Just when you thought ships couldn't get bigger

To Whom It May Concern:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well.

Happy sailing,
John Sisker
SHIP-TO-SHORE CRUISE AGENCY®
(714) 536-3850 or toll free at
(800) 724-6644 & (pagoo ID: 714.536.3850)
http://www.shiptoshorecruise.com



Royal Caribbean will break its own size record with a new 6,400-passenger
vessel. HOW big is too big?

There seem to be no physical restraints to the continuing supersizing of
cruise ships, as lines build bigger and bigger, allowing them to save with
economies of scale and to add more attractions onboard. Even before the
Champagne bottle is cracked on Royal Caribbean's record-breaking
4,370-passenger Freedom of the Seas on May 12, the cruise line already has
announced a new ship that will carry up to 6,400 passengers. The Freedom of
the Seas, estimated at 160,000 tons, is not that much larger than Cunard's
Queen Mary 2, which is 151,000 tons. But Royal Caribbean's new Project
Genesis ship, due in 2009 at a cost of more than $1.1 billion, comes in at
220,000 tons. At 1,180 feet long, the Project Genesis ship is longer than
three football fields. Is it too big? The question popped up repeatedly at
last month's Seatrade Cruise Shipping Convention in Miami Beach, Fla. The
annual meeting is the cruise industry's largest trade show. " 'Do I really
want to be on a ship with 6,000 passengers?' That's the question many
vacationers will ask," said Walter Littlejohn, president of New Jersey-based
Chartwell Vacations, citing a questionnaire he gave to about 1,200 cruise
passengers. The survey found 43% said the Project Genesis ship was
"absolutely" too big. (The ship will carry 5,400 passengers in double
occupancy but reportedly up to 6,400 when extra berths are filled.) About a
third of the respondents said they would not cruise on the ship. Vacationers
may fear the cruise experience will be diminished with such large crowds.
Even now, ships the size of Royal Caribbean's 3,800-berth Voyagers present
problems for ports and passengers. "We have crowds at airports," Littlejohn
said. "We have crowds at embarkation. We have crowds at disembarkation. You
have to get up early to get a deck chair on sea days." Older passengers
already "want to know how far they have to walk to dinner [on a ship]," he
said. And waits to embark on a Genesis-sized ship may make airport security
lines seem positively speedy. Check-in would take four to six hours for a
Project Genesis ship, said Bruno-Elias Ramos, president of BEA
International, a Florida company that designs terminals. Home-port terminals
would probably have to install airport-like conveyor systems to handle the
estimated 17,000 pieces of luggage, he said. Itineraries would be limited
too. A ship that size would have to call at marquee ports, the big-name
Caribbean destinations such as Cozumel, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; St.
Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; Grand Cayman; and a few more. The larger ships
will require expanded services at ports and a coordinated effort with local
governments and tour operators to handle the logistics of so many people in
port simultaneously. Then there's the issue of safety, raised by an audience
member at a Seatrade panel on the effect of such large ships in the
industry. Could 6,000 passengers be evacuated in a timely and safe manner?
It reportedly took more than three hours to account for 3,813 passengers and
crew aboard the Star Princess during a recent fire, which resulted in one
death. But Maurizio Cergol, chief cruise ship designer for the Fincantieri
yard in Italy, which has orders to deliver 12 cruise ships through 2009,
doesn't think size compromises safety. "The safety is not a matter of size,"
he said. "It's a matter of design." Fears aside, big ships are popular.
Royal Caribbean's Voyager ships and the new Freedom of the Seas attract
thousands of vacationers. The Freedom is heavily booked even before its
debut and is commanding a high price for its first few months out. The
220,000-ton ship "is absolutely not too big," said Lynn Martenstein, Royal
Caribbean's vice president of corporate communications. "There's room for
all sizes of ships. It's all about choices for cruisers," she said. "The
Freedom and Genesis series allow us to provide more experiences, more
activities, more onboard services and more amenities."

In article .net,
John Sisker wrote:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well.

It is not from the "trades". You copied a copyrighted article from the
Los Angelas Times by Mary Lu Abbott.

--
Charles

"Charles" wrote in message
d...
In article .net,
John Sisker wrote:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well.

It is not from the "trades". You copied a copyrighted article from the
Los Angelas Times by Mary Lu Abbott.

--
Charles

Charles, What is the proper way to post a copyrighted article in this NG.
Should the author be given credit first? Just wondering since lot of folks
do it.

"RichC" wrote in
:


"Charles" wrote in message
d...
In article .net,
John Sisker wrote:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would
be of interest to this newsgroup as well.

It is not from the "trades". You copied a copyrighted article from
the Los Angelas Times by Mary Lu Abbott.

--
Charles

Charles, What is the proper way to post a copyrighted article in this
NG. Should the author be given credit first? Just wondering since lot
of folks do it.




The best way is to reference the article and give the url refering
people to it. Most papers on line do not really wnat people avoiding the
paid advertiseing

--
Joseph Coulter
Cruises and Vacations
http://www.josephcoulter.com/

In article , RichC
wrote:

Charles, What is the proper way to post a copyrighted article in this NG.
Should the author be given credit first? Just wondering since lot of folks
do it.

There is no proper way to post an entire copyrighted article without
permission from the copyright holder. In this case the Los Angelos
Times. If they gave permission then they would want credit for the
author and the publication.

If you see an interesting article, if they have published it to their
website, you what you can do is post a link to the article. That is you
can post the url the Newsgroup.

--
Charles

On Mon, 01 May 2006 06:04:21 -0400, Charles
wrote:

In article .net,
John Sisker wrote:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well.

It is not from the "trades". You copied a copyrighted article from the
Los Angelas Times by Mary Lu Abbott.

Good point - what the hell is the "trades" that Sisker refers to
anyway? Often wondered.

Mike wrote in
:

On Mon, 01 May 2006 06:04:21 -0400, Charles
wrote:

In article .net,
John Sisker wrote:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would
be of interest to this newsgroup as well.

It is not from the "trades". You copied a copyrighted article from the
Los Angelas Times by Mary Lu Abbott.

Good point - what the hell is the "trades" that Sisker refers to
anyway? Often wondered.


the trades would be sources such as Travel Weekly which are widely read
by people in the Industry. He is trying to make it sound like he is
giving insider information as opposed to Ray's news releases from the
cruise lines. Marco Polo did a similar service for a while in his proper
but sometimes mysterious posts which were no more than links to the
original article (the proper way to reference a copyrighted story by the
way)

--
Joseph Coulter
Cruises and Vacations
http://www.josephcoulter.com/

Joseph Coulter:

Just what was mysterious in my posts?

Aloha

(Mark O. Polo) wrote in news:12419-4456721B-49@asg-
storefull-3112.bay.webtv.net:

Joseph Coulter:

Just what was mysterious in my posts?

Aloha



Other than I always had to go to the url to find out what you were posting?
Not that I minded I just wasn't sure sometimes, but as I indicated you were
always correct in how you posted, and usually interesting to those of us
who chased the trail.

--
Joseph Coulter
Cruises and Vacations
http://www.josephcoulter.com/

Joseph Coulter wrote in
7.136:

(Mark O. Polo) wrote in news:12419-4456721B-49@asg-
storefull-3112.bay.webtv.net:

Joseph Coulter:

Just what was mysterious in my posts?

Aloha



Other than I always had to go to the url to find out what you were
posting? Not that I minded I just wasn't sure sometimes, but as I
indicated you were always correct in how you posted, and usually
interesting to those of us who chased the trail.


and on review in google, not as mysterious as I remembered. It
seemedthat they were a bit more like teasers on TV but no in fact
concise precis of the article. Mea culpa.

--
Joseph Coulter
Cruises and Vacations
http://www.josephcoulter.com/