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Carnival Destiny moored at Riva Sette Martiri, Venice – October 1996 (Photo Stefano Fermi) |
And the Grand Princess followed in 1997. These first 100,000-tonners brought real economies of scale to cruising but were not yet that different from the modern cruise ships that had preceded them. Ironically, the Carnival Destiny has just been rebuilt as the Carnival Sunshine and Lin Arison, widow of the late Ted Arison, will once again perform the honours.
It was really the arrival of the 1,000-footers that began to change the nature of cruising. The first, Royal Caribbean’s 1,020-foot Voyager of the Seas, of 1999, brought us a Royal Promenade, rock climbing walls and ice-skating. And in recent years, the trade has been deluged with bigger and bigger ships, culminating in 2009-10 in the 5,408-lower-berth Oasis and Allure of the Seas, which can carry 6,360 passengers when all beds are full.
It is now also possible to go surfing on board and to be visited by Shrek, the appearance of whom has probably also scared a good number of adult cruisers away from these ships as well.
Royal Caribbean now stand out as the builder of behemoths, giants and leviathans, now having produced ten ships in three different classes that carry more than 3,000 passengers since the Voyager of the Seas, plus planning three new ships of the Quantum class (4,180 passengers) and another Oasis. The interesting thing about these ships is that they are able to attract the custom, and they are able to do so at prices above the average.
Norwegian Cruise Line, on the other hand, has added a lot of extras too, but with its Freestyle Cruising, started in 2001, it has also been able to charge extra for many if not most of its alternative restaurants. In fact, Norwegian is probably better known than most other lines as a line where you will pay end up paying more for on board spend than on some others.
But while not all may like larger ships, the truth is that by the general public has welcomed these additional entertainment options and alternative restaurants. And, in the end, the real negativity is coming from sources outside the industry.
The first real negativity came about a dozen years ago now from a strange source, in the form of Ross Klein, a university professor in social work from Newfoundland. Just how many in this Canadian province of 515,000 actually take a cruise each year we don’t know, but Klein is not a Newfoundlander.
Although he had arrived in Newfoundland before he started his criticism of the industry, he had held junior teaching positions at Yeshiva University in New York, Syracuse University, Iowa State, State University of New York and Skidmore College before he became a professor at Memorial University in St John’s. And he has degrees from Arizona State University, the University of Maryland and Syracuse University.
Not long after arriving in Newfoundland, Klein started making a reputation for himself. In quick succession, he published four tomes on cruising.
In 2001, it was “Death by Chocolate: What You Must Know Before Taking a Cruise,” in 2003, “Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Industry,” in 2005, “Cruise Ship Squeeze: The New Pirates of the Seven Seas” and in 2008 “Paradise Lost at Sea: Rethinking Cruise Vacations.”
The man has made a veritable industry out of making money from books that criticize the cruising industry and in getting himself hired as some sort of “expert,” especially at hearings convened by one Senator Rockefeller.
Indeed, Klein has made himself into such a celebrity that he maintains his own website at www.cruisejunkie.com, where one can find just about anything critical of the cruise industry. One of his speaking engagements biographies says, “as an outspoken critic of the industry, Klein’s is a unique voice,” but one must wonder why it is so unique.
Todd de Haven, in an open letter to “Cruise Mates” written in 2006, came up with his own theory:
“I believe … I may have found what ultimately could be the reason behind Klein’s crusade and if I’m correct, the reason is for me at least, incomprehensible. The start of his campaign against the cruise industry appears to correlate with the same time frame he received what he felt to be an unsatisfactory response to a complaint he made to an upscale cruise line about his perceived ill treatment by a bartender.”
Meanwhile, in 2005, another author no one had even heard of before, Kristoffer Garin, joined Klein, when he published an entertaining volume entitled “Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes, and Showdowns That Built America’s Cruise-Ship Empires.”
While sensational, Garin’s book carries a good story about the mergers and acquisitions activities of these lines. Washington-based Garin, now an investment banker, also co-authored the New York Times bestseller“Win Forever: Live, Work and Play Like a Champion” in 2010 with Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll. But having written his first tome on cruising, although he has also written occasionally for Conde Nast Traveler, he does not seem to have returned to the cruising theme.
To its credit, Garin’s “Devils on the Deep Blue Sea” makes a very good read if you’re interested in boardroom shenanigans at the cruise lines during their various takeover attempts. And rather than lecturing in social work, Garin actually served as a petty officer in the Royal Norwegian Navy between 1997 and 1999.
Another frequent source of negative comment on the North American cruise industry is Walker & O’Neill, a firm of Miami lawyers who make their crust making claims against cruise lines on behalf of passengers and cruise ship crew members. Jim Walker even runs a website called “Cruise Law News” and is often to be seen being interviewed on US television. But one can hardly hold it against a lawyer that he tried to make a name for himself in order to maximize his fee billings.
More recently, in January of this year, came a company called Un-Cruise Adventures, really an amalgam of two previous lines called American Safari Cruises and InnerSea Discoveries. But this renaming was really aimed at conveying the line’s unique style of exploration cruising. And they were not the first to use this theme.
SeaDream Yacht Club had started using the tagline “it’s yachting not cruising” almost a decade before. These are hardly naysayers, however, but companies with products that they want to differentiate from mass market cruising.
Despite all this negativity that comes from only a couple of individuals, cruising is still an industry that is growing from strength to strength, mainly now in Europe and Asia. One can only hope that once Europe pulls into its full stride and becomes a mature market, we will not have naysayers like Senator Rockefeller and Ross Klein running their own sort of circus.
Neither has ever worked in the industry and it is actually rather unsightly, even to some fellow senators, to see the two of them gang up together in senate hearing after senate hearing.
Work Under Way on AIDA Sisters In Japan

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) has begun construction at its Nagasaki Shipyard of the first of two new-generation 124,500-ton cruise ships for AIDA Cruises, the German arm of Carnival Corp & plc. The two new ships, which will incorporate an array of new environmental technologies, are scheduled for delivery in March 2015 and March 2016
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) has begun construction at its Nagasaki Shipyard of the first of two new-generation 124,500-ton cruise ships for AIDA Cruises, the German arm of Carnival Corp & plc.
The two new ships, which will incorporate an array of new environmental technologies, are scheduled for delivery in March 2015 and March 2016.
The keel-laying ceremony to mark the occasion was recently attended by owner’s representatives including Pier Luigi Foschi, chairman of Costa Group, Michael Thamm, CEO of the Costa Group, Michael Ungerer, president of AIDA Cruises; and chairman Hideaki Omiya from MHI. The new ship will be the first of two vessels ordered by AIDA, each able to carry around 3,300 passengers capacity– and the largest ships ever for AIDA Cruises.
The order for the two follows the two highly successful 116,000-ton ships, Diamond Princess and Sapphire Princess, built for Princess Cruises in 2004.