5 years the prices of the speciality restaurants have gone up by about £15 and the drinks prices have doubled to prices at which for $12 I can only really afford to have a drink every other night.

It's a bitter pill to swallow in order to get the experience of sailing on their ships, but at the moment the amount of included things and the overall experience is only just enough to balance it for me. I don't expect them to be giving us everything for nothing, but how many price increases can people really withstand before just moving elsewhere?

I personally wouldn't pay at all for the North Star or the iFly simply for what they are, the amount of time not being worth $20/30. Having them free however is something which makes the ship more attractive, and is one of the things which keeps me from going elsewhere when the cost of other extras go up.

I would like the 4th Quantum to be called Encore of the Seas. Fits well with the previous two and I quite like the musical theme :)

Anthem > Ovation > Encore > ?

But what could the next one be? Prelude of the Seas? Symphony of the Seas?

Do they still have the Italian Tea cocktail? It was one of my favourites on Independence but apparently there is no stock cocktail menu anymore and it varies in each bar :/

I went to the Anne Frank House in January and didn't have to queue for long at all. I think if you go in the morning the queues are shorter.

Hello all,

I haven't been on Royal for two years, and haven't been on a Quantum class ship either so I have some questions for recent Anthem cruisers.

1. What eating places are open 24 hours? Sometimes I wake up very early (4am! :eek:) and like to go for a walk and a snack :D

2. I will be a platinum member on this cruise. Are there any coupons which are significantly different over gold?

3. Can you get out onto the bridge wings from the Solarium all the time? That looks like a decent spot for sailaway.

4. Am I still able to remove the auto-gratuity? I have always preferred to pay tips directly in cash and would like to be able to do this on Anthem.

5. I am debating whether it is worth it to get the drinks package, and can't seem to find a definitive answer on how much drinks cost! I've heard they are going to be $12 each?

Thanks :D

Thanks for sharing your expertise about the Island & my aircraft carrier.

 

Would you know whether or not cutting holes in the solid aft end of the new section could create any sort of structural weakness?

Yes, cutting a hole in any panel will decrease the strength, but with the correct stiffening there is no reason it can't be done. I would imagine the blank face is there because they wanted to cram as many mini-suites in on Dolphin and Caribe decks as possible. Just a guess anyway.

As a naval architecture student, the question has come up about the affects of adding extra weight to the upper aft decks. I'm assuming that ships are like aircraft & that adding weight fore or aft would affect CG.

 

I was on an aircraft carrier which after extending the angle deck despite adding additional ballast the ship still had a slight list to port. Do you think the Island would need ballast forward to keep the bow in the optimum position?

Yes, there will be some shift in ballast needed since the CoG will shift aft. The 'rockets' likely will have been removed to reduce the effect of this, although I think the funnel looks strange now with nothing at the front of the grill.

The CoG will have been raised too I would imagine, but not really by a huge amount owing to the extra superstructure being aluminium.

With regards to your aircraft carrier, there is only so much you can use ballast tanks to adjust heel and trim. Too much and your draft would be too great.

Looking at this from the perspective of a naval architecture student, it's quite sad to see such a cheap job. You can tell they have asked Fincantieri to give them the cheapest possible design with the maximum number of cabins, which is why there are only simple angles and any curves are along one axis. Simply put, putting complex curvature into steel is difficult, expensive and requires additional equipment therefore most cruise ship yards outsource it to external companies. Most repair yards certainly don't have the steelworking capacity to do something like that, which is why often additions to cruise ships are somewhat simple in their design.

The aim here was to add as much potential revenue with the minimal amount of investment, and clearly Princess don't really care about the appearance of their ships enough to warrant spending extra on making the additional block a bit less obnoxious. This isn't to say at all that the quality of the repair work is poor or unsafe, but it is definitely a penny pinching decision that in my opinion makes the ship look like crap. Fair enough if you are a container ship/bulker owner for which the appearance of your ship doesn't matter, but part of the appeal of cruise ships is that for their huge size, appearance remains fairly high priority during their design.

Amazing photos. The ship looks absolutely stunning though, I wasn't considering sailing on Britannia since i'm not keen on P&O, but I might have to give her a go!

Basically you order with your normal waiter who then has a runner who goes and fetches the wine for you.

 

Didn't seem to be causing any problems although some were moaning about the waiters lack of wine knowledge.

 

 

Hope that helps

 

Sue

The wine waiters were one of my main complaints on Ventura. If you didn't order wine on a regular basis, the waiter would either never turn up or arrive halfway through your meal.

I would pick Navigator. The ship has recently had a huge refit so there is that to consider also. While I have only sailed on Independence, I found the buffet to be far superior to the relatively small one on Ventura.

Excellent review. I think the ship looks fantastic, despite the few little nagging issues. Some things which would bother me:

1. The aft pool being teenagers only. Does it specifically say on the pool that it is only for teens? Seems a bit odd.

2. The Market Cafe. This is something which I can't comprehend. On pretty much every other cruise line, they have a 24 hour cafe with free food available around the atrium area. On P&O, you have to pay for the item or buy a specialty coffee to get it for free.

If they can give 24 hour free food in the buffet and a free 'grab n go' station on the pool deck, why can't they do it in the atrium? I liked on Royal Caribbean and Princess to go late at night and sit down in the atrium with a cold drink and a panini. I can't do that on P&O without paying extra.

3. Pool deck food. This isn't a P&O problem per se, but I feel Britannia will suffer more than others due to the amount of offerings. It's all well and good having a burger bar and pre-packed sandwiches, but the problem I found on Ventura was that people were messy with it, and you would find fries and other food mashed into the deck. Not nice when you're walking often barefoot to and from the pool. Also I have visions of 'grab n go' wrappers being blown all over the place due to lazy people not knowing how to use a bin :mad:

Royal Caribbean have the right idea by keeping food away from the outer decks.

Hi,

We booked our aft cabin for August early last year trusting that the soot issue that they've had on the aft cabins on the Royal Princess would be sorted on the new Britannia.

 

The good news is that so far we haven't read / heard anyone complain about it ---

 

Is it safe to uncross our fingers now do you think?

The issue on Royal was to do with the stacks not being high enough, and the little 'wings' which were designed to direct air to send the soot high enough to pass over the ship didn't work successfully. It isn't something which is easily modeled during design.

Regal has higher stacks to solve this, and I believe Royal is having them altered in the first refit. Also on Britannia I would imagine the tall double stacks work even better.

I believe that of the P&O fleet only Britannia and Arcadia have pods. All the Grand class are traditional.

Britannia doesn't have pods. Only Arcadia does.

The rising sun logo is now on the funnel, Azura actually looks a lot better with the blue colour and the logo rather than the buff. The new P&O Cruises lettering is on the sides as well.

I don't really understand why RCI keep insisting on butchering their ships, and a brand new one at that, just to pander to a market they will only be spending 6 months in. I can understand making certain changes to the menus, but there isn't really a need to expand the casino when the one already there is large enough.

Do they reverse these changes when they pull the ships out?

The tent will be to protect the work going on underneath, usually painting the pools or replacing the resin deck surfacing. It has to remain bone dry or it'll ruin the surface, so they put a tent up. You see it a lot on ships going in for refits.

Oceana's bow graphic looks awful. It is not even painted correctly with missing patches. It needs to be much larger as well because whilst in port the open cable handling doors etc completely destroy the integrity of the design. The funnel design does not work either. The sunburst logos are lost against the lattice background. They need to add solid background colour. P&O should really employ decent graphic designers, not cheap ones :rolleyes:

It looks patchy because they haven't finished it yet. They can only do it in sections because of limited time in port, plus I would imagine they can't do it in every port they visit. Be patient!

Visited the yard today, saw all the blocks being made for Norwegian Escape, also a few pipe units marked for Ovation of the Seas. According to the guy giving us the tour of the facilities, float out is in around 10 days. The dry dock was about half full today.

I visited Meyer Werft today, and we were told that the ship is being floated out in around 10 days.

On Emerald Princess it was held as an LGBT get together in the Wheelhouse Bar. The first one was hosted, but the others afterwards were simply listed in the patters.

My concern from the stats is that it will carry even more passengers than the first three S-class ships, but be 56 feet shorter and about 5,000 GT (gross tonnes) smaller. (GT is a measure of volume, not weight. In essence, it is a measurement of it's size).

 

Smaller, but more crowded. Not sure how that equates to an improvement. :(

I don't think there will be a problem. Even Celebrity admitted that the Solstice Class had too few cabins for the space available, which is why Reflection has more passengers. That is something Celebrity do, they have a much lower passenger/gross tonnage ratio than most cruise lines.

Also, 5000GT is a pretty insignificant decrease in size.

It's a ship with engines. It produces exhaust smoke and there isn't really much you can do when burning heavy fuel oil. It's perfectly normal. Also just because the exhaust gases are clear doesn't mean there is less pollution.