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Will HAL ever have mega ships?


atexsix
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16 hours ago, AL3XCruise said:

 

I'm aware one is based on volume and has no defined unit while one is displacement, so you can't really compare directly.  Comparing carriers to carriers and cruise ships to cruise ships though and drawing a correlation is a bit more accurate.  Since GT isn't a linear measure (not to mention the design, structure, and purpose of the ships varies greatly) I'll admit it isn't a perfect comparison, but I think its still safe to say cruise ships are growing faster.   

 

The Ford class displaces about 20,000 tons more than the Forestall class and is about 40 feet longer.  Of course, the volume has probably increased much more than the displacement numbers indicate, but I still would be surprised if it comes anywhere close to what we've seen in megaships.

 

I think we need to bring Archimedes into this discussion.😎  You're all making my head hurt first thing in the morning.

 

Roz

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4 hours ago, ski ww said:

Thanks for the explanation of the different tonnage. Still trying to figure out the different tonnage, deadweight, cargo, gross net, displacement & registered. For this land lubber that's a lot to wrap my head around.

Here's the low down:

 

Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT)and Net Registered Tonnage (NRT)are archaic terms no longer used for about 20-30 years

Deadweight tonnage (DW):  the weight of cargo and fluids (fuel, water) the ship can carry, for a cruise ship the pax, food, and fuel/water.

"Cargo tonnage" I've never heard of, but see below for GT and NT

Gross Tonnage (GT):  is an abstract measure of the enclosed volume of the ship.  The actual volume is modified by a constant "k", which varies with the total volume, so the relationship between total volume and GT is not linear.  This replaces GRT.

Net Tonnage (NT):  is, like GT an abstract measure of the "cargo" volume of a ship.  So, if you take GT, and subtract out the fuel/water tanks, the machinery spaces, and all crew spaces, you get NT.

Displacement:  This is the actual weight of the ship, as it is a measure of the weight of water that is displaced when the ship is placed in the water.  A 5 oz lump of metal will displace 5 oz of water (raising the level) when dropped in a glass of water.

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I pray HAL does not ever enter the mega ship world.  I find mega ships very ugly and bulky.  One of the things I love about HAL are the beautiful ships with blue hulls and no gross tacky paintings on the ships’ exteriors, no unsightly water slides, etc.  I think the Pinnacle Class ships should be the cap.  I don’t feel like sailing on a ship with 4-5 thousand people.  I won’t sail on a mega ship.  However,  I love and adore the Queen Mary 2 liner, as she is a gorgeous ship with only about 2,500 passengers. She’s huge but not a mega ship.

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MeandtheSea- I agree comletely - I also love the QM2- that ship still deserves the name ocean liner! At evey twist and turn one is connected with the sea..! Perfect! I am trying the new Nieuw Statendam in two weeks- can´t wait to see the changes- but i know before hand- i certainly will miss the prommendade deck..! The little walkway around the NS is a sorry excuse for a prommenade deck. Big misstake of HAL - IMO.

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On 7/4/2019 at 3:58 PM, chengkp75 said:

Gross Tonnage (GT):  is an abstract measure of the enclosed volume of the ship.  The actual volume is modified by a constant "k", which varies with the total volume, so the relationship between total volume and GT is not linear. 

 

What's the actual use of GT? It does make things more complicated, like retractable roofs. Wikipedia isn't helping, as usual. How much leeway does a ship designer have to come up with a huge GT and a very small displacement or vice versa? For both container ships and cruise ships displacement and enclosed volumes must be very much correlated.  A small yacht would have a bigger GT than a huge barge that has no enclosed volume. Why such a difficult metric instead of displacement, or maybe in the case of passenger vessels, the number of berths?

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So hear is a shocker.  Have long term HAL fans considered that they are not part of HAL's planning?  Lets talk reality.  Most HAL cruises are selling for a lower price then many of their competitors...and there are still many cruises that must offer major discounts to sell the berths.   And what happens on those terrific longer HAL itineraries that many of us love?  Walk around the ship at 10pm and its like a morgue.  Most bars are relatively empty and few are spending money.  The older experienced HAL cruisers are generally not buying the overpriced photos, and HAL art auctions do not seem to be nearly as crowded as auctions we have seen on other lines.  More and more HAL cruisers realize that they can book private excursions (or DIY) for far less then HAL excursions.  This all means that the older most loyal HAL cruisers do not generate the kind of on board revenue found on some other lines...and onboard revenue is important to the bottom line.  

 

The problem for HAL is how they can maximize on board revenue and also charge higher prices per passenger day.  It seems that current management has thrown in the towel and is hell bent on cutting costs (no production shows, fewer bands, lower spending on food, etc).   This kind of strategy can certainly boost profits over the short term,  but will likely destroy the cruise line as the "word spreads" and folks choose other options.  Meanwhile, HAL is hoping to attract a younger generation of cruisers with their newer vessels.  But HAL has the reputation as a floating nursing home and eliminating production shows, having no late night adult/comedy shows, etc.  is not going to attract many of the younger cruisers.

 

Perhaps I am completely off-base...but I see the current business plan (or lack thereof) as a recipe for disaster.  Although we are long time HAL fans (5 Star Mariners) only 1 of our current 6 cruise bookings is on a HAL cruise and we are considering canceling that cruise because of the HAL cut-backs on entertainment.   Previously a majority of those bookings would have been on HAL.  This past winter we canceled a HAL booking....partially because we were very confused as to what on earth we would get on a long EXP voyage.  This was only the 2nd cruise we have cancelled in over 100 bookings!  

 

The one remaining HAL cruise we have booked is a 30 day voyage.  Will there be Production shows?  Will there be decent lecturers?   Will there be a cruise director?  Any chance of a piano bar player?  Will there be live entertainment after 10pm?  Wil there be a good port lecturer who tells us about the ports rather then just trying to sell excursions?  Who knows?  On our other 5 bookings (with different lines) we know what to expect.  But on HAL, despite having more than 500 days, we no longer have a clue what awaits.  DW teases that going on HAL is now an adventure.  But, like many HAL veterans, we expect HAL to deliver the kind of product that we have grown to respect and enjoy.  We fear that no longer exists.  I hope I have this wrong and all will be fine....but my personal warning flags are flying high.

 

Hank

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You are both right- the customers of HAL ( or Cunard for that matter ) are in the age between 50 and 107. Some  are not around for very much longer- not to offence anybody- but that is the circle of life!

QM2 does not have one of the biggest morgue´s at sea for nothing!

With all the due respect for our elders- when i watched some very, very experienced cruises I often thought thy look like they are on their last legs...!

 

They need to fill their ships anyway- maybe with the now younger group, who without dout become customers who appreicate a calm, relaxed cruise experience and who do not need to be constantly entertained!

At the moment it must be the baby boomers, who come " of age"!

But beware- the customers grow older- grow more experienced- the children grow up- so they look for the afore mentioned cruise experience- and they will be happy if HAL or Cunard is still around to cater  to the need of more " old fashinoned cruises"!

So I suppose there will always customers for both HAL and Cunard!

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6 hours ago, Germancruiser said:

 

They need to fill their ships anyway- maybe with the now younger group, who without dout become customers who appreicate a calm, relaxed cruise experience and who do not need to be constantly entertained!

At the moment it must be the baby boomers, who come " of age"!

 

 

This has been discussed before and it's true up to a point. I would argue, though, that people expect to age differently now than in previous generations. A lot of cruisers do outgrow the desire for 24/7 partying, hairy-chest contests and such. But that doesn't mean that they do not want appropriate activities onboard ship -- interesting lectures and classes, good music, etc. They will also increasingly expect connectivity in all things, both in terms of onboard activities (making reservations, checking onboard account) and being able to connect with the outside world. 

 

I hope that HAL is planning for this future, but I have my doubts.

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14 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

What's the actual use of GT? It does make things more complicated, like retractable roofs. Wikipedia isn't helping, as usual. How much leeway does a ship designer have to come up with a huge GT and a very small displacement or vice versa? For both container ships and cruise ships displacement and enclosed volumes must be very much correlated.

 

Just like your car has specs for internal volume, length, weight, etc., ships have metrics for various purposes.  As the Chief pointed out, some compare cargo capacities, some weight (displacement), some volume.  Depending on what is being evaluated, different measures make sense.  

 

There is correlation, but as @chengkp75 pointed out, it isn't perfect.  A carrier has a lower profile than a cruise ship and is built with heavier gauge materials to withstand the conditions it can operate in (very high speeds, battle damage, etc.).  A cruise ship with an aluminum superstructure is lighter and thus has a lower displacement, but could still have more enclosed volume. 

 

Marketing folks in the cruise industry like to talk about volume because the gross tonnage numbers are normally very large, and because they represent volume small increases in length, beam, or height can show up as substantial increases in gross tonnage.

 

I don't know what the impetus for the change from GRT to non-linear GT was though, perhaps one of our mariners can explain that?

 

3 hours ago, cruisemom42 said:

A lot of cruisers do outgrow the desire for 24/7 partying, hairy-chest contests and such. But that doesn't mean that they do not want appropriate activities onboard ship -- interesting lectures and classes, good music, etc. They will also increasingly expect connectivity in all things, both in terms of onboard activities (making reservations, checking onboard account) and being able to connect with the outside world. 

 

Very true; as the internet generation gets older we enter new marketing territory.  For example, after experiencing Broadway shows on megaships will customers be willing to give that up, even if they no longer need waterslides?

 

HAL is going to have a tough needle to thread as they try to keep current cruisers happy, prepare for the future, and try to maintain a specific brand identity.  After all, if they just become a Princess clone what impetus does Carnival have to keep investing in HAL?

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On 7/2/2019 at 6:23 AM, Krazy Kruizers said:

 I consider the Pinnacle class ships Mega ships for HAL.  And they are too large for us.  JMO

 

We sailed on the Grand Princess when she was 109 tons and didn't like the size of the ship.

 

But sadly I do think in the future HAL will have larger ships to stay in competition with the other cruise lines.

It appears that HAL has tried to hedge its bets -by gradually giving up its genuine (valuable AND valued) niche position between the mass market lines which ranged from Celebrity, to Princess, to Royal Caribbean, to Carnival, and all the way down to NCL and the more upscale Azamara, Crystal, Oceania, Seabourn, etc.

 

By trying to be all things to all people, I believe that they are rapidly losing what they had

and are looking at a cloudy future of simply being a Johnny-come-lately in the big ship league.

 

Too bad their management didn’t get Porter’s “Competitive Advantage” message.

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On 7/1/2019 at 4:57 PM, atexsix said:

Will HAL ever have mega ships?

 

The writing is on the wall.  The competition (Princess and Celebrity) are already up into the 130s and 140s GT.  Like it or not, HAL is a low cost mass market line and its only a matter of time before Koningsdam is a little sister to something else.  

 

The alternative is other lines.  There are plenty out there who sail small ships and offer service of HAL's years past.  Maybe its time to start looking at them.  

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13 hours ago, Germancruiser said:

So I suppose there will always customers for both HAL and Cunard!

I haven't been to Mariners' Club meets on HAL, but my two June transatlantics on QM2, both carried about 2535 passengers and over half were first-timers and an additional 260 or so were on their second Cunard cruise.

 

I expect the average status is higher on some other itineraries - on the Christmas Caribbean cruise the priority check-in line for Platinum, Diamond and suites seems to be as long as the regular line.

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3 hours ago, Aquahound said:

 

The writing is on the wall.  The competition (Princess and Celebrity) are already up into the 130s and 140s GT.  Like it or not, HAL is a low cost mass market line and its only a matter of time before Koningsdam is a little sister to something else.  

 

The alternative is other lines.  There are plenty out there who sail small ships and offer service of HAL's years past.  Maybe its time to start looking at them.  

Well said Aquahound!!

With that said we also will be sailing smaller lines! Love HALS smaller ships! 

Massdam, Rotterdam, and we enjoyed Ryndam! Nieuw Amsterdam and Eurodam for us is wonderful too, but a lot  has changed  especially with the food. We are seeing alot of cutbacks! Just my opinion!

Denise😊

 

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5 hours ago, AL3XCruise said:

Just like your car has specs for internal volume, length, weight, etc., ships have metrics for various purposes.  As the Chief pointed out, some compare cargo capacities, some weight (displacement), some volume.  Depending on what is being evaluated, different measures make sense.  

 

Yes, but I don't understand what sense GT has. I can think of another metric for my car, called C, which is simply calculated by dividing the wheel diameter by average CO2 emissions when driving 40 mph on a sunny day, than add horn decibels and multiply by the number of years it was built since 1990.

 

13 guests means you need a doctor on board. Wider than panamax, you can't sail through the Panama Canal. The ship wouldn't fit. Number of containers a ship could handle or actually is handling,  number of guests for port fees. Easy to measure and bigger ships pay more than small ships and everyone understands.

 

Then there's the amount of enclosed volume, with a complicated formula. Who cares about enclosed volume? Is it a proxy for something? 

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21 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

What's the actual use of GT? It does make things more complicated, like retractable roofs. Wikipedia isn't helping, as usual. How much leeway does a ship designer have to come up with a huge GT and a very small displacement or vice versa? For both container ships and cruise ships displacement and enclosed volumes must be very much correlated.  A small yacht would have a bigger GT than a huge barge that has no enclosed volume. Why such a difficult metric instead of displacement, or maybe in the case of passenger vessels, the number of berths?

Gross tonnage is a measure of the overall "size" of the ship.  It gives places like the Panama Canal (Panama Canal tonnage is somewhat derivative from GT and NT) and ports a ready indication of how big a ship they are dealing with, and in many cases, how much fee is charged.  Barges and yachts typically don't measure GT, since in the case of a yacht it would be so small, and for the barge, their dimensions are fairly standard.  Various ships use different tonnages as being the important one.  Military vessels use displacement, since their vessels tend to have heavy machinery packed compactly into their hulls.  Most cargo ships consider deadweight as the most important tonnage, as this is a measure of the weight of cargo it can carry, especially tankers.  RO/RO vessels look at both deadweight and NT, since their cargoes may be compact and heavy, or light but voluminous (a shipment of buses) where NT becomes the controlling factor.  Cruise ships use GT mainly as I say, as an overall "size" comparison.  Each vessel gets all of the tonnages calculated at design, but not all ships "care" about all the tonnages. 

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1 hour ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Yes, but I don't understand what sense GT has. I can think of another metric for my car, called C, which is simply calculated by dividing the wheel diameter by average CO2 emissions when driving 40 mph on a sunny day, than add horn decibels and multiply by the number of years it was built since 1990.

 

13 guests means you need a doctor on board. Wider than panamax, you can't sail through the Panama Canal. The ship wouldn't fit. Number of containers a ship could handle or actually is handling,  number of guests for port fees. Easy to measure and bigger ships pay more than small ships and everyone understands.

 

Then there's the amount of enclosed volume, with a complicated formula. Who cares about enclosed volume? Is it a proxy for something? 

A port could charge by number of containers the ship handles in port, but then they would not know how much wear and tear their infrastructure is getting, if it is 100 containers of ping pong balls, or 100 containers of lead ingots.  GT and NT, and their predecessors, GRT and NRT come from the old days when cargo was not containerized, but merely packed into the holds of ships, so volume became of interest.  Statistics talk about the "volume of cargo" a port handles, and this is in tons (weight), so there is still some "cross-contamination" between "break bulk" cargo and container cargo.  Also, sometimes ships are used for non-standard purposes, such as during the first Gulf War, I remember a British bulk carrier (smooth holds to carry bulk cargo like grain, iron ore, or fish meal) being loaded with palletized artillery shells, so both the NT (the cargo volume) and the deadweight (cargo weight) could either be the controlling factor.

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1 hour ago, Underwatr said:

"the total weight of cargo, stores, etc., that a ship carries or can carry at a particular draft." 🙂

Believe that is what I said.  What you state is correct, but design deadweight is for the design draft, and doesn't change.  

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11 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

port could charge by number of containers the ship handles in port, but then they would not know how much wear and tear their infrastructure is getting, if it is 100 containers of ping pong balls, or 100 containers of lead ingots.  

 

OK, maybe weight could be handy to differentiate between containers. If a port can handle ping balls more easily than lean ingots, the weight of the containers should be part of the quote. 

 

I still don't understand why someone came up with "enclosed volume" as a better metric instead of easy to measure things like displacement, number of berths, or length of the ship. 

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9 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

OK, maybe weight could be handy to differentiate between containers. If a port can handle ping balls more easily than lean ingots, the weight of the containers should be part of the quote. 

 

I still don't understand why someone came up with "enclosed volume" as a better metric instead of easy to measure things like displacement, number of berths, or length of the ship. 

Again, it is from the days of non-containerized cargo, where the volume of the ship determined how much cargo you carried.  How is displacement an easy to measure metric?  Do you have a big scale you weigh the ship on?  No, it starts with volume.  In theory, you place the ship in a tank of water, of known volume, let the "displaced" (hence the name) water spill over the sides of the tank, take the ship out and measure how much water is left.  Subtract that from the original volume and you get the volume of water displaced, times the density of water, gets you the weight of the ship.  Or, more simply, you calculate the volume of the ship below the design waterline, which equals the volume of water displaced.  And ships are not shapes easily calculated for volume.

 

You want to use ship length as a metric?  Let's just look at two cruise ships, since this is CC after all.  Oasis of the Seas is 360 meters long, compared to Freedom of the Seas at 338 meters.  So, Oasis is 7% longer than Freedom, so you charge them 7% more, right?  But when you look at GT, Oasis is 225,000 while Freedom is 154,000, or a 46% increase in volume, and that volume equates to passenger carrying ability.  And if I used number of berths, who do I charge more in port fees;  Silver Muse at 41,000 GT and 600 pax or The World at 42,000 GT and 200 pax?  Just because the cabins on The World are bigger or there are more public spaces means they should get charged less in port fees, or less to go through the Panama Canal?  And before you say it, yes, smaller passenger ships (don't recall the berth limit) are charged by Panama Canal tonnage (a volume figure) rather than per berth.

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4 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Again, it is from the days of non-containerized cargo, where the volume of the ship determined how much cargo you carried.  How is displacement an easy to measure metric?  Do you have a big scale you weigh the ship on? 

 

Every time the ship is in a dry dock, displacement can be measured. It's just the amount of water that you don't need to pump out. Just like you explained. Put an official stamp on the results, et voila, there's a simple metric to decide which ship is big and which is small. 

 

4 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

You want to use ship length as a metric?  Let's just look at two cruise ships, since this is CC after all.  Oasis of the Seas is 360 meters long, compared to Freedom of the Seas at 338 meters.  So, Oasis is 7% longer than Freedom, so you charge them 7% more, right?  But when you look at GT, Oasis is 225,000 while Freedom is 154,000, or a 46% increase in volume, and that volume equates to passenger carrying ability.  And if I used number of berths, who do I charge more in port fees;  Silver Muse at 41,000 GT and 600 pax or The World at 42,000 GT and 200 pax?  Just because the cabins on The World are bigger or there are more public spaces means they should get charged less in port fees, or less to go through the Panama Canal?  And before you say it, yes, smaller passenger ships (don't recall the berth limit) are charged by Panama Canal tonnage (a volume figure) rather than per berth.

 

Number of berths are used, for instance in Amsterdam, to tax the ship. I don't know what it costs for a port to have a ship moored, but length seemed reasonable. What's fair? For bulk transports of oil, grain or whatever, where no containers are used, I'd say "displacement". For stuff bought at Alibaba, in containers,  I'd say "displacement". For a cruise ship, if it's The World or Magic, I'd say "displacement". 

 

Paying more because you got a roof above the swimming pool? Then less because it's retractable? When cabins are added volume changes. When balconies are enlarged at the cost of smaller cabins, volume changes. Put a few cabanas on the ship, and the volume changes. Or maybe fabric doesn't count where aluminium would.  IMHO, "enclosed volume" is a very difficult metric, that needs professionals to calculate with a lot of rules and they would come up with different results. Displacement is just the weight of the ship. Extremely simple. 

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1 hour ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Every time the ship is in a dry dock, displacement can be measured. It's just the amount of water that you don't need to pump out. Just like you explained. Put an official stamp on the results, et voila, there's a simple metric to decide which ship is big and which is small. 

 

So, you don't measure a ship's displacement until it is launched?  Without knowing the displacement, and the shape of the hull, you don't know the center of buoyancy, and therefore you don't know the stability of the vessel.  Then how does the flag state or the class society know that the ship is safe?  Not so voila.

 

But at this point, if anyone wants to continue a discussion about Naval Architecture, start a new thread, and let this return to its original topic.

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1 minute ago, *Miss G* said:

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that nothing is extremely simple.

 

I fully agree, but I meant compared to using volume as a metric which is extremely hard. Then it's relatively easy to measure the weight of a ship.

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