Welcome to another issue of Cruise-n-Views Newsletter. If you are new to our newsletter, welcome. We are glad to have you as a subscriber and hope you enjoy the information this weekly newsletter provides you to stay up-to-date on all the exciting happenings in the cruise industry. We also hope you take part in this newsletter, by submitting questions you want answered, providing feedback to help us improve the newsletter to make it even more enjoyable, and even participating in occassional surveys and then reading the results of our readers once posted. The more participation from the readers, the better the newsletter will be.

Editor: Daniel A. Hoffman  

This newsletter contains current news and information on the "Cruise" industry. It will also contain the "Views" of the editor on different issues within the industry. The editor owns and operates a cruise oriented travel agency located in Pennsylvania. This newsletter's main purpose IS NOT AND WILL NOT BE for the purpose of selling cruises. It will at times contain ads from different sources. All ads will be cruise or travel related. It will list cruise specials from time to time in the ad section, but as stated, this is not the primary purpose of this newsletter.

In This Issue

#1 3 Mega Ships Ordered by 2 Cruise Lines

#2 Is Carnival Ordering New Ships?

#3 Carnival Trying To Get More Of The Northeast Market

PLUS
ALL REGULAR FEATURES

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#1 THREE MEGA SHIPS ORDERED BY TWO CRUISE LINES

After the extremely fast expansion of the overall cruise fleet in the past 5 years, with many cruise lines adding multiple ships, and sometimes even multiple ships within the same year, things had slowed considerably.

Planning, developing, and ordering a new mega ship takes upwards of one to two years before the order is even ready to be placed. After 9-11 almost all cruise lines, as well as a lot of other businesses in the United States, took a wait and see attitude about any further expansion. Some were even concerned about ships that were already "on the books", meaning they had been ordered and were under construction or already fully committed to begin construction. No major cruise line canceled any ships that were "on the books" at that time. It should be noted that in addition to the new ships placed in service in 2003, there are eleven new ships being delivered and placed in service in 2004 and another two planned for 2005 as well as two more scheduled for 2006. As you can see, the complete process involved a great deal of time. Once the order is placed, it can take upwards of a year to physically begin construction and then another two to three years to complete the construction and have the ship ready for use.

So who ordered the three new ships? Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL) ordered one and Star Cruises, owner of Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), ordered two. These are the second and third largest cruise lines, respectively, in the world.

RCCL placed an order with the shipyard Kvaerner-Masa of Helsinki for a new 160,000 gross ton Ultra Voyager. This ship will cost $720 million dollars, will be delivered in 2006, will carry 3,600 passengers, and will be the largest passenger ship ever built, including beating the Queen Mary 2 which is not even in service yet. The Queen Mary is scheduled to enter service in early 2004 and is sized at 150,000 gross tons. This will make the Queen Mary 2 the largest passenger ship ever, at least until RCCL gets this new one in service in 2006!

RCCL also took an option on a second similar ship which could launch in 2007 if the option is exercised in time.

Star Cruises placed orders with Meyer Werft Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, for two new ships to be used by NCL. These two ships are both similar and will be sized at 93,000 gross tons, which will be the largest ships in the NCL fleet. Both of these new ships were designed for NCL's highly successful "Freestyle Cruising". These two new ships will have a lot of the same feature designs of the Norwegian Star and the Norwegian Dawn. The total cost of the two ships combined will be $790 million dollars. Each ship will accommodate 2,400 passengers. The first ship will be delivered in late 2005 and the second will be in 2006.

NCL has stated an intention, ever since being acquired by Star Cruises several years ago, to renew their fleet by adding one new ship per year. This recent order shows additional commitment to that statement. NCL has also expanded into several new US ports to provide "Homeland Cruising", the ability to take a cruise without the need to fly to an embarkation port. These new orders will also help NCL accomplish another statement. They want to try to have a newer ship located in every year round port they serve. This will allow everyone in the US to experience "Freestyle Cruising Close To Home On A Modern Cruise Ship".

#2 IS CARNIVAL ORDERING NEW SHIPS?

With RCL and NCL both placing recent orders for new ships, the question comes up, if the second and third largest cruise lines are ordering new ships, what is the largest cruise line doing?

Carnival has stated that they are not placing any new orders currently. Carnival has stated that they are interested in building the next generation "Ultimate-Caribbean Princess" class ship, however, at this time they do not plan on doing anything that would result in any new ships sailing before 2007.

They did say that their plans for this next class of ship will result in a ship that is sized at between 170,000 gross tons and 180,000 gross tons and carry somewhere between 3,600 and 4,000 passengers! It looks like RCCL may not hold the record for having the largest passenger ship ever in service for very long even once they get their 160,000 gross ton, $720 million dollar Ultra Voyager in 2006! Many people are starting to ask, just how big is too big?

Carnival's management has stated "that they plan to use 2005 and 2006 as an opportunity to strengthen its balance sheet and use capital to pay down debt, buy back shares, or pay dividends instead of using it on ship deliveries".

#3 CARNIVAL TRYING TO GET SOME MORE OF THE NORTHEAST MARKET

Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) recently made a lot of cruise agents and passengers happy when they announced that they would be the first to put a large brand new ship, especially designed for "Freestyle Cruising" in the northeast. They announced that the ship would be using the Port of New York as its base, but even more importantly, it would be based there "Year Round"!

This caused a lot of attention from the other cruise lines, "sailing out of New York year round?" was the common response. They were even asked if they realized that New York gets very cold and even gets "snow" in the winter! They said that with the brand new Norwegian Dawn, which has a faster cruise speed than any other ship in its class, that they could sail out of cold wintery New York in the late afternoon and have the passengers in a warm climate by the following day at noon. They said, their in depth research had shown a strong cruise market in the northeast region, but with the only option being to fly to Florida, or another major port to board the ship. They felt strongly that if the passengers did not have to fly, they would not mind boarding a ship in the cold climate and sailing to a more tropical climate.

Apparently their research was correct! The Norwegian Dawn has received excellent response from both the cruise agent community as well as the cruisers who live in the northeast region. Booking volume has been very good, including, January, February, and March!

Well, now Carnival has announced that starting in the summer of 2004 aboard their new ship the Carnival Miracle, they will be offering their first program of seven day cruises from the Port of New York sailing to Port Canaveral (Orlando) and the Bahamas. The Carnival Miracle is a 88,500 gross ton ship carrying 2,124 passengers and is scheduled to serve this itinerary from June 12, 2004 until August 28, 2004.

Carnival is still not willing to commit to a year round ship in this area. They are most likely waiting to see if NCL's booking volume does indeed hold during the full winter months.

UPCOMING ITEMS

Be watching in coming
weeks for the full
Q & A section to start.
This will be a section
where you can submit
questions to the editor
and staff dealing with
anything cruise related.
If you already have a
question you want to
submit, the email address
is listed in the above section.

RESPONSE TO OPINIONS
AND STATEMENTS

As stated above in the masthead,
the editor will at times include
his opinion of issues and events
in the cruise industry. If you
do not agree or have a
differing opinion, please
feel free to email it directly to
Reply@Cruise-n-Views.com
The editor will read it
and may request your
permission, which you
can freely give or withhold,
to post it in an
upcoming newsletter.
Differing opinions are always
welcome, of course
they are always wrong,
but welcome!! Just kidding,
Please feel free to submit them.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Hello, my name is
Dan Hoffman, and I
am the editor of this
newsletter. I am
involved in the cruise
industry and have traveled
fairly extensively aboard
cruise ships. Combining, my
wife Gayle and I, we have taken
a total of 19 cruises entailing
185 total sailing days and
covering 34 different ports.
We also have several
more cruises already booked.
I am telling these facts
simply so that you have an
understanding of whom you
are reading and what the
background, knowledge, and
actual cruise experience is of
that person, me! As stated
earlier, always feel free to
send me an email with,
questions, opinions, or
experiences. Thank you and
enjoy the newsletter.

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