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Princess: The Race For New Ships


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It's hard to believe how fast Princess fleet is aging.

 

7 ships older than 15 years.

 

3 more ships with a 15 year birthday next year.

 

You wonder if the age of fleet is bogging down overall cruise capacity or forcing reduced fares?

 

Princess lost time between 2008 until 2013 when the Royal was finally delivered.

 

Now they can't build'em fast enough.

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not sure what your point is? New ships alone will not make a difference. Service on board is what counts in my view,. The larger ships seem to miss the level of service that we are use to.

 

We have typically cruised on new ships, but have been less than satisfied with the new Celebrity ships, the Royal Princess, the QM2... so the size seems to detract from the experience for us. Given this we have avoided booking HAL, which is also building similar designs.

 

We are falling back booking ships in the Grand class, which we find enjoyable and offerring very service. Even the Grand the oldest offer a very good cruise experience.

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After the first generation of Grand-class were so successful, Princess rammed out five more ships launched between January 2003 and April 2004: Coral, Island, Caribbean, Diamond and Sapphire. The first two updated the Sun-class (which were not yet at all old) with features common to the rest of the fleet, the other three took the Grand-class to their next steps.

 

The fact that the next ten years saw only three new ships (further variations on the Grand-class) tells me that Princess got the design right and was wise to stick to what they did best.

 

But with 4500-5000+ passenger ships thriving on other lines, Princess does have to follow the industry business model and move upward from their current fleet of 3000-3500 pax ships. Non-mega sized ships do not "bog down" overall capacity; what they do is require more turnaround days than the competition to accommodate the same passenger count. So Golden and Star Princess are being more or less swapped out for Sky and Enchanted Princess not because they are old but because Princess gains 2000+ berths to sell while not increasing the number of voyages. Or in some regions they can maintain capacity with fewer turnaound days and redeploy ships to where demand in increasing (like China--or so they thought).

 

It remains to be seen what Princess' plans are for the 175k ton monsters arriving in 2013 and 2015. They will become Carnival Corp's largest ships, replacing the ones arriving for CCL and Costa a couple years before--which will have to be based in Los Angeles and Europe respectively as there is currently expected to be no capacity for them at the Caribbean turnaround ports (or Australia as was mooted for one of the ships when they were first announced).

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I am in the crowd of the new ships are just too darned big. They flood the ports with pax. You have to walk miles on the ship just to get around passing all those ridiculous wave riders, bumpem cars, water shows etc which have zero appeal to us.

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You wonder if the age of fleet is bogging down overall cruise capacity or forcing reduced fares?

 

Carnival Corp (which owns Princess) has a policy of growing capacity below the level of increasing demand. The result is that as demand is increasing faster than capacity, the price for a cruise will go up which means higher profits.

 

Any reduced fares have been from reduced demand, especially in the Caribbean where last year's hurricanes have caused reduced demand for that area for all cruise lines.

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On the larger ships, it is my feeling that the cruise lines can herd passengers like cattle more ... vs providing more personalized service. We really felt that on a Cunard Queen Mary 2 ship/cruise ... given the size of the ship it took hours to get off and on this ship on a NY to Quebec cruises compared to the same line, Queen Victoria. We will stick to the smaller older ship as long as we can... being in our 70 and 80s suspect we will good to go for a while.. LOL

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We pretty much enjoy all the ships. Our last cruise was on the Crown Princess...the one before was on the Royal...the next one up (dang it's so far away) will be on the Sky. Never felt like service was any different and what we could do was any different based on the size of the ship. It's strictly dependent on the abilities of the crew!

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I have not booked any cruise on any ship much bigger than 3,000 passengers and would prefer not too, Next 3 cruises for 2018 and 2019 are on the Crown, Ruby and Star. I also do not need climbing walls, water slides etc to enjoy myself

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After the first generation of Grand-class were so successful, Princess rammed out five more ships launched between January 2003 and April 2004: Coral, Island, Caribbean, Diamond and Sapphire. The first two updated the Sun-class (which were not yet at all old) with features common to the rest of the fleet, the other three took the Grand-class to their next steps.

 

The fact that the next ten years saw only three new ships (further variations on the Grand-class) tells me that Princess got the design right and was wise to stick to what they did best.

 

But with 4500-5000+ passenger ships thriving on other lines, Princess does have to follow the industry business model and move upward from their current fleet of 3000-3500 pax ships. Non-mega sized ships do not "bog down" overall capacity; what they do is require more turnaround days than the competition to accommodate the same passenger count. So Golden and Star Princess are being more or less swapped out for Sky and Enchanted Princess not because they are old but because Princess gains 2000+ berths to sell while not increasing the number of voyages. Or in some regions they can maintain capacity with fewer turnaound days and redeploy ships to where demand in increasing (like China--or so they thought).

 

It remains to be seen what Princess' plans are for the 175k ton monsters arriving in 2013 and 2015. They will become Carnival Corp's largest ships, replacing the ones arriving for CCL and Costa a couple years before--which will have to be based in Los Angeles and Europe respectively as there is currently expected to be no capacity for them at the Caribbean turnaround ports (or Australia as was mooted for one of the ships when they were first announced).

 

Not sure what you mean "175k ton monsters arriving in 2013 and 2015". Arriving in the past??

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It's hard to believe how fast Princess fleet is aging.

 

7 ships older than 15 years.

 

3 more ships with a 15 year birthday next year.

 

You wonder if the age of fleet is bogging down overall cruise capacity or forcing reduced fares?

 

Princess lost time between 2008 until 2013 when the Royal was finally delivered.

 

Now they can't build'em fast enough.

 

When I look at the mega ships, and what they have to offer...I feel like I'm in a grand hotel, not a cruise ship. I don't get that "I'm on a ship" feeling.

JMHO!

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Yes I would also like to see a new (or existing) Princess ship spend more time sailing from New York.

A bit confused by the couple negative comments about crowding and poor service due to passenger volume on QM2 - yes the ship is huge at 150,000 tons but only carries 2700 passengers, notably less than Grand-class.

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Not sure what you mean "175k ton monsters arriving in 2013 and 2015". Arriving in the past??

 

Sorry but I clearly meant 2023 and 2025, when the two proposed 4300 pax LNG-powered ships are expected to arrive.

 

it would be nice if princess can send a ship to NYC. Princess sailings out of NYC is somewhat limited

 

Well when Princess is up to five Royal class plus two even larger ships by mid-next-decade they will have to be based somewhere. You certainly could see one based in Brooklyn all summer rather than just for autumn leaves cruises. Or they might return to San Juan. Or have to expand Florida turnaround ports to Miami or Port Canaveral as Port Everglades is pretty much maxed out--even if they don't expand the booking hall they will have to upgrade the mooring lines and deepen the channel to get a ship larger than the Royal-class into Terminal 2.

 

Certainly Princess could build another Grand Style sized ship?

 

 

Sure they could. But they won't. Just like you will never see brick-sized cell phones, CRT televisions, analog tuned radios, and Edsels ever built again. Of course they all could be built. But whose buying?

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Yes I would also like to see a new (or existing) Princess ship spend more time sailing from New York.

A bit confused by the couple negative comments about crowding and poor service due to passenger volume on QM2 - yes the ship is huge at 150,000 tons but only carries 2700 passengers, notably less than Grand-class.

 

Not the number of passengers but how ship managed the passengers.

 

It in northern eastern Canadian cruise, it took upward of 2 hours to get off the ship, because even when there was a gangway, they used only one... then if you got off as we did in Quebec and wanted return about 2 hours later they were still disembarking and would not let us board immediately... my dh is in 80's ... we thought this was very poorly handled compared to experiences we had on HAL, Princess, Celebrity and the smaller Cunard ships. It was so bad we did not get off in Newport at all because it was tender port.. Using only one gangway in ports was the problem. Most cruises use more than one on big ships. So the ship, made folks get tickets to get off and wait in groups, that is what reminded me of being part of herd... never had that experience on other lines that docked in port. Tender ports understand.

 

As I think about it, large ships, very similar to flying on the new 380 double decker airplanes, if you are in coach.. felt like a cattle car./ very small seats very little comfort... now when we are flying on a 380 we buy premium coach and have a more sane experience on long transatlantic flights.

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Imagine 4 of this 4500-5000+ passenger ships in port at the same time. We have seen pictures like this. Now not everyone gets off the ship or all at the same time. Add in the tourist that have flown in, that are all ready there and crew that are allowed to go ashore. Imagine how many people will be there. Excursions, private or ship, will be harder to book. Have you ever been to a port and your ship was the only one there? Have you been to a port with 4+ ships there? Give me a single ship any day.

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Not the number of passengers but how ship managed the passengers.

 

It in northern eastern Canadian cruise, it took upward of 2 hours to get off the ship, because even when there was a gangway, they used only one... then if you got off as we did in Quebec and wanted return about 2 hours later they were still disembarking and would not let us board immediately... my dh is in 80's ... we thought this was very poorly handled compared to experiences we had on HAL, Princess, Celebrity and the smaller Cunard ships. It was so bad we did not get off in Newport at all because it was tender port.. Using only one gangway in ports was the problem. Most cruises use more than one on big ships. So the ship, made folks get tickets to get off and wait in groups, that is what reminded me of being part of herd... never had that experience on other lines that docked in port. Tender ports understand.

 

As I think about it, large ships, very similar to flying on the new 380 double decker airplanes, if you are in coach.. felt like a cattle car./ very small seats very little comfort... now when we are flying on a 380 we buy premium coach and have a more sane experience on long transatlantic flights.

 

On the Royal in August going around the British Isles they used two gangways to get off the ship and you had to get numbers and get called off to avoid long lines. .

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After the first generation of Grand-class were so successful, Princess rammed out five more ships launched between January 2003 and April 2004: Coral, Island, Caribbean, Diamond and Sapphire. The first two updated the Sun-class (which were not yet at all old) with features common to the rest of the fleet, the other three took the Grand-class to their next steps.

 

The fact that the next ten years saw only three new ships (further variations on the Grand-class) tells me that Princess got the design right and was wise to stick to what they did best.

 

 

Technically, they built 5 super Grand-class vessels, but Carnival Corp, in their infinite wisdom, allocated them to P&O.. the Ventura and Azura. And another Royal-class ship went to P&O too.. Britannia.

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