Cruise Lines

Next month's cruise convention in Southampton is going from strength to strength, with a Premiere day now added where agents will be able to learn how to increase their cruise sales as well as lunch and take a tour of one of Princess Cruises' superliners.

Was it really only last year that Andy Harmer got up on stage in Dover to open the first cruise convention and introduce the world to the Association of Cruise Experts? I guess the speed at which this event has taken off just underlines how fast this sector of the industry is growing and what a great job ACE has been doing in the meantime.

Whether agents go for the Premier on May 16, the three-day event the following week, when there will be another five ships to see, or both (definitely the best option), it's a fantastic opportunity to learn more about cruising from some of the leading people in the industry. Proof indeed of how important the trade is to the cruiselines.

Premier day places are up for grabs now. Email natalie@psa-ace.org or call 020 7436 2449.

Cunard is to ease the strain for single travellers in 2009, cutting the single supplement on Queen Mary 2 from 100% to 75% and even 50% on some voyages during April and on May 2 and 8 for those who get in quick.

It's about time. We hear so often - from the cruiselines themselves - what a wonderful holiday a cruise is for people on their own. And as one who regularly cruises on my own I agree. Except for those swingeing supplements.

Could this new-for-2009 decision have anything to do with Carnival UK chief commercial officer Peter Shanks' prediction in his company's 2008 cruise report that by 2020 we will have waved goodbye to single supplements?

I didn't realise at the time that actually he was hinting about what was to come rather than playing soothsayer, but now I look back at those words of wisdom, I see he also predicted that we would have (hopefully) figured out a foolproof way of smashing champagne bottles on the side of new ships.

Enter the Royal Marines, who will be guaranteeing a smashing time this week when P&O Cruises' Ventura is named in Southampton by Dame Helen Mirren.

I know I for one am going to listen more closely to Shanks' crystal-ball gazing. His obviously works better than Mystic Meg's.

Interesting story on the Cruise Critic website about an American couple who have been banned from cruising with Royal Caribbean International.

Apparently they were regular cruisers with the brand, but managed to find faults with every cruise they took. These were vocalised to the world through travel websites and when Royal acted to rectify the problems with financial sweeteners - on-board credits, money off future cruises - they told the world of that too.

Cleverly they always praised Royal and rebooked with them so it never looked like they were after money. Of course they weren't. But now the game is over. Let's face it, cruiselines can't afford to allow others to learn the rules.

Somehow I'm finding it hard to feel sorry for these guys, who have been pouring their hearts out on US TV, but I do have sympathy for Norwegian Cruise Line. Apparently they have discovered - and love - NCL's Freestyle cruising!

Regent Seven Seas Cruises president Mark Conroy reckons world cruising is becoming more popular because people are simply taking their offices globetrotting as well.

Regent now has Wi Fi on all its ships so guests can now work whilst on a long voyage. This allows access to the rest of the world at their convenience. Regent Seven Seas Society Silver and above members are offered complementary Wi Fi so they can communicate via the internet for as long as they please with no extra charge.

 

Work your way around the world - but without the backpack. What a fantastic concept. No wonder Conroy also reports that world cruising is a growing sector of Regent's market - so much so that they are offering more long voyages in 2009 to meet demand.

Other interesting world cruise facts from Regent:

* 20% of Regent's world cruise bookings come from the UK.

* 70% of world cruisers are repeat customers.

* a 116-night all-inclusive world cruise with six-star Regent (with all drinks, alternative dining and tips covered) costs less than a 105-night non-inclusive cruise (non of the above covered) on Cunard's five-star Queen Victoria - £291 per person per day against £296.

Who says they can't afford luxury?

Passengers on Azamara Cruises, the better-than-Celebrity brand from the Royal Caribbean stable, had a real treat as their ship popped into London this week on the way from Barcelona to Copenhagen - namely what passes for a port in one of Europe's leading capital cities.

Port? Actually, it's a pontoon just down river from Tower Bridge that has been covered with portacabins that you weave through in order to get to the ship - and that's after enduring a tortuous tender transfer from the other side of the bridge.

No matter. There was a fabulous view of Tower Bridge from the aft end of the ship and it must have been fun squeezing through the Thames Barrier - for passengers at least. Captain Carl admitted he pulled his stomach in as he manoevered through with just 15 metres to spare on either side.

Thames boatmen notwithstanding, I finally managed to get on board with some of the top people from Royal Caribbean for what was a first glimpse of an Azamara ship for all.

Except it was a bit like deja-vu for anyone who has been on Princess Cruises' Royal Princess (Swan Hellenic's Minerva II as was) or any of the Oceania Cruises' ships.

Obviously Azamara Journey been tweaked here and there - actually there have been $19 million of tweaks to add 32 bigger suites, a cafe, bar and change the carpets. Sadly the money didn't stretch to real teak on the pool deck so there's a plastic faux alternative but the wooden sun loungers with comfy mattresses helps to make up for that.

They have also put in new alternative restaurants, which come with no charge (that's one of the better-than-Celebrity bits) and look lovely. But so does the eat-when-you-like main dining room. Again, so much more advanced than its X-rated big sister with its fixed dining.

And at the moment, as the brand is not yet well known, it doesn't cost any more, and sometimes even less. That's got to be well worth a second look.

My stint on Swan Hellenic's Minerva is just about to end, mainly due to other commitments and partly because the guys in head office were concerned that if I stayed on to Kirkwall and we hit bad weather, the ship would not be able to get in to the port.

Result? Minerva would head off to Norway - it's next stop after Scotland - with me on board when I was supposed to be elsewhere.

But they hadn't factored in Captain John Moulds. "I'd have got you in," he told me over dinner yesterday evening, after telling me that bad weather is no obstacle for him when it comes to landing passengers in Antarctica - the most unfriendly climate in the world.

Somehow I really think he would.

I have been picking up a few useful pointers on P&O Cruises' Ventura from Phil at the Cruise Village/Save 'n' Sail as he was on the ship in June and I am on later this month. Ventura, for those who have already forgotten, was launched in April and is the biggest in the P&O fleet, with lots of new-for-P&O stuff on board.

http://www.mycruiseblog.co.uk/

It all sounds pretty good, although he reckons the cover charge in The White Room is too high given the limited choice on the menu. I'll reserve comment on that issue, but I was surprised at the launch to discover that they have gone for flexible pricing in the speciality restaurants so people on shorter cruises pay more. I struggle to see how that can be justified, other than to the bean counters.

But what interested me most is his comment that Freedom dining is not working well because too many people book tables at their preferred sitting time each day so when radom diners turn up to eat, there is no room.

The turn-up-and-dine concept works very well on Princess Cruises (where it is called Anytime Dining) so I wonder what the problem is.

Could it simply be that Princess staff are more experienced at handling flexible dining because they've been doing it for so many years or because P&O people haven't got to grips with this idea of Freedom after so many years of being told when to eat and where to sit.

I just hope things are improving - and fast....

As my regular blog readers will have seen, I was at Tilbury last week to see Marco Polo, now sailing under charter to Transocean Tours and sub-charter to Cruise and Maritime Services through the summer. Click on the video, created courtesy of Travel Weekly, to see and hear more.

I see Celebrity Cruises, that bastion of cruise tradition, is cutting back on formal nights for nine, 10 and 11-night cruises starting August 1. A sign of the more casual times, even for lines that like to think their passengers are quality, discerning types.

They'll be telling us they are trialing an open-dining system next. I can't wait.

But luckily it's one we can all applaud in these days of being green, in words if not deeds.

The line has won an award from CiAI in Italy, which translates into National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Aluminium Packaging, for collecting tons of empty cans, waste foil and aluminium packaging - 10,000 kg of the stuff between May and December 2007.

CiAI usually reserves its awards for councils, but decided MSC qualified because its ships are floating towns. Actually that doesn't sound so good, does it? I can see the term being picked up with glee by environmentalists determined that cruising is the worst thing since, well, sliced bread.

A report in Travel Weekly US suggests the chill wind of the economic downturn is starting to blow around the cruise lines.

Johanna Jainchill's report talks of downsizing staff and budget cuts at Royal Caribbean in response to rising fuel costs and says sources say the line wants to trim the payroll by 10%.

RCCL's vice-president of corporate communications Lynn Martenstein admitted they are under pressure to control costs.

Like most companies today, we are redoubling our efforts to find savings, but we have not announced any specific actions.

Hot on the heels of news that Susan Hooper, managing director EMEA, is resigning one can't help putting two and two together and coming up with, well,  four.

I feel a definite reorganisation in the air.

This week I'm blogging from Ventura, the new big ship in P&O Cruises' fleet that was launched in August, where last night we had a'60s and '70s party.

Lively, fun, but Buddy Holly songs? Someone should tell the DJ that he died in a plane crash in 1959.

Just as everyone was thinking the new ship building boom was over - I refer you to a report on Tripso by Anita Dunham-Potter - sharp-eyed cruise watchers spot news on Aker Yards website saying MSC Cruises has ordered two more Musica-class ships.

Sisters to MSC Poesia, the ships will weigh 89,600 tons and carry 2,550 passengers and be delivered in Febrary 2011 and February 2012.

MSC notwithstanding, Dunham-Potter is surely right in predicted the end of the new ship boom As she points out, all the cruiseships on the shipyards' books bar the MSC duo - she estimates 35 vessels at a cost of $22 billion - were ordered before the price of fuel shot up and world economies shot down.

But does it matter that the boom is over, for a couple of years at least? We all love new ship launches, but I can't help thinking it will be a good thing to give the new capacity coming into the market time to settle - there are still 35 ships to come, after all, and two of those are Royal Caribbean's giant 5,400-passenger vessels.

Simple supply-and-demand economics also tells me that a shortfall in capacity means prices will go up. And higher prices surely are better for cruiselines and agents. Given that, I wonder whether MSC wouldn't be better to watch and wait until it starts to command higher fares.

Do we need more cruise ships? Let me know what you think.

MSC Cruises reports its most successful week for bookings. On Saturday, there were 25% more calls to the call centre than on an average Saturday, while Monday recorded 48% more calls than the daily average and the conversion rate was up 60%.

Is MSC reaping the benefits of its amazing deals or is this yet more proof that credit crunch or no, cruisers are not yet ready to give up on their holiday at sea.

This guy is Daniel Hochsteiner, from Germany, one of a band of entertainers who juggles three or so times a day in the piazza on Princess Cruises' Crown Princess.

The piazza, but the way, is the ship's atrium by another name because it is a place where you can buy coffees, teas or something stronger, snack on salads, cookies or cakes from the International Cafe - free in the day, charged in the evening (I'm not entirely sure why as the daytime food is so much nicer) - or just meet others and watch the entertainers. Much like an Italian piazza.
 
Oh - and it's also one of the best places for us laptop junkies to pick up wireless internet, which is why I'm spending a lot of time there.

Daniel was getting off the ship just after I took this picture. He's been on for a week, juggling hoops and tennis rackets, and now he's off to do the same on another cruise ship.

Rest assured, I'll be back down there to see who takes his place.

So this is it. The day Royal Caribbean, travel agents and hopefully the British public have all been waiting for. Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built goes on sale at 1pm UK time.

This ship is longer than four football pitches, higher than Nelson's Column - 220,000 tons and with room for 5,400 passengers.

Royal is moving staff from other areas into reservations to cope with an expected 50% more bookings than on its previous busiest sales day. Senior managers have been drafted in to deal with booking inquiries and Jo Rzymowska, associate vice-president and general manager, has promised to make the tea.

Some £1 million has been set aside to make sure this behemoth sells. It's going to be a long day.

Either I've not been paying attention or this is new. Passengers who book one of the 99 suites in the VIP Yacht Club on MSC Cruises' new MSC Fantasia, launching December, have soft and alcoholic drinks included in the price.

Suddenly it becomes a lot more attractive!

Yacht Club people also have 24-hour butler service, a VIP swimming pool, hydro-massage pool, solarium, lounge and direct access to the spa.

The ship holds a massive 3,959 passengers and takes pride of place in MSC's new 2008/09 brochure. It will be sailing the Med - the maiden voyage is an eight-night Christmas cruise, then there's a New Year sailing and 12-night itineraries out of Genoa.

How much extra does it cost for the Yacht Club? Unfortunately my press release skips over the money bit and as I'm away and it's now 7am in the morning UK time, I can't find out.

If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to know.

As promised, an update on the Piazza entertainment on Princess Cruises' Crown Princess. Following juggling Daniel's departure, we've had quick-change artist Yulana Plotvinova and magician Alex Lodge.

I've yet to have seen the latter at work - he does his magic up close so it depends on him coming to your table - but the oohs and ahhs from other passengers were impressive.

Plotvinova is great. She walks into a curtained closet in one outfit and emerges at the other end in another, or wraps herself in a cloak, then whisks it off to reveal - yes, another outfit. I was standing right in front of her, trying to take pictures, but it's impossible because it all happens so fast. And no, I couldn't see how it is done.

These "street" entertainers are very clever. Gives the atrium - sorry, Piazza - life and a reason to hang out there, rather than just passing through to admire the décor and eat the sticky buns they offer for breakfast in the International Cafe!

I looked at them earlier and wondered who would eat such unhealthy food for breakfast - sugar, icing, you name it, they are covered in it. And then along came the Americans!

US-based Travel Trade reports that MSC Cruises is selling off the MSC Rhapsody, the oldest and smallest ship in the fleet.

No surprise really. In an interview for Travel Weekly earlier this year, MSC's chief executive officer Pierfrancesco Vago told me that the clock was ticking for the 780-passenger MSC Rhapsody and 1,064-passenger MSC Melody - another of MSC's smaller ships.

There are passengers who like Rhapsody and Melody because they are smaller and more intimate, but more and more people want balconies so they will go in the end - I would guess over the next couple of years.

Travel Trade reports that Israeli-based Mano Maritime is interested in buying the Rhapsody. Ironic really, given that MSC Cruises started life when Gianlucci Aponte, owner of cargo giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, acquired the Achille Lauro, the cruiseship hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, resulting in the death of an Jewish American passenger.

But irony or not, the fact is that with two new ships with room for close to 4,000 passengers close to launch, MSC has less and less room for small, elderly ships such as the Rhapsody. Much as Carnival Corporation had no room for Swan Hellenic and Norwegian Cruise Line had no room for Orient Lines, which are both starting new lives under new owners.

Meet Mahir, my butler on Crystal Cruises' ship Crystal Serenity. He comes with the Penthouse I'm in on a short but sweet cruise in the Med - made all the sweeter by reports coming back from home of cold and rain as temperatures here hit 30 degrees.

As I explored the ship yesterday I also came across Raymond, who goes around the sun deck every hour with cold towels for those who need to cool off.

You don't have to pay, it's not an extra. Just part of the service. Now that's what I call luxury.

Ocean Village is spending £1 million on a multi-media advertising campaign starting next week, which will include TV ads in the Granada, Central, Yorkshire and West Country TV regions.

The cruise line for people who don't do cruises is targeting its core 35-54 market with a one-week cruise in the Med from £599 per person. Gill Haynes, OV's head of marketing, says it's a keen lead price that represents great value for money in the current economic climate.

I would say it's an incredible deal. Don't forget that price even includes a flight and transfers. Amazing.

Agents had better get ready for the rush.

Which I was.

The Penthouse on Crystal Serenity is lovely. There's a walk-in wardrobe, large bathroom with two sinks, jacuzzi bath and separate shower, equipped with a flat-screen TV, DVD and CD. And of course there is Mahir, my butler.

But interestingly the Penthouse I had on Princess Cruises' Crown Princess last week was bigger.

It had a long balcony with two balcony doors, two TVs, a DVD, a walk-in wardrobe and the bathroom was spilt into two. A toilet and sink in one room, a jacuzzi bath and shower in another.

We didn't have a butler, but we did have the lovely Elmar, who greeted us each day with a chirpy good morning and managed to keep the room tidy despite the best efforts of my 14-year-old daughter to do otherwise.

"Have you noticed they have the name of our suite [Aruba] instead of the number on the signs in the corridor?" she asked excitedly the first day we were on board. I had to admit I hadn't, but it did explain why I spend ages looking at the sign trying to work out which direction to walk to get to 412.

It wasn't there. And then I realised I was standing almost right in front of the room.

Sometimes you can feel really stupid.

MSC Cruises has not only found the money to buy two new Musica-class ships - 93,000 tons and 3,013 passengers - but they have already been named. MSC Meraviglia and MSC Favolosa, to be delivered 2011 and 2012.

I just hope the names sound better when spoken by an Italian!

Seatrade Insider reports that a contract dispute between Norwegian Cruise Line and Aker Yards could affect the delivery of NCL's first 4,200-passenger ship, code-named F3, scheduled for early 2010.

It's a confused story, with Aker Yards on the one hand saying work on the first F3 is on-going, likwise discussions with NCL, but refusing to confirm the delivery date, and unnamed sources saying the F3 newbuild is not going ahead.

NCL says it will not comment on commercial or legal matters. Unfortunately that only heightens speculation that the story is true.

Good news for all agents who are going to miss seeing Celebrity Cruises' new Celebrity Solstice - this is the one with the real lawn and the first new Celebrity ship for six years - which comes out of the shipyard in November and goes straight to the US/Caribbean.

Jo Rzymowska, managing director for Celebrity Cruises UK and Ireland, tells me that the next Solstice-class ship, Celebrity Equinox, will be making a first stop at Southampton when it leaves the shipyard in Germany next August.

After the trade has had time to see it, Equinox will be picking up its first paying passengers in th south coast port for a cruise to Civitavecchia, the port for Rome, where it will be based for the rest of the summer alongside Solstice, which comes back to Europe after an inaugural season in the Caribbean.

Two new Celebrity ships in the Med? That's confidence for you.

Incidentally, I'm lucky enough to be one of a select few from the UK going on board Solstice at the end of next week as it sails out of the shipyard at Meyer Werft and down the River Ems to Gandersum, so keep an eye out here for my first impressions.

When P&O Cruises launched Ventura this April, it was all about kids. Noddy, Mr Bump and racing cars around a Scalextric track (although having seen them clustered around the table, I reckon that's really for the dads!).

Apparently when sister ship Ventura II is launched - at the moment known as Hull 6166 but I prefer Ventura II until the real name is revealed at the keel-laying on October 27 - things might be different.

At a dinner this week, P&O Cruises managing director Nigel Esdale said the new vessel, which launched in 2010, could have a different appeal.

He said launching Ventura, P&O Cruises' biggest ship, had created challenges, which in turn have led to some on-board refinements.

For instance, I am told by a colleague who attended that they will now be using empty tables in the Club Dining restaurants - that's where the fixed diners eat - to accommodate passengers on Freedom dining (Freedom diners have been facing over-long delays getting a table in the evening) and using themed buffets in the self-service to draw people away from the dining room.

It's probably not an ideal solution, but it's a positive response to the moans from passengers that have filled websites this summer and shows the bosses have been listening.

"We're learning, we're refining, we're changing some of the emphasis, changing some of the service styles, moving some of the manning around, experimenting with some of the flows around the ship in terms of the schedules of the shows and activities."

Aker Yards in France has broken ranks and spoken of its dispute with Norwegian Cruise Line over the cost of NCL's two 4,200-passenger ships, codenamed F3.

Seatrade Insider says Jacques Hardelay, president of Aker Yards France, has confirmed there are issues over construction costs.

In projects with this magnitude of complexity, we have in this industry several examples that discussions arise during the project execution. We regret that we have a situation with a dispute.

Earlier Seatrade reports spoke of a meltdown in relations between Aker Yards and NCL and said Aker Yards had approached other cruise lines to take over the building project.

Hardelay says building work is going on, but other reports suggest the yard has stopped work on the F3s.

NCL is officially saying nothing but Travel Pulse say the company has told employees that the first F3 ship order has been cancelled (backed up in the comments section by a mother of an NCL officer, who says all the crew were told last week) and a decision has not been taken on whether to proceed with the second ship.

Travel Pulse also reports that NCL has called off its search for a sales executive to replace Andy Stuart, who was moved left, right or up (not sure which) to oversee the F3 project. It speculates he could be about to return to his old role in charge of sales and marketing. 

Some in the industry have suggested that it would be a good thing if the order were cancelled because it would mean less capacity in the market from 2010, when the two ships were due to launch.

Maybe, but what a large dollup of egg NCL bosses would have on their collective faces after the great song and dance they made about these ships and how they were so different. If the reports are true, seems they are just too different - no theatre, wavy cabins - for other lines to be interested.

When I tried to find out some information about Indian Ocean Cruises earlier this year I was told by Uwe, my contact there, that its ship had been deployed elsewhere and that cruises were therefore temporarily suspended. Ondeed the website was a blanck, inviting people to call back later.

He said he would tell me when they managed to find another and got things started again.

He didn't - maybe he has moved on? - but I read in Travelmole that not only does IOC have the 200-passenger Ocean Odyssey back, but that the ship has had a $10 million refurb.

I was on the ship last November and had a great cruise, sailing from Goa down the west coast of India, out to the idyllic Lakshadweep Islands, and enjoyed fab food and charming service, but boy, was that ship in need of some tender loving care. I would love to see what they have done with it.

IOC is also extending its operations beyond Goa. It will cruise there in winter and base the ship in Port Louis, Mauritius, in summer, sailing to Madagascar, Reunion and the Agalega Islands.

A new cruise portal, bestcruisedeal, launches on October 1 where cruiselines and agents can access "thousands of cruisers and promote deals, late availability and new itineraries".

As the site wasn't live when I looked yesterday, I'm not sure how they know about these thousands of cruisers. Wishful thinking and a bit of sales talk, I suspect.

The founders of the site are in talks with cruiselines and cruise specialist agents to enable them to promote their deals on the site on a permanent basis. A range of advertising and promotional packages are available, starting from £500 a month.

Sound familiar? In July I had an exclusive story in Travel Weekly about the launch of cruisepricescompared.com, which allows agents to advertise their cruise deals. The difference is, posting a deal on CPC costs agents nothing.

The launch was all very hush, hush for fear that someone might copy the idea. Seems CPC was right. Imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, though.

Is bestcruisedeal just an imitation? Let me know what you think.

This is me on the lawn on Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Solstice this weekend - one of the first people allowed to stand on the green stuff as it was only laid last week - at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, the day before it left the yard to sail up the River Ems for eight days of sea trials.

There's an amazing half-acre of grass that passengers will be able to go putting or picnicking on, even play croquet. Royal Caribbean's Cruises chairman and CEO Richard Fain, who was over from the US for his monthly visit to see how the build is going, tells me the grass was chosen after much research to withstand Caribbean sun, saltwater and lots of feet.

Moreover, each sod has been carefully washed so there are no ants, spiders and other crawly bugs lurking beneath the grass.

Fain - whose had the idea of putting real grass on the ship - saw it laid for the first time last Fridau, just a day before me, and admits he was "blown away".

What happens if it rains? I asked. People will get muddy shoes, Fain replied. Ah, of course.

This was the view awaiting me as I arrived at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, on Saturday afternoon. The Germans and Dutch had turned up in their thousands to see Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Solstice - and as they had the camper vans they were ready to wait. They even had what sounded like a live band to entertain them Saturday night.

This is actually only about half of the number of camper vans parked up waiting to see the ship leave the yard and head off down river for its sea trials.

We were supposed to leave Saturday evening but in the end it left about 1pm Sunday. All to do with the wind and water levels in the river. By the time I left the ship at 11am Sunday, another car park had filled with new arrivals and an overflow car park was starting to fill.

Now that's what I call true Celebrity.

Entertainment staff "flying" over the audience in the theatre, a floor to ceiling wine tower in the main dining room and dancing fountains. These are just three of the "wow" features on Celebrity Cruises' new ship Celebrity Solstice - apart from that grass, of course!

The ship was not finished when I was on board this weekend, and to my untrained eye there looks to be a lot more work to do, but apparently it is 97% ready.

The plastic protective sheeting on the carpets and stairs has to be to be lifted, furniture has to be unpacked and put in situ, there are more paintings to hang, bits that need painting. And at the end of it all, one hell of a cleaning job.

But despite all this, it is easy to see that Celebrity has done a very good job with this ship. There are lots of big open spaces, plenty of rooms to swallow up the 2,850 passengers and some really smart design ideas.

My favourite has to be the Grand Epernay dining room, a vision of white and silver, light, bright and modern, a welcome change from the heavy decor favoured by so many cruiselines. At one end is the wine tower, a name that hardly does justice to this giant piece of art in which wine will indeed be stored and which will have wine "angels" to fetch bottles from the top level.

Sky lounge is also lovely; more silver, more light and bright, and the water feature in the solarium is captivating. There's another fountain by the pool; apparently they may even have party nights up there and allow passengers to dance in the water. Whatever turns you on.

I was much more excited by a suggestion that the ents team could teach passengers how to "fly" in the theatre. Ocean Village does something similar with the trapeze but sadly that looks like a no-go for the Americans. Health and safety strikes again.

As Celebrity's biggest ship, it's no surprise that Solstice has more speciality restaurants than any other vessel in the line's fleet. Fixed dining in Blu for health-conscious passengers in the Aqua-class cabins, a steak house, reached through a "barrel", an Asian fusion restaurant that will serve big plates of food to share, a 24-hour bistro with soups, sandwiches, crepes.

But there are also a few design faults. The bathrooms are spacious but the loo roll is in the wrong place, the bedside tables are just about big enough for a book - nowhere for my alarm clock and lotions and potions - and there is no main light switch by the bed. In fact I only learned in the morning how to switch off the main lights while leaving on the bedside light on.

I suspect they will be handing out leaflets at check-in to stem a run of questions or risk a spate of broken toes as passengers struggle to get into bed in the dark. Where are the health and safety people when you need them?

Heard some great news yesterday. The engine on Voyages of Discovery's ship Discovery has finally been fixed.

It's been a nightmare six-month will-be, won't-be saga for the cruiseline and passengers, but it's finally over and the old lady is running at full speed ahead.

But every cloud, as they say.

Swan Hellenic's Minerva - part of the All Leisure stable, like Discovery - is having to go into dry dock on October 27 for a planned four days to have a diesel generator fixed. It means the preceeding Treasures of Africa cruise has had to be shortened, from 15 nights to nine nights.

Passengers who are affected will be receiving letters today.

With no sign of an end to the dispute between Norwegian Cruise Line and Aker Yards over the building/cost of its 150,000-ton F3 ships, comes another misery for NCL.

Cyprus-based Louis Cruise Lines has failed to dot the i's and cross the t's in the purchase of Norwegian Dream. The sale was supposed to go through on Monday but Louis apparently decided against splashing out $218 million for the ship because the charter business it was planning for the vessel did not materialise.

As well as operating its own cruises, Louis charters ships to other lines, including Thomson Cruises. It's not so unlikely that one of those others - or indeed Thomson - has decided against increasing capacity at a time when people are concerned about their bank balances.

Louis is saying nothing; likewise NCL, which will be no surprise to anyone who has been following the F3 saga. Leaving everyone to speculate and rumour.

Star Cruises, which owns half of NCL has told brokers to put Norwegian Dream back on the market, but brokers reckon it's a terrible time to be selling a ship.

I don't know. I had a meeting Tuesday with the guys from Fred Olsen Cruise Lines and casually mentioned the ship sale had fallen through. "Don't tell Mr Olsen," came the urgent reply. New-to-Fred ship Balmoral used to be Norwegian Crown, so they obviouly fear he has a penchant for ex-NCL stock.

But what with Balmoral and the newly-stretched Braemar, the FO team feels they have more than enough extra capacity to fill for a while!

All the talk at a meeting at Royal Caribbean HQ in Addlestone, Weybridge, yesterday was about the new ships - Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Solstice and Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas.

But this wasn't the usual stuff about Central Park, Boardwalks and zipwires, but rather a day for the techies to find out some behind-the-scenes stuff about these ships.

About the wonders of non-toxic silicon paint on the hull, for instance, how they will be using waste heat from the engines to heat water, how common rail diesel engines have been fitted as they are more efficient and reduce emissions, how air-conditioning and lighting is cleverer, so it uses less energy and so helps the environment.

The air-con changes mean there will be a 25%-30% improvement in energy efficiency (personally I would just turn it down - or is it up? - so passengers don't freeze, but maybe that's too simple) while lighting-related energy consumption will fall 40%.

We learned that Solstice has 500 square metres of solar panels, which will provide enough energy to power the passenger lifts - all the jokes about being stuck in the lift when the sun goes behind a cloud illustrates why they won't actually be used for that purpose!

We also learned that the pipes sticking out of the funnel on Oasis are telescopic, allowing them to disappear inside the funnel to allow the ship under low bridges.

True, you don't get that many bridges in the ocean, but without this cute mechanism the ship couldn't get out of the Baltic - it is being built in Finland - or into New York.

Cue more jokes .... but I'll leave you to work that one out for yourselves.

At the meeting at Royal Caribbean HQ yesterday, it emerged that the grass on Celebrity Solstice is sitting on a bed on clay and limestone rather than "dirt", as the Americans call soil, to disuade any crawly things from taking up residence and avoid problems with customs people worried about the ship-born diseases. It will survive on the nutrients watered into it.

After many months of searching and trialing - they even had a patch of grass in the car park at HQ in Miami - they decided on a grass from Austria, which is reckoned to be tough enough to withstand hot Caribbean sun, Mediterranean summers, salty air and being stomped on by thousands of feet.

It was transported in refrigerated lorries from Austria to the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Eighteen hours from "harvest" to being laid.

"Ice rinks on a ship? Now that was easy," said Harri Kulovaara, Royal Caribbean's executive vice-president maritime.

Kulovaara also revealed that when Royal Caribbean built Song of America (now Thomson Destiny), in 1982, the designers reckoned it was as big as a cruise ship could go. It was 37,773 tons and held 1,450 passengers. Oasis of the Seas, launching next year, is 225,000 tons and will hold 5,400 passengers.

Just goes to show you should never say never.

I guess it had to happen. A cruise ship launching with a 4D cinema - the 4th D being where they shake you, spray you with water and blasts of air. The first film I was ever all shook up over was that masterpiece of the silver screen, Earthquake.

Disaster, death and destruction. Just what you want to take your mind off the fact that you are at sea, miles from anywhere on a lone cruise ship, at the mercy of the deep blue sea!

The cinema will be on AIDAluna, a 2,050-passenger vessel being built by Meyer Werft in Papenburg, Germany, for German cruise line AIDA Cruises - which is part of the Carnival Corp empire - and launching next April.

It was a change waiting to happen once Thomson and First Choice became as one. Now it has.

As the rumour mill predicted, Royal Caribbean Cruises has sold its 50% stake joint venture stake in Island Cruises to TUI Travel.

Island Star, on charter from Celebrity Cruises, will complete its Caribbean winter season and be returned to Celebrity on March 26 2009. It will then join Royal Caribbean's Pullmantur Cruises Spanish operation.

Royal Caribbean Cruises chairman and chief executive office Richard Fain said the company wants to focus on developing and expanding the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises brands in the UK.

"[This way] we will be better able to serve our customers and create value for our shareholders. This belief has been strengthened by the success of the inaugural season of Independence of the Seas, which has served the UK market from Southampton, since it entered service in May 2008."

Island second ship, Island Escape, will complete its winter season sailing in Brazil and then return to the Med, cruising from Palma in summer 2009 as planned, but as a Thomson Cruises ship rather than an Island one. It is not clear whether the name will be changed, but a statement says it is being "integrated" into the Thomson fleet so it's a fair bet that it will at the very least become the Thomson Escape.

Details of the deal and how it affects passengers booked on Island cruises are detailed on the Thomson Cruises website.

Island's managing director Patrick Ryan will leave the company in December. David Selby, TUI's director of cruising, stays at the helm of the new integrated business.

It's a sad end for a cruiseline that, after a chequered start, built up a good following in the UK for its low-cost cruises and casual brand. I reckon a lot of that was down to the captains, who were always to be seen out and about talking to passengers, which the passengers loved. It gave the cruise a human touch.

Island Escape was not the best ship in the world - one couple I met on another cruise called it the Island Mistake and rued the day they went on it - but I had a very enjoyable few days on Island Star, which was a big step up. Unfortunately for TUI, Royal Caribbean gets Star back, Thomson gets the Escape.

It will be interesting to see what they do with the ship's dining. Island is all about buffet dining, with waiter service available at extra cost. Thomson has a 24-hour buffet but waiter service in the evening as standard. Difficult for Thomson to have an odd one out in the fleet so I suspect Escape will have to change.

As a friend has just remarked apropos of the Island Cruises news.

No wonder Louis Cruises decided against buying Norwegian Dream. They probably intended to charter it to Thomson Cruises to replace the Emerald. But now Thomson is getting Island Escape it doesn't need another ship.

I'm off on a Black Sea cruise with Spirit of Adventure, the Saga brand for the over 21s (hence I am allowed on).

Hopefully I will be able to keep you posted about the ship, the Black Sea and other breaking news, but internet connections don't sound great so blogs might be a bit intermittent.

You have been warned.

It was hinted to me this summer when I was in Stockholm, but now it's for sure.

In 2010, Disney Cruise Line is positioning the Disney Magic in Scandinavia in 2010, operating 12-night cruises that will visit Germany, Russia and Sweden.

All-American mouse meets St Petersburg history and culture. What a thought.

...but not really in the way Spirit of Adventure intended. As we arrived at the port, in Turkey, there was a sudden jolt, followed by an apology from the captain. Apparently the tug had not been doing its tugging bit as we came into dock. Result, one alarmingly big gash in the side of the ship.

Cleverly it was patched up so we could continue on our way, into the Black Sea, heading for the Ukrainian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol and Yalta.

Spirit of Adventure - it's also the name of the ship - is scheduled to go into dry dock after this cruise anyway for its annual spruce-up. Could the timing have been any better?

I seem to be spending my life underground on this Spirit of Adventure cruise in the Black Sea. On Saturday in Odessa I was down in the catacombs under the city, seeing where resistence fighters lived during the Second World War; on Sunday I was in tunnels dug after the Second World War to hide a submarine base in Balaklava, just outside Sevastopol.

Yes, the very same Balaklava made famous for the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, so we learned all about that too while we there.

The history in this area is fascinating. Odessa, I was surprised to discover, is a very elegant city, best known for the Potemkin Steps - 200 steps that lead from the city to the harbour that featured in Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin.

It was great to see them, and I walked up and down them, but the catacombs are far more interesting - 2,500km of mad-made tunnels (it's where they took the limestone from to build the city) that would stretch from Odessa to St Petersburg if laid in a straight line.

Up to 250 resistance fighters lived for a year in the tunnels we wandered through under the town of Nerubaiskoye, coming out at night to blow up German trains, trucks and garrisons. Because they lived underground, they were very pale, so they had to make themselves up before they went out on sabotage duty or the Germans would easily spot them.

Nest day I was in the submarine tunnels - much bigger obviously as they had to hold a nuclear sub. These are the stuff of James Bond - I could just see Daniel Craig racing through them, blowing everything up as he went. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

The tunnels were dug by brigades, which each did their bit and were then sent away - shot, I suggested, but Mariya, our guide said no - so no one knew the full extent of them. She reckons the people of Sevastapol, just down the road, didn't even know they existed.

The subs and nuclear weapons have all gone now - after all this area is now the friendly Ukraine, not the Russian bear (you don't even need a visa to visit). And anyway, the subs got too big to fit in the tunnels and no one had any money to expand them.

I have to admit I had a long debate with myself before I left home for this Spirit of Adventure cruise in the Black Sea, deciding whether I really wanted to spend my evening in Sevastopol watching the Russian Navy Black Sea Ensemble doing their thing. Am I glad the cynic in me lost.

It was a fabulous show, full of singing and dancing - yes, the kind of stuff that usually leaves me cold, especially on a cruise ship. But then cruise ships don't have singers and dancers like this.

When the show, at some officers' club in town, ended we all sat there, waiting for them to come back. Instead we got Neil, our much-loved cruise director, reminding us there would be food in the Verandah self-service when we got back on the ship.

Groan. Not more food, the audience chorused as one (we had, after all, had an early dinner before leaving for the performance). Then they rushed up to the Verandah as soon as they were back on board. Unlike a fool and his money, a cruiser and his food is never parted.

After our jolt getting into Kepez, Turkey, earlier on my Spirit of Adventure cruise, it was a pleasant surprise when the captain came on the tannoy in my cabin this morning at 7.30am - yes, really, and in the cabin too; there is no sleeping in on this cruise - to announce we had tied up. I hadn't even noticed we had stopped moving.

But imagine my shock when he announced we were in Malta. We had only left Sevastopol late the previous night and were supposed to be in the Black Sea. Was I mistaken? Was it his Aussie burr? Not if half the passengers on this cruise can be believed.

Naturally it was a great joke and the talk of breakfast.

Anyway, the truth is, we had arrived in Yalta, the third and last port in our Black Sea odyssey. Most of us spent the morning at the Livadia Palace, the summer residence of the last Russian Tzar, Nicholas II, and famous as the place where the Big Three - US president Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin - met at the end of World War Two to carve up Europe.

According to Irina, guide of bus 6, both Western leaders got tired of Stalin's oneupmanship - he even provided a lemon tree for a US delegate who complained there wasn't a slice of lemon in his drink - so they decided to play a trick on him.

One morning Roosevelt told Stalin he dreamed he was leader of the whole world, Churchill that he was ruler of the universe. Quick as a flash, Stalin said he had also had a dream: that he was the person who refused to sign the papers appointing each of them to these positions.

"It's just a joke," Irina emphasised, having just told us what a kind, hospitable man Stalin was. Or maybe that was the joke?

This time it all happened as we were leaving Yalta late last night in the hands of an L-plated tug boat driver. It was his first tugging job, apparently, and seems to have been a minor disaster, leaving us standed for a while as the tug failed to do its tugging thing. Thankfully, though, this time there were no piers for Spirit of Adventure to hit.

So today we've been all at sea, heading back over the Black Sea towards Istanbul in Turkey, where we are due to dock around 8am tomorrow.

We've had four lectures, a Ready Steady Cook with cruise director Neil and Captain Frank Allica that got the smoke detectors on red alert, a gala drinks do, formal night, crew show and we've got to be on deck at 6am tomorrow for the magical dawn sail through the Bosphorus.

Who says cruising is a holiday?

It had to happen given how successful Costa Cruises seems to have been operating cruises from Dubai around the Gulf.

Between January and April 2010, Royal Caribbean International is positioning Brilliance of the Seas at the emirate, presumably also sailing around the Gulf, although itineraries have not been announced.

Brilliance is the ship chosen to operate cruises in the Med this winter - the first time Royal has stayed in Europe year-round. If Brilliance is also staying for 2009/20, it's for a very short season. Does this mean winter Med has not been a success? I hope not, but wait to find out.

You can always tell when a new ship feature has been a success - it starts to appear on the cruiseline's other ships.

And so the 2,600-passenger Star Princess becomes the first vessel in the Princess Cruises' fleet to be retro-fitted with a host of features introduced when Crown Princess launched in 2006.

Star has just emerged from a three-week drydock with an adults-only Sanctuary (a serene area at the top of the ship with faux greenery, padded loungers and stewards armed with water sprays to keep you cool), a Movies under the Stars screen where you can have a night at the fliks, and an piazza-style atrium with a cafe, wine bar and "street" entertainers to keep the buzz buzzing.

Caribbean Princess and Golden Princess go for their facelifts, respectively in January and April next year, and will emerge with all the above (actually there's already a Movies under the Stars screen on Caribbean Princess - it was the first Princess ship to get one).

They will get a new Crown Grill steak and seafood restaurant. Great news. That was my favourite place to eat when I cruised on Crown Princess this summer.

Interesting to see that Island Escape might not be swallowed up into the Thomson Cruises concept following TUI's decision to buy its outstanding half share in Island Cruises from Royal Caribbean.

Instead, Thomson might use the ship to build a more casual Island-style brand, adding one or two others from its fleet.

It does make sense. After all, not everyone wants Thomson's more formal-style cruising - namely fixed dining, with two sittings at dinner time. That's no doubt a key reason why they booked with Island in the first place.

All will be revealed in Thomson Cruises' next brochure, due out in December.

Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has announced it is retiring the geriatric Black Prince, first launched in 1966 as a passenger/freight ferry sailing between the UK and the Canary Islands in winter and the UK and Norway in summer.

Black Prince has long been destined for the chop - as with Cunard's QE2, it would cost too much to bring the vessel up to the standards needed to meet new SOLAS (Safely Of Life At Sea) regulations that become law in 2010.

These are tough new rules about the make-up of a ship - no combustible materials, low-level lighting, fireproof enclosures around stairways, and more - that has made it more cost-effective to hive off older tonnage than spend money on repairs.

Saga's Saga Rose is also another ship destined to go because of the new regulations.

Like QE2, Black Prince will have a farewell season to help sell those last few cruises.

The long goodbye, although no where near as long as QE2's, starts on September 9 2009 in Liverpool and ends in Southampton on October 16, spanning four cruises. A shame they didn't throw in a last three nighter to round it all off.

Then Black Prince would be retiring in October 19 2008, having come into service on October 19 1966. It has a certain symmetry that appeals.

Fred hasn't said what is happening to the ship, but speculation last evening at a get-together with SeaDream Yacht Club was that it will end up sailing in Greece, where, we were told by our host, Ian Buckeridge, the line's UK director, that ships will not have to comply with SOLAS 2010.

Remind me never to book a cruise with a Greek line.

The ever enigmatic Ian Buckeridge, UK director of SeaDream Yacht Club, was back on the subject of expansion at an intimate get-together in London last night.

I have heard it before - that SeaDream is planning to expand, that they are negotiating for a Hurtigruten ship. Last night's news was that they couldn't see it would work as a separate luxury exploration vessel. Sounds familiar?

It seems this time it really could happen, although not with the Hurtigruten ship, giving SeaDream the opportunity to expand into new destinations.

At the moment it only has two ships, each with room for just 110 passengers, each designed for outdoor living so the ships have to be in warm places. The Med in summer, Caribbean in winter.

But don't hold your breath. Nothing seems likely to happen until 2010. Which is long enough away for us to forget that it was ever on the cards.

Seventh heaven for footie fans surely? A seven-night Brazilian/football-themed cruise with Pele, top European players and all sorts of people from the world of football.

It's all happening on Italian line Costa Cruises' Costa Serena, on a cruise departing June 28 2009, not from Brazil as you might expect, but from Venice, sailing around the Greek Islands.

There will be non-stop talk about football, an exhibition of items linked to the most important moments of Pele's life, with never-seen-before video clips.

I can certainly see the appeal if you like football, but the bit that appeals to me is that the whole cruise will be Brazilian-themed - the food, the entertainment, the atmosphere - to make Pele feel right at home.

"When I began to feel "saudade", meaning when I was homesick, what I wanted most was to be able to experience the traditions and customs of my beloved Brazil. The Costa Serena cruise, during which everything will be focused on Brazil, will spread joy throughout the entire Eastern Mediterranean."

Nice sentiment, but since when have footie fans spread joy in the countries they visit?

The BBC reports that QE2's iconic red funnel is to be sliced off by its new owners, Dubai-based Nakheel, and replaced with a four-deck glass penthouse with swimming pool, designed to become the most exclusive hotel room in Dubai.

The Cunard ship sails from Southampton for the last time on November 11, to start a new life as a floating hotel at the Palm Jumeirah, one of the reclaimed islands on the waterfront in the emirate.

According to the report, the funnel will be used as an entrance to the ship, the lifeboats will go, extra rooms will be built at the stern and all cabins will be ripped out and replaced with bigger, modern bedrooms.

"What's happeneing to the ship is very good," Captain Ian McNaught is quoted as saying. Tell that to the thousands who will be shedding more than a few tears as they wave a last farewell on the 11th day of the 11th month.

Anyone booking a suite in Ruby Princess will be able to start the day with a peaceful breakfast in Sabatini's, away from the madding crowd in the self-service or the main dining room.

It's a great idea - makes suite passengers feel special and means a few less people for the morning scrum - and one of several new features making their debut on Ruby, Princess Cruises' new ship, launching next month.

On sea days, for instance, they will be serving a British pub lunch in the Wheelhouse Bar (ploughman's or bangers and mash anyone?) and they are adding cheese to the menu at Vines wine bar - 12 varieties will be available each day for a "nominal" fee.

The Scholarship@Sea programme is being expanded so passengers can learn new skills, such as the art of entertaining, navigation, astronomy (I guess those two go quite well together) and how to mix a cocktail.

There will be "misting" stewards around the pool to help passengers keep their cool, more audience-participation entertainment (karaoke is bad enough, so dread to think what this will entail) and a Wizards Academy for kids.

Best news for me, though, is that wifi will be available in the cabins - no more trudging down to the atrium with a laptop, hunting around for a seat next to a plug. They are also adding the connections needed for passengers to use their mobile phones while at sea. Another very welcome addition.

Princess will no doubt wait to see how all this is received, but I think we can expect most of it to be rolled out to Ruby's sisters, Crown Princess and Emerald Princess, if not other ships in the fleet, in very quick time.

Crystal Cruises has reduced its required deposit from 10% to 5% for all 2009 bookings except for the World Cruise.

For the World Cruises, passengers now only need to put down $1,000-$1,500, depending on stateroom, not 20% of the cost as before.

The cruiseline is also giving people a week to pay their deposit (it was three days) and has cut the no-penalty cancellation period from 75 days to 45 days.

The announcement is all dressed up in words like "secure", "risk-free" and "investment", but at the end of the day it suggests that even six-star passengers need coaxing to part with their money as the credit crunch turns into a recession.

The website Cruise Critic has announced the winners of its 2008 Editor's Picks Awards.

Royal Caribbean International topped the league table, coming first in five categories, with Princess Cruises getting a very respectable three awards.

It's an interesting snapshot of who does what best in the cruise industry - but only if you are in the US. There's no mention of UK lines P&O Cruises, Fred Olsen Cruise Lines or Ocean Village, nor of river cruise specialist Viking, which might not win any "best for" awards when it comes to ships, but has some great itineraries (Russia, Ukraine, China anyone?).

With a Cruise Critic UK website now established, maybe it's time to open up the voting a bit?

And the winners are ...

Best Luxury Cruise Ships - Crystal Cruises
Best Dining - Oceania Cruises
Best for Romance - Princess Cruises
Best Spa and Fitness - Royal Caribbean International
Best Cabins - Holland America Line
Best Value for Money - Carnival Cruise Lines
Best Itineraries - Azamara Cruises
Best Entertainment - Norwegian Cruise Line
Best Shore Excursions - Carnival Cruise Lines

Best Family Cruises
Best Kids' Programs - Disney Cruise Line
Best Teen Programs - Royal Caribbean International
Best Multi-Generational - Princess Cruises - Grand Class

Best Luxury Cruises
Best Luxury Dining - Crystal Cruises
Best Luxury Service - SeaDream Yacht Club
Best Luxury Staterooms - Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Best Dining
Best Main Restaurant - Carnival Cruise Lines - Conquest Class
Best Specialty Restaurants - Oceania Cruises
Best Healthful & Alternative Dining - Celebrity Cruises

Best for Romance
Best for Honeymoons - Windstar Cruises
Best for Weddings - Princess Cruises
Best for Couples - Regent Seven Seas Cruises' Paul Gauguin

Best Spa, Recreation and Fitness
Best Pool Deck - Royal Caribbean International - Voyager/Freedom Classes
Best for Fitness Enthusiasts - Royal Caribbean International
Best Spas - Costa Cruises' Samsara Spa - Concordia Class

Best Cabins
Best Standard Staterooms - Holland America Line - Signature Class
Best Suites - Norwegian Cruise Line - Jewel Class
Best Family Cabins - Disney Cruise Line

Casual cruiseline Ocean Village is offering one week in the Caribbean for £749 per person (from £99 for kids under 12) - an incredible deal given that it includes flights and transfers.

The low, low price is on a December 17 departure - a seven-night Corals and Coconuts cruise on Ocean Village Two - which is a bit of an awkward time for agents to sell I guess because it's so close to Christmas for those who want to be back for festivities with family and friends.

But you know, Christmas has a habit of coming around every year. Deals like this might not. Blue skies and Caribbean sun or the grey skies and rain? A bit of a no-brainer really,

The Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy, officially handed Princess Cruises the keys for Ruby Princess yesterday and the ship set sail for Fort Lauderdale.

It will be named on November 6 by Trista and Ryan Sutter from the ABC TV show Bachelorette, who will also be celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary.

I am among the UK contingent going to see the ceremony and enjoy a two-night cruise on the ship. Keep watch here for my first impressions.

Hurtigruten's new trade website is a useful new tool for agents planning to sell the cruise line.

There are lots of useful bits and pieces - a place to order brochures and download flyers, find out about training and fam trips, a FAQ section.

The Norway map, where you can see at a glance where the ships visit when they sail between Bergen and Kirkenes, is very helpful. It would be good to have one for each of Hurtigruten's other destinations - Spitsbergen, Greenland, even Antarctica, along with details of the ships that serve these rather specialist areas.

That information is on the main site, I know, but it's a pain if you have to keep jumping between URLs.

With oil hitting $70 a barrel from its $150 summer high, cruise lines are starting to remove those dreaded supplements.

Carnival Corp was one of the first to announce it was axing surcharges across its brands on all new bookings made after October 31 for 2010 sailings.

Now Royal Caribbean has followed suit. Passengers booking a cruise with Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises or Azamara Cruises after November 10, for a holiday departing on or after January 1 2010, will not pay a surcharge.

Those with 2009 sailings might even get a refund, in the form of an on-board credit, if oil prices stay low, but what is the chance of that when the oil-producing nations have already decided to cut back production to push up the price?

Just in case, there are some very complicated price mechanisms in place to determine who might get what if the price goes down or stays level. If anyone actually understands them, I reckon they should be rewarded with a free cruise.

Carnival has also negated any cause for celebration by announcing price rises effective from, you've guessed it, October 31. It's a clever move. The whole world hates the S word, so just swallow up the supplement in the price. I have no doubt others will soon follow suit. Will they be as honest? Only time will tell.

Quest for Adventure, the ship slated to join Saga's Spirit of Adventure cruise line for the young at heart, will instead replace Saga Rose, which is being retired in October 2009.

Its Farewell Voyage will be a 37-night cruise from Southampton around the Med, to the Greek Islands, Egypt, Malta and Morocco.

Like Cunard's QE2 and Fred Olsen's Black Prince, Rose does not meet the standards required by the Safety of Life at Sea regulations being introduced in 2010 and the cost of making her shipshape and SOLAS acceptable are just too high.

It's sad news for all Saga Rose fans, but also a bit of a blow for Spirit of Adventure, which was due to start sailing Quest for Adventure in July 2009. It was already in the brochure and some passengers on my recent Spirit cruise in the Black Sea were booked on it.

The ship, currently named Astoria, was built in 1981, weighs 18,591 tons, holds 450 passengers and is sailing for German company Transocean Tours.

Instead of becoming Quest and going in search of adventure, Astoria will become Saga Pearl II, devoted to passengers aged 50-plus who want tradition, convention and formality.

It's official. Celebrity Solstice belongs to Celebrity Cruises.

The keys were handed over on Friday and the ship is now on its way to Fort Lauderdale, where it will be named on November 14 after a mini-cruise to nowhere. Celebrity promises "formal ceremonies" but details of the naming are under wraps.

I'll be there and keeping you updated on the pros, cons and the naming itself so keep watching TW's Cruise Lines.

Sad to see that instead of positioning Carnival Liberty in Dover for the 2009 summer season, to operate a series of Baltic voyages, Carnival Cruise Lines has decided to leave the ship Stateside.

The line only launched its Baltic cruises this year, starting with the magnificent naming ceremony on Carnival Splendor and a most enjoyable three-night cruise to Amsterdam.

The official line is that the bosses fear continued economic uncertainty and high air costs will deter the Americans from flying to Europe. The same reason given for pulling Carnival Freedom's 2009 Mediterranean season earlier this year.

That could be true. But what about the Brits? We don't have to fly anywhere to get to Dover.

As I reported in the Telegraph recently, though, Carnival was selling next summer's 12-night Baltic cruises for £699 per person - less than £60 a day. Month ahead of sailing. It doesn't suggest the cruises have been flying off the shelves.

Any Brits booked on the cancelled Liberty cruises will get a full refund, but the UK team is also scouting around trying to find alternative voyages on another line in the Carnival group. Passengers can also rebook on Carnival Dream, the line's new big ship, due out of the yard in September and scheduled to operate a few Med cruises before going to the Caribbean.

Unless they are about to be cancelled as well.

I couldn't help but smile at the story this week about the Thomson Celebration passengers who had a cruise to, well nowhere.

I don't think they saw the funny side. The ship was due to set off on a three-day cruise to Ireland when bad weather struck. The captain could have battled his way through the storms or settled for a couple days in Liverpool.

Very sensibly he chose the latter. Who on earth wants to spend three days being sick on the Irish Sea? But then, who wants to spend three days tied up at Liverpool docks?

Quite a few people, apparently. Everyone was free to go home - and incidentally would still get the 80% refund, offered in the form of vouchers to use against another Thomson cruise - but many decided to stay on board and eat, drink, enjoy the entertainment, even have a free bus trip into the city. In fact they had everything but Ireland and the seasickness.

Some have now cried foul because they are not getting a full refund. Thomson cited terms and conditions, said it was an insurance issue and that it was not obliged to give any refund at all. All to do with small print and why we are all urged to have travel insurance.

Mr and Mrs Scott, quoted in the Liverpool Echo, said it was "scandalous", especially as ferries were making the crossing and they were in a ship. Yes, but Thomson Celebration is not a very big ship. History doesn't relate if they stayed on board and enjoyed the hospitality anyway - or indeed whether they had any travel insurance to cover the £279 they had each splashed out on the break.

Personally I prefer the attitude of the couple from Crewe quoted by Cruise Critic.

"We are disappointed, but we know it couldn't be helped and at least there is good food, good entertainment and people were having fun."

Kelly Ranson, Cruise Critic's UK editor, just happened to be on the ship and wrote:

This seemed to sum up the attitude of the majority -- and although everyone was disappointed that they were not visit Cork or Dublin, the facilities and the attitude of the staff on the ship helped to make a good weekend away.

The interesting question is whether any will use their refund vouchers and have another go on Thomson cruise. Or is once enough? We'll never know.

Ocean Village's latest recession-busting offer means they are now giving away free Caribbean cruises when they travel with two adults booking a voyage on Ocean Village Two. That's four adults for £1,877 including flights - but you have to go from Birmingham.

Does this give us an idea of which area of the country is battening down the hatches first as talk of recession hots up?

A Californian couple will be adding a new twist to the "I name this ship" stuff during the Ruby Princess naming ceremony in Fort Lauderdale next week, saying "I do" as they become the first couple to tie the knot on board the new Princess Cruises' ship.

Trista and Ryan Sutter, who met and married on US TV five years ago, will be doing the naming honours and also acting as the new couple's attendants (I am guessing that's a US version of a witness).

The Sutters say they will be coaching the couple to be on how to make the wedding special and intimate. Intimate? When the wedding and naming will be on the Princess website the next day. Who are they kidding?

All these years using wire and plastic clothes hangers and now it turns out we are collectively responsible for damaging the environment.

As a result, Crystal Cruises has switched to new EcoHangers, manufactured from recyclable materials, themselves 100% recyclable and proven stronger than wire hangers in lab tests.

Just what do people do with their hangers? The heaviest thing I've ever seen on one is a cute towel monkey made by my room steward.

I'm sure this is all good green news. More importantly, though, does it mean an end to that maddening tinkle tinkle from the wardrobe that you get on the last night, once all your clothes are off the offending hangers and packed?

And what exactly has Crystal done with those eco-unfriendly hangers? Surely not added them to the 8.5 billion that it says fill America's landfill sites each year.

Travel Pulse reports USB cruise industry analyst Robin Farley has revised 2009 and 2010 yield estimates and is now forecasting a 3% decline for 2009 and a flat year for 2010.

October has reportedly been a very challenging month so far and as a result cruise lines have become more aggressive with 2009 promotions, starting them earlier than normal given the macroeconomic environment.

It's certainly true there are a lot of deals out there. Yesterday I reported Ocean Village is giving away Caribbean cruises, now I've got this from six-star SeaDream Yacht Club - seven nights in the Caribbean for £2,795, departing January 31. That's a straight 50% price cut and includes flights and transfers, an overnight stay in Antigua before the cruise, alcohol and soft drinks and gratuities.

It's on offer from BA-way Cruise. To book, call 0208 248 2355.

Was yesterday's shocking news of the demise of Ocean Village really such a surprise?

One of my blogs two days ago reported they were giving away Caribbean cruises. What kind of message does that send out?

Rather than going overnight, the line will be phased out (to give Carnival UK a chance to change its mind if things suddenly recover maybe?). Ocean Village Two will join P&O Australia in autumn 2009, while Ocean Village the original will go a year later.

It's sad news. Ocean Village seemed to have built up a following among people who don't do cruises, converting them into people who do do cruises. And understandably. I cruised with them twice and had a great time. They did what they did very well. It was casual, fun, relaxed; great for kids and adults alike.

But it can't support more than two ships and that, officially, is why it has to go.

It's interesting that this is the second casual brand to go in less than two months. Island Cruises is to be wound up next year, following TUI's decision to buy the outstanding 50% share of the line. It has said it will set up a new casual brand, but so far there have been no more details.

The end of Ocean Village means another major loss in capacity for the UK market. QE2 leaves the Cunard fleet in less than two weeks and next year Island Star, Black Prince and Saga Rose will also go.

In return, in 2010 P&O Cruises gets new ship Azura, while Cunard gets the new Queen Elizabeth.

Norwegian Cruise Line has announced it will be axing fuel supplements on all bookings made after November 10 for cruises departing on or after January 1 2010.

There are also complicated rules to determine whether those already booked for cruises after that date will get a refund in the form of an onboard credit; likewise, for those who have booked a 2009 cruise.

After this year's roller-coaster oil ride, I can understand why NCL is cautious, but it does seem a little unfair that anyone who has booked early for 2010 - what the cruiselines want them to do, after all - is to be penalised for their eagerness.

There is a real danger these people will be so annoyed they'll join the ranks of the last-minute bookers and that is not good anytime, but especially not when times are tough.

It was nice to read on e-tid that no one will face the chop in the wake of Carnival UK's decision to axe Ocean Village.

A spokeswoman said the ships' crews will transfer to P&O Australia, while land-based staff will be needed at P&O Cruises and Cunard, which are both getting an extra ship in 2010.

P&O Cruises takes delivery of the 3,100-passenger Azura in spring 2010, with the new 2,100-passenger Queen Elizabeth joining Cunard in October that year.

"The 26 people who work shore-side on Ocean Village will be absorbed with this new capacity."

It's an intriguing question, posed by Mark Tre in the Cruise Examiner, in a piece looking at the winners and losers in the cruise industry in the current financial crisis.

He reckons the big two - Carnival Corp and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines - are best positioned to ride out the storm, but that question marks hang over Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises.

The big question about MSC is not only whether it will be able to survive a rapid expansion in a short number of years, but whether parent company Mediterranean Shipping Company, the world's second-largest container line, can survive in a diminishing market where freight rates are dropping every week.

NCL may be a stronger position, now being half-owned by Apollo Management as well as Star Cruises. But Apollo had had to follow through on a recent major acquisition in another market and has a full interest in Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises that it must also look after. There have also been reported disagreements between Apollo and NCL as to the future path that NCL should be taking, one of the reasons for the dispute over the F3s.

Can the two get together to take on the big two? Or would MSC fill a hole at Royal Caribbean and offer a counterpoint to Carnival's Costa?

This is not the best time for cruise lines to be on a spending spree - or is it? Desperate times can mean desperate deals.

Princess Cruises' Movies under the Stars as been so popular it's being added to seven more ships over the next three years, starting with Golden Princess in May next year and ending with Sapphire Princess in 2011.

The big pool-side screen is used to show sporting events, rock concerts and films through the day but it realy comes into its own at night, when you can tuck up under a blanket and nibble away at popcorn while enjoying your favourite flicks.

I hope to be discovering lots of new features on Ruby Princess today, but let's not forget some of the favourites for which Princess Cruises is so well known.

This is my favourite - The Sanctuary, an adults-only area at the top of the ship where Serenity Stewards (yes, that's really what they are called) are on hand to look after you.

And here's the Movies under the Stars area. You can just make out the picture ... a repeat of the 1970's US TV show Love Boat, the show that put the romance into Princess.

It was a very red evening on Ruby Princess as Trista and Ryan Sutter, godparents to the new Ruby Princess, pressed the button and smashed the bubbly, watched by Carnival Corp chairman Micky Arison, Captain Tony Yeomans and Alan Buckelew, president and CEO of Princess Cruises.

They call it the Ultimate Ship Tour. Ultimate Ship Snore, I thought, when reading about this new feature on Ruby Princess. Yet there I was, in line to get a taste of what it's all about during our two-day cruise to nowhere on the new ship last week, little knowing I was about to be enthralled and forced to eat a substantial slice of humble pie.

The real tour lasts about two and a half hours and takes you to all kinds of places you never knew you wanted to visit - the ship's laundry, print shop, medical centre and photo lab. We didn't get to stop at these but all necks were craning as we walked past tantalising open doors. We really did want to visit them after all.

What we did get to do was climb into the funnel - no I didn't know what that was all about either, but look at a picture of a Princess ship and focus on the grill on which the logo is mounted; I was behind there. The pictures below were taken inside of the funnel, the bottom one looking out through the grill.

We went up to deck 18, but there are ladders right up to deck 21, 60 metres above sea level. No, was the short answer when I asked it we could go to the top.

Then we went down to the engine control room, the heart and soul of the ship, according to chief technical officer Robin Sutherland, who gave us a fascinating insight into the ship's engines, propulsion and the hi-tech waste water systems.

Yes I know it sounds nurdish, but it was really interesting - and I loved the idiot's guide to waste on the computer, which had a picture of a toilet to denote black water and a sink to illustrate grey.

Last stop was the food stores, where about 150 tons of eats and drinks is kept - that's just per cruise - and from whence comes the necessary bits to create around 20,000 meals a day.

Paying passengers will also visit the galley, where they will be served champagne, caviar and canapes and be presented with a chef's coat, go back stage at the theatre and have bubbly and strawberries on the Bridge, and their picture taken with the Captain.

All that for a cool $150 per person, which sounds a lot but as only 12 people per cruise will get to do it, I reckon passengers will snap it up, if only because it is so exclusive.

After all, how many people do you know who have been in a cruise ship's funnel? The folks at home can't help but be impressed.

Anyone who read my blogs from Crown Princess this summer will know I am a big fan of the "street" entertainment they put on in the Piazza, aka the atrium, because of the way it brings the area alive.

There were some great acts on Crown and the ones on Princess Cruises' new ship Ruby Princess were just as good. Here are acrobats Vitalli and Dani doing their muscle-man stuff and comedy juggler Nick Pike doing his thing on a unicycle with a little help from a passenger. All good, honest fun you can dip in and out of, which I much prefer to the big production shows with mediocre singers and dancers who take themselves so seriously.

Another week, another ship launch. This time it's the turn of Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Solstice, and again it's in Fort Lauderdale.

So after a day at home on Sunday and a day at World Travel Market yesterday, today I'm flying back out to Miami.

We've a two-day cruise before the naming so I'll be keeping you posted here and in Travel Weekly on how things are looking.

First it was the oldies; now it seems it's the big spenders who will take the cruise industry through the recession.

Because just as the rest of the industry starts to feel the crunch, White Star Cruises, the luxury cruise arm of WEXAS - The Travellers Club, reports record sales figures in October.

The on-line company sells only five and six-star cruiselines - the likes of Crystal Cruise, Silversea, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, SeaDream Yacht Club, Swan Hellenic and Peter Deilmann - and says its average sales price is a whopping £5,500 per person.

Just to prove things are good, White Star has produced a 60-page on-line brochure featuring 15 of the world's top-rated cruiselines. General manager Scott Anderson calls it "informative, inspirational and independent".

No, I don't entirely follow the logic either. If a company is so happily crunch-busting, why spend time and effort creating such a masterpiece? But no matter. It's refreshing to have good news while all around is recession. Long may the luxury guys carry on cruising.

Another week, another new ship. This time it's Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Solstice - the one with the real grass - which is hosting hundreds of agents and journalists from around the world on minicruises from Fort Lauderdale.

Last time I saw Celebrity Solstice, it was about to leave the shipyard in Germany and was full of bubble wrap and cardboard boxes. All that has now gone, leaving behind a classy-looking ship with some special touches.

My favourite has to be the solarium, pictured here, which has smart loungers and a few of these wonderful giant chairs.

The bottom picture shows some of the comfy loungers on the Solstice Deck, an exclusive area on deck 16 where only those who can be bothered to walk will find. It will either be empty because no once can be bothered; more likely though, there will be some battle royales as passengers grab their place in the sun and refuse to shift for the rest of the day.

If you thought having a real lawn on a cruise ship was bizarre, how about this? A glass-blowing studio on Celebrity Cruises' new Celebrity Solstice where gaffers - apparently that's what the people who blow glass are called - can be seen plying their trade.

The oven is called the Glory Hole and is 1,120 degrees Centigrad. Fine on a cool, overcast day in the Med, not so much fun when the outside temperature is a sticky 80 degrees.

QE2 might have left Southampton for the last time, but the old girl is not going to disappear from the headlines.

Dubai is planning to match last week's fond farewell at the south coast port with an equally big welcome when the ship arrives in the emirate on November 26.

QE2 will be met at The World islands by a flotilla of local yachts, boats and leisure craft led by a Royal Navy frigate, and there's an open invitation to anyone with a boat to register and be part of the welcome.

QE2 is to be transformed into a luxury floating hotel off the trunk of Palm Jumeirah by new Nakheel, which is also planning to open a heritage museum displaying artefacts from the ship and of local maritime history.

Great for anyone who happens to be in Dubai, but what about past passengers left without their favourite ship to cruise on? I offered some QE2 alternatives in a piece in the Telegraph. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

After several seasons in Antarctica, Voyages of Discovery is leaving the White Continent and cruising to South East Asia and the Far East in winter 2009/10.

I wrote a little on this for the next TW Cruise, due out soon, but since then the brochure has come out bearing more information and some magnificent itineraries that will take you around India, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and South Africa.

VoD's ship Discovery takes its time as it cruises through all these places so there's lots of time ashore. Anyone with the time and money could put some of these itineraries back to back and have an ultimate round-the-world trip.

OK, you won't make it to Australia so it's not quite RTW, but at least you would see the world as you went instead of spending endless days at sea, as is the norm on a standard world cruise.

There is no single supplement on a number of cabins and guaranteed no fuel surcharge on all bookings. All the cruises will have guest lecturers on board to add some insights into the places being visited.

VoD says it has switched to Asia to give passengers who have done Antarctica something new for winter 09/10. Makes sense. I cruised Antarctica with Voyages and much as I loved it, it's not something I would do twice with the same cruise line as I'd like to see how others cope with the harsh environment down there.

On my cruise, most of the passengers agreed they had done Antarctica and would not go back. After all, it's not cheap and makes more sense for them to spend their money seeing new places and cultures.

Travelmole reports P&O Cruises is to make some changes to Ventura after admitting to facing "challenges" in the first summer season.

In a letter to travel agents, managing director Nigel Esdale says they will stop taking bookings for the Freedom dining restaurant so diners really do have freedom to turn up and dine when they want - hopefully getting a table straight away - the Beach House self-service will become an informal dining venue with waiter service and sunloungers will be placed on deck 19, in an area previously devoted only to the bungee trampolines and Cirque Ventura.

"We will retain the bungee trampolines which have been a real hit with passengers aged from 8 to 84. And we will continue to offer the Cirque Ventura circus skills school teaching the art of juggling, tightrope and stilt walking."

In addition, new furniture, including a reclining chair, will be put on cabin balconies, to help alleviate demand for loungers on the open deck.

I reported in my cruise column in the Telegraph on the problems of Freedom dining I encountered when I was on board and spoke to people who were fed up with the morning rush to grab a sunlounger so it's good news that all these things are now being addressed.

MSC Cruises says it took 47% more calls in October than in the same month in 2007, while bookings for the month were up 84%.

Managing director Giulio Libutti attributed the bookings surge to the fact the call centre is open longer and also on Sundays for the first time.

Apparently a lot of bookings are coming in for MSC Lirica, which is sailing the Baltic from Dover next summer, and the giant MSC Fantasia, which is being named in Naples on December 18.

This is the ship with the much-anticipated VIP Yacht Club - a separate area of the ship where top-paying passengers will enjoy butler service in their cabins, have a private swimming pool and observation lounge with bar. 

Is this the first casualty of the credit crunch?

Seatrade Insider reports that the "new" Orient Lines president and CEO Wayne Heller has cancelled the resurrected cruise line's first European season due to the current econimic climate.

"We are exploring possible options to relaunch our cruise program at a more favourable time in the near future."

The maiden voyage on Maxim Gorky, which has been renamed Marco Polo II, was supposed to be on April 15 from Barcelona.

Booked customers will receive a full and prompt refund.

Royal Caribbean International's giant Oasis of the Seas has to be seen to be believed ... and I was lucky enough to see it on Friday, at STX Europe's shipyard in Turku, Finland, where it was about to be floated out.

The Caribbean it wasn't, with snow and ice on the ground and freezing temperatures, but we were kitted out with big coats, steel toe-cap shoes, gloves and hard hats for a walkabout in the dry dock and on board - the first groups to get a glimpse of what this levathon will be like.

After a lightening tour of some of the key places on the ship, we were taken dockside, a cannon was fired - so loudly the ground shook! - and the sluice gates were opened, allowing water to touch the hull for the first time.

The gates were opened at about 5pm and the dry dock was expected to be filled by midnight so the ship could be sailed out to a new berth where the interior will be fitted out. They have just under a year to transform it from looking like a mass of steel and scaffolding, as below, into a luxurious cruise ship.

This is the Royal Promenade - the very same feature you'll find on the Voyager and Freedom-class cruise ship, except this one will be more than twice as wide as the "street" on those vessels. When finished, there will be a pub, shops, cafes and the amazing Rising Tide Bar.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines chairman and chief executive officer Richard Fain, who was guiding my group, said they decided they needed a lift to get passengers from the Royal Promenade to Central Park above and those little box things most of us manage with to get up and down floors was just too boring. So they are putting in a bar. Of course.

The idea is that it acts as a lift, but I can see passengers grabbing a stool for the evening and staying put.

Unless of course they are tempted away by the antics in the Aquatheatre at the back of the ship.

There is a pool, 17.9 feet deep (this one pool will hold more water than all the pools on the Freedom-class ships) surrounded by amphitheatre-style seating and with a bridge 10 metres above from which performers will be diving into the water. Sort of Cirque de Oasis, I guess. Apparently one show will have a row of divers going off the bridge all at once, which would be quite spectacular

When the pool is not needed for swimming, the bottom can be raised so it also becomes a dance floor.

These rectangular bars of metal on the pods on Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas look a bit like those things tyre fitters use to balance your car's wheels.

In fact, they are sacrificial anodes and their job is to divert the corrosive attentions of salt water away from the pods they are positioned on. When their job is done, they are simply replaced. Quick, easy and a darn sight cheaper than replacing a corroded engine.

So simple. And apparently they really work too!

First stop on the way to the shipyard to see Royal Caribbean International's Oasis of the Seas was a bike shop in Turku where, in one corner, we were able to tramp through a mock-up of a standard version of one of the 28 new loft suites that will be on the ship.

Was this to keep it away from the prying eyes of the competition, I wondered? Who would think of looking in a bike shop? But no. We were told it was actually only because the factory happened to have a bit of space available. Sometimes fiction is so much better.

These loft suites are spectacular, two decks high and with a floor-to-ceiling glass window which looks out over the balcony and out to sea.

Downstairs there is a bathroom, dining table that slides out of the way after use and a sitting area with a flat-screen TV and sofa bed. It then opens out to the balcony.

Upstairs is a mezzanine with another bathroom, this one with a shower with his and hers shower heads - RCCL chairman and chief executive officer Richard Fain was amazed I'd never seen such a thing and then revealed he has a his and hers shower at his home and that it is very handy when him and her are different heights because you don't have to keep moving the heads up and down - and a double bed with a flat-screen TV that opens out of the ceiling.

Oasis of the Seas has such a lot of new things on board to thrill and excite passengers that the ship had to be the size it is just to hold them all, explains Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines chairman and chief executive officer Richard Fain.

Speaking at the float out of the ship, in a snow-covered shipyard in Turku, Finland, he said Oasis is one-third traditional Royal Caribbean, one-third evolutionary and one-third revolutionary.

The traditional is, for instance the Schooner Bar, which can be found on other Royal Caribbean ships. The evolution is the Royal Promenade, which is twice the width of the promenades on other ships, and will twist and turn instead of running in a straight line. The revolution is Central Park, a huge open area in the middle of the ship that will have real trees and shrubs, the loft suites, the Aquatheatre, zipwire and more.

"I know size is what everyone focuses on, but we didn't set out to build the world's biggest ship. Oasis is big because we decide what we want to put in and than wrap a ship around it. We don't just take rooms from other ships and make them bigger, but we add more, to give passengers the opportunity to do things they never would have thought of doing on a ship."

Fain revealed that he initially thought putting a rock-climbing wall on the Voyager-class ships was a really stupid idea, but went along with it because it was the least stupid idea he was presented with at the time. He now jokes that it was one of the best ideas he ever had ("that's one of the benefits of being chairman!").

Oasis of the Seas is now 65% ready. Its first sea trial is scheduled for June, with a second one in September.

It will weigh 225,000 tons (this is the shipyard's figure, which keen readers will notice is another 5,000 on the tonnage previously quoted), which makes it more than twice as heavy as an aircraft carrier, and carry 5,400 passengers.

Inside, there will be 5,000km of electric cable, 250km of pipes, 100,000 electric points, 90,000 square metres of carpet, 8,000 square metres of windows and there will be 2,300 metric tons of water in the pools. In all, it will be made up of about 500,000 individual parts.

Now Oasis of the Seas is out of the dry dock, the yard can start work on sister ship Allure of the Seas. The keel-laying is on December 2, with delivery slated for late autumn 2010.

Hot on the heels of Silversea's decision to bring Prince Albert II back to the Arctic for summer 2009, Hurtigruten has added capacity in Spitsbergen for June, July and August for 2009.

The additional cruises are on the 120-passenger Expedition, which is owned by Gap Adventures and has been chartered on a crew basis for four years by Spitsbergen Travel, which is a subsidiary of Hurtigruten.

Expedition will be sailing 13 nine-day Kingdom of the Polar Bear cruises for Hurtigruten from Longyearbyen, circumnavigating Spitsbergen, weather permitting.

Hurtigruten's head of commercial Kathryn Beadle said demand has outstripped capacity on the line's two other ships in Spitsbergen.

"Our main nine-day Spitsbergen voyage is already close to being sold out for 2009 and we still have more than six months' selling time."

Expedition, which has an ice-strengthened hull, was built in 1972 and is currently undergoing modernisation. When it enters service it will have a panorama lounge, expedition lounge, restaurant, library, bar, fitness room and sauna.

Cold is clearly the new hot for British cruisers. Just a month ago Titan HiTours announced it had signed an alliance with National Geographic which enables Brits to travel on the company's expedition ships, operated by Lindblad Expeditions, to Antarctica, the Arctic, Alaska, the Galapagos and other such exciting places.

There's never been a better time to go cruising on your own.

Elegant River Cruises, part of Connections, which is the independent travel division of Titan Travel, is offering no single supplements to travellers who book a spring cruise before December 31. It means a potential saving of nearly £2,500.

Now Oceania Cruises has slashed the single supplement on Far East and Australia cruises on Nautica between December 2008 and April 2009, cutting it from 100% to 50%.

I reckon we'll see a lot more offers for singles over the coming weeks as lines pull out all the stops to fill their ships in these credit-crunching times.

Agents should urge clients travelling along to make the most of it and who knows? Maybe the cruise lines will discover a hidden market and the lower supplements will stick.

Or maybe not. But it's a nice thought.

In a move Woolworths would be proud of, Italian cruise line MSC Cruises is offering cruises for £1 on selected sailings across the fleet next year - even on new ships MSC Fantasia and MSC Splendida.

To qualify, one person has to book an MSC Cruise at brochure price and the second person travelling with them will then pay only £1, plus any flights of course. The offer is applicable to more than 100 departures between March and November, but bookings have to be made between December 1 and 7 this year.

Drastic times call for drastic action, but is it a bit too drastic? Last week Travelmole reported on a survey by the website Cruise Critic which found that just 13% of cruise travellers would not be cruising next year because of financial pressures.

People did say they would be looking at ways to cut the cost of their cruise. Avoiding flying, booking at the last minute and cutting on-board spend were top ideas. But they pale into insignificance compared with the now very obvious way of cutting costs.

Book an MSC Cruise for £1!

P&O Cruises is going back to its core values of delivering a traditional British cruising experience with new ship Azura, launching next year.

The ship will be a sister to Ventura, managing director Nigel Esdale said, but it will not be the same. Crucially, instead of the big push for families that accompanied the launch of Ventura, Azura will be aimed at couples looking for "a serene holiday experience" that is unahamedly British.

"Azura will establish P&O as a contemporary brand that delivers a stylish large ship experience in tune with what the British want. British tastes will drive the decor, entertainment and shore excursions .... All passengers will be British so they need to be able to feel at home"

That's not to say families will be banned on this ship. Azura will have as much space devoted to kids and teens as Ventura, and Noddy and Mr Bump will be on board - as will bungee trampolines, high up on deck 19.

Azura will have an Indian restaurant, Sindhu, created by Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar (this will be where East is on Ventura) and a new restaurant-cum-wine-bar, The Glass House, being created with the help of TV wine expert Olly Smith.

There will also be a new fine dining restaurant - presumably where The White Room is on Ventura - but it has as yet no name, as well as the usual self-service outlets and dining rooms. There will be three dining rooms, with fixed and dine-when-you-like options available.

A couple of things have been "borrowed" from sister brand Princess Cruises - an adult-only Retreat on the top deck and an open-air cinema (respectively the Sanctuary and Movies under the Stars on Princess ships) - but new for P&O (in fact new for any cruise ship built this century) there will be single cabins. There are just 18, it's true, and they will carry a premium but nothing like the double occupancy price that many lines charge.

Also new are a couple of large suites suitable for families or groups of friends and designated spa cabins located near the Oasis Spa.

Michelin-starred chef Atul Kocchar, the man behind Sindhu, the Indian restaurant opening on P&O Cruises' new ship Azura, tells me his dishes will be Indian "with a British twist".

The "twist" being that there will be no hot curries, but rather a tasty use of spices. "What if some like it hot?" I asked, a little dismayed. We can cater for them too, Atul promised.

Atul said Sindhu will also be all about presentation. The food will look more attractive than the stuff dished out at your local Tandoori, with meat and sauces served separately so diners can see what cut of meat they are eating (I know what he means - I always go vegetarian at my local curry house, just in case....).

As well as creating the menus, Atul will be helping to design Sindhu and also training the staff who will work there, either by going on board himself or having one member of staff learn the ropes at one of his restaurants (he owns Benares in London, Vatika in Southampton and Ananda in Dublin) so he or she can teach the others.

Meanwhile, he is getting ready to embark on his first P&O voyage, in March or April next year, so he can see what this cruising lark is all about. "I've been on Ventura in Southampton and am confident this will work," he says. "The biggest challenge for me is not having an open fire."

And for that I think we can all be grateful.

Princess Cruises must be cock-a-hoop about Cruise Thomas Cook's new cruise report.

The Love Boat line puts a lots of store on romance and now it transpires they were right, with nearly two-thirds of the 5,000 Brits polled by the cruise retailer revealing that a cruise helps to put the spark back in their relationships.

More than half of those surveyed said tables for two at dinner get them in a romantic mood, while 30% said dining on their cabin balcony gets them in the mood (good news for Princess, which has Anytime dining for passengers who want a romantic table for two and balcony dining for lovers who prefer a little privacy).

Just under a quarter said a Champagne breakfast worked magic in the romance department, while one in four said they'd like to get married on a cruise ship (yes, Princess can help there as well, with its weddings at sea performed by the captain). The findings are just a few of the facts to emerge from Cruise Thomas Cook's first cruise report.

* 70% would like to see a full-scale West End or Broadway musicals (with West End and Broadway quality performers, I would hope, but history doesn't relate).

* 57% wanted a total ban on smoking.

* 44% would love a branch of Marks & Spencer and Boots on a cruise ship (why go away if you want to take the high street with you, I wonder?)

* 45% of female cruisers buy new undies before setting off on a cruise (hopefully they are cruising with their loved ones, although again history does not relate).

* 65% prefer organised shore excursions to exploring alone.

It's all good fun stuff, but the really important thing for agents and cruise lines is that the survey bears out what has been said so many times: Get someone on a cruise once and they will be back. Some 4,811 of the 5,000 polled had been on a cruise and more than three quarters said they "were very likely" to cruise again.

Cruise Thomas Cook director Marc Bennett said: "As an independent cruise retailer we are in a good position to provide this type of report. There is no angle for us but the most important factor in continuing to grow the UK cruise market will be a greater understanding of the needs and requirements of today's cruise passengers."

Do I spy a possible sideline selling undies? I'll bet it's more lucrative than travel insurance and forex, and certainly a lot more interesting.

Hebridean International Cruises is going back to the Caribbean and Central America for winter 2009/10 - and this time it is taking people on the transatlantic.

The cruiseline's 98-passenger Hebridean Spirit made its debut in the region in winter 07/08 and that time went over the Pond empty, thinking that no one would want to be making that journey in a 4,200-ton ship. It seem they were wrong.

"The brochure's only been out a couple of weeks but we already have some bookings for the crossing," managing director Mike Deegan told me on the even smaller Hebridean Princess - just 2,112 tons and yes, the one the Queen chartered - when it was in Tilbury this week.

The night before I was there, it had been hosting Hebridean's top-selling agents for an awards evening and overnight. It is a lovely little ship, with quaint but beautifully-appointed cabins, but at that size I can understand why they run for cover at the first sign of bad weather.

News of those intrepid transatlanticers is interesting, but the real point here is that they have actually been able to book because the brochure is already out - part of a strategic move by Hebridean to stop lagging behind when it comes to getting its cruises out on agents' shelves.

There are some great cruises in there, more Caribbean than before, and taking Spirit though the Panama Canal and into ports in Cuba that most people will never have heard of.

The 2010 summer programme will be out in March, and one brochure will feature cruises on both ships, which is also a first for the cruiseline - usually there are two brochures for each ship each year.

I am told Princess will be doing its usual Scotland stuff, but dropping its Norway visits as Spirit is going north for the summer, covering off Norway and the Arctic areas.

Italian line Costa Cruises has been named "Best Cruise Company" at the annual Virgin Holidays awards. Runners up were Carnival and Ocean Village.

Naturally managing director Marco Rosa is pleased - in fact almost as thrilled as when I saw him last week, racing high-performance cars at a fantastic day out at Thurleigh Airfield near Bedford with some of his top-selling agents and fellow scribes.

He now has to come back down to earth and get ready for 2009, when Costa has two new ships launching - the Costa Luminosa and Costa Pacifica - so close to each other they are sharing a naming ceremony.

Travelmole reports that Yachts of Seabourn is to name its second new ship, Seabourn Sojourn, in London, when it launches in June 2010.

The vessel will be the second of three sisters bring built by Seabourn. The first, Seabourn Odyssey, comes out of the shipyard in June 2009.

It's yet more proof of how much faith cruiselines have in the UK market, even in these credit crunching times, following hot on the heels of Celebrity Cruises' announcement a couple of weeks ago that it will be offering its first cruises from Southampton, aimed at British cruisers, in summer 2010.

Seabourn president and CEO Pam Conover said the UK has a large and loyal following of repeat cruisers from the UK and expects this to grow.

"In the long term, the UK represents a huge growth market for Seabourn as UK cruisers look for a more intimate, personal experience offering exceptional value for money, all of which can be found on our yachts." 

I'll be on a Windstar cruise in the Caribbean next week, finding out how the cruiseline is performing since it was sold to Ambassador International in February 2007. I'll be posting information and pictures, so keep an eye on Cruise Lines to find out more.

I've never had a suite with portholes before.

Thing is, when Windstar's  Wind Surf launched in 1990 - it started life as Club Med I - my room was just an ordinary cabin. Or rather two ordinary cabins. Because my suite is two rooms that have been knocked together.

The result is a lovely big room with two doors, two full-size bathrooms, two work desks, two flat-screen TVs, a big sitting area and the bedroom, and a big curtain across the opening between the sitting area and bedroom that is closed at night. 

I've also got a DVD player - you can borrow DVDs free from the library - and an iPod speaker. And yes. You can even borrow an iPod - again for free.

Yesterday, moored off Bequia, in the Grenadines, the marina on Windstar's Wind Surf was lowered for anyone who wanted to have a go at sailing, windsurfing or the like.

It's a great facility. Bjay (pictured below), one of three sport co-odinators, showed me around - six kayaks (three doubles, three singles), two sailing boats, three windsurfs and enough snorkelling equipment for everyone to get masked up and into the water. You can even go waterskiing if the water is calm enough.

You need to be able to sail or windsurf to borrow the equipment, which is all free, but kayaking and snorkelling virgins are fine.

"We also have a rescue boat, but we don't have to use it very often," Bjay reassured me.

The weather has been doing a grand job trying to make the Brits on Wind Star feel at home. It was raining when I landed in Barbados on Sunday and was pouring down on and off while we were moored off Bequia. But two days on, the Caribbean is back to its hot and sunny best.

I expected mine to be the only English accent on the ship. In fact, there are loads of us. Well relatively speaking. There are actually only 69 passengers anyway, on a ship that holds 315 (15 are British passport holders and there are other Brits from other places around the world), so it feels a lot like the Marie Celeste, especially in the evenings.

On the first evening, the ship was deserted by the time I left the dining room just before 10pm. Things have picked up though. Last night, in the Compass Rose, my favourite bar (pictured), there were eight of us. A busy night for the barman!

Craig and Nicola, who together make up the band Rain and have been singing their socks off to an empty room, looked thrilled.

The upside of having so few passengers is that we are all loving having our own private yacht and the top service that comes with it. There are 188 crew. That's more than two for each passenger - a ratio the luxury lines can only dream of!

I'm even greeted by name as I get in and out of the tender and the barman remembered my cabin number before me.

For those not in the know, Wind Surf is a sailing ship, with five masts and seven big sails. They switch off the engines if there is enough wind - apparently they saved 30 tonnes of fuel on the transatlantic crossing a couple of weeks back by using wind power - but today, the third evening of my cruise, is the first time I have seen them billowing in the wind, and then only four sails are up.

Sadly there weren't any muscle men heaving and straining to hoist the canvas either, as everything is done at the push of a button.

Ah. The romance of technology.

MSC Cruises' "sail for £1" sale, for this week only (at least as far as we know), seems to have hit wanabee-be cruisers in all the right places.

Operations and reservations manager Milica Mocevic says they have had to draft in extra staff to cope with all the demand.

Which just goes to show what a clever piece of marketing it is.

You only qualify for the £1 cruise when you book with another person paying full brochure price.

When you get over the emotive £1 bit, you realise this is actually just what other cruiselines - and indeed travel companies generally - call "buy one get one free". Except people going for this offer are paying top whack by getting the £1 in return for paying full brochure price.

I reckon they'd probably be better off - literally - shopping around for the 40% and more discounts doing the rounds in these credit-crunching days.

But they are not and MSC is reaping the benefits. Smart.

I'm pleased to report that this cannon, trained on Windstar's ship Wind Surf, is British.

This is the view from Fort Rodney on Pigeon Island in St Lucia. Behind where I'm standing, clearly visible (but not in this picture - here you are looking at St Lucia), is French Martinique. So back in 1778, our man Rodney realised this hill was a perfect vantage point for keeping an eye on the marauding French so he had this fort built.

But how did they get the cannons up there?

One of the highlights of my Windstar cruise was the barbecue on the beach at Pigeon Island in St Lucia - burgers, hot dogs, salads .... and the ubiquitous steel band.

It was all going very well, and then they started playing Christmas carols. December 3, on a beach in the Caribbean, with the sun blazing down.

Too early. Out of place. Bah humbug. I went for a walk.

Far better was the discovery that a woman playing a steel drum is called a pimp. At least that's what one of the other band members told me. I just hope he wasn't joking!

One of the problems of being on a ship with so few passengers (I'm on Windstar Cruises' ship Wind Surf in the Caribbean with another 68 people instead of the full complement of 315) is that most of the shore excursions have been cancelled because they haven't reached the minimum numbers.

It has been very disappointing, so full marks to Leia, the shore excursions manager, for finding out that we would be in Grenada alongside Princess Cruises' Emerald Princess on Friday - and for getting in touch with the ship to see if they happened to do the river tubing trip I wanted to do.

They did - and so full marks to Princess also, for allowing me to infiltrate the group.

It was great fun - you sit in a big tube and float down river, through rapids, bouncing off boulders, going backwards, forwards, spinning; really just as the water and tube takes you because you don't have any control.

I felt rather like a human pinball. But a lot wetter. Especially after the guys from the company running the trip - Adventure River Tubing - got us all corralled at one of the ropes strung across the river where they collect everyone every so often, surrounded us and let loose a barrage of splashing.

Until then I had just been wet; after that I was drowned!

These guys - there were lots of them - did a fantastic job making sure we were all absolutely safe, and rescuing us when we got beached, which happened to several of us a few times. As I said, you have no control on these tubes.

Jude, the guy on the right here, said ours was the second group of the day; sometimes they have four.

All too soon it was over and we were back on dry land for a rum punch (it is the Caribbean after all). "Was it good?" the guy with the bottle asked. I said I had only one complaint. It was over too soon.

By the look on his face I got the impression that was not very original.

It's good to read in Cruise Critic that several cruiselines are dropping the complicated mathematical formula introduced to work out whether passengers will pay a fuel supplement, and instead banishing surcharges to the box marked history.

It has been a long time coming, especially given the price of oil has been hovering around the $50 a barrel mark for some time - well below the $150 high of the summer when the supplements were introduced.

Then they had good reason; now it just looks as if the supplement is being used to help pay for the hefty discounts being offered to get people booking in these tough economic times.

Carnival Corporation's Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Princess Cruises and Yachts of Seabourn will be axing the supplement from December 17 2008. Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean brands Celebrity Cruises, Azamara Cruises and Royal Caribbean International follow suit on January 1 2009.

That's a good start. Now let's hear from the lines that are still charging. There's still time for them to make it a happy Christmas for their (British) customers.

Rather than pit passengers against pirates, Cruise Critic says Hapag-Lloyd is going to disembark all those on the first sector of Columbus' world cruise at an undisclosed point before they reach the Gulf of Aden and fly them to Dubai, where they will wait in five-star luxury for the ship to catch up. There will be no extra cost to passengers.

The ship will be manned by a skeleton crew as most of the staff will also be taken off and flown to Dubai.

Hapag-Lloyd managing director Sebastian Ahrens says as long as the situation in the Gulf of Aden is uncertain they will not cruise through the region with passengers on board.

Just over a week ago, there was a failed pirate attack on Oceania Cruises' Nautica.

Prestige Cruise Holdings, the parent company of Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, the latest to drop fuel supplements.

The change is effective January 1 2009. Passengers who have already paid the supplement for cruises next year will have the money refunded as an on-board credit.

Soon it'll be only the British lines holding out for the supplement. Why?

Oceania Cruises president Bob Binder is not running scared after Nautica was fired on by pirates at the end of last month.

In an interview in Travel Weekly US, he says they will evaluate itineraries in the area in the interest of the safety of passengers, crew and safety - no surprise there - but adds the pirates are "not a great concern".

I imagine the incident was frightening for passengers - that's if they noticed it was happening. Binder says they were asked to leave the open decks twice (standard procedure in such an incident), but the whole thing was over in just a few moments.

But if we're going to let pirates frighten us out of the Gulf of Aden, cruiseships should also stop sailing into Santorini in case they hit an inaccurately chartered reef and avoid the Arctic and Antarctica as they might hit an iceberg. They should also stay out of the English Channel in case they come across the waterborne equivalent of a boy racer.

Life would be so safe. But oh so boring.

Costa Cruises has launched a new family fare which makes it more affordable for mums and dads to book a separate cabin for the kids.

It's a great deal for parents fed up with going to bed early with the little ones or having to creep around the cabin in the mornings while teens have their beauty sleep.

But what's really interesting about this news is that it transpires Costa doesn't require children to be over a certain age before they can have a cabin to themselves.

"There is no lower age limit for children in their own cabin. As long as there is a person aged over 18 in the cruise party, it is then the parents responsibility for the children in the separate cabin. Costa will try to give interconnecting cabins where possible, but this is not guaranteed."

Norwegian Cruise Line says"kids" have to be over 21 to have their own cabin, which is frankly ridiculous and a rule made to be broken, but no minimum age is not wise either. Imagine a couple of kids under the age of 10 trying to cope in an emergency.

MSC Cruises and P&O Cruises stipulate 18 years, Princess Cruises requires children in a cabi on their own to be aged over 16.

Considering its launch is only a year away, we know very little about Silversea's new ship Silver Spirit, which merits just two paragraphs on the cruiseline's website.

Compare that to Royal Caribbean International's Oasis of the Seas, which comes out at roughly the same time, has its own website and has already had journalists nosing around it in the shipyard.

But in response to a question about world cruising in 2010, I am told Silver Spirit will be sailing a Christmas voyage from Barcelona to Lisbon in December 2009, a transatlantic in January 2010 and a Grand Voyage around South America, starting in January 2010.

So now you know.

Apparently more information will be released in the next couple of weeks. I hope so. The ship carries 540 passengers and none can book unless they have some itineraries and prices.

MSC Cruises took delivery of MSC Fantasia in a ceremony at the STX Europe shipyard in France yesterday. The STX Europe and French flags were lowered and the flags of MSC Cruises, Italy and Panama were raised.

The ship has now left the shipyard and is sailing to Naples by way of Lisbon, Gibraltar, Alicante, Barcelona and Marseilles. It will be named in Naples by Italian diva Sophia Loren on December 18.

I'll be there to watch the ceremony and also staying on board for a two-night cruise to Genoa so look out next week for reports from the ship.

Interesting to get some information from Star Clippers that doesn't just tell me how well they are doing. On the contrary it says the cruise line is to suspend fuel supplements for all cruises departing after March 31 2010. Moreover it is going to refund passengers booking a cruise around Tahiti the magnificent sum of £200 towards the cost of their flights.

Are they in the real world? When most of the rest of the cruising industry, with a few notable exceptions, is getting rid of fuel supplements altogether now, Star Clippers - which operates sailing ships, you will remember, which sail when wind conditions allow, thereby saving on fuel consumption - thinks it is good news that they will be suspended in more than 12 months time. Have they looked at the cost of oil lately?

As for £200 per person towards the cost of a flight to Tahiti. When cruise lines are cutting fares frantically to get people booking, the word generous does not spring to mind.

Costa Cruises has marked the start of its third season of cruising around the Gulf from Dubai by announcing new ship Costa Luminosa, launching in June 2009, will be homeported in the Middle East port in winter 2009/10.

That's quite a commitment given this is still such a new market. Usually, somewhere new has to put up with the smaller, older ships for quite some time, until they have proved themselves.

I guess Costa feels Dubai has already done that. When they launched Dubai cruises in winter 06/07, they had one 1,680-passenger ship and carried 44,000. Last winter they put on a second ship and carried 70,000.

This winter there are also two ships - the 1,680-passenger Costa Classica and the bigger 2,394-passenger Costa Victoria - and they expect to carry 100,000 passengers.

The numbers are made up of Europeans, including Brits, but also increasingly passengers from China and the Far East.

But maybe also Costa is making sure it is in a good position to head off competition from Royal Caribbean International, which is positioning Brilliance of the Seas in Dubai in January 2010, also to operate cruises around the Gulf.

The 92,700-ton Costa Luminosa carries 2,828 passengers and will have all the mod-cons you expect of a new ship including 772 balcony cabins, a luxurious spa, 4D cinema and Grand Prix driving simulator.

Cutting prices is one thing, cutting prices and angering others who have paid a higher price for the same cruise is something else. How not to win hearts and minds.

So good for Voyages of Discovery, which is extending savings just announced on ex-UK sailings and flycruises to passengers who have already booked.

It means some people will cash in on savings of up to 50% on the early-booking prices, or benefit from new prices up to £900 below what they were. Perfect for countering all the bad news floating around right now.

It'll be interesting to see if other lines follow suit.

It's bad enough that Star Clippers is retaining the fuel supplement until March 31 2010. Now I read that honour is actually only for us Europeans and it is lifting the supplement for passengers from North and Latin American only as from January 1 2009.

Nice to see where their loyalties lie. That's a whole 13 more months they plan to charge us the levy, even though the price of oil has plummeted.

I hope passengers vote with their bookings. After all, there are plenty of other lines out there that are playing fair.

Crystal Cruises has followed the pack and is dropping its fuel surcharge for cruises on or after January 1 2009. If you're on a Crystal cruise and have paid in full you'll get a shipboard credit, if you've yet to pay in total, the final invoice will be adjusted.

Happily, they are all falling like flies, although there is still silence from British lines P&O Cruises, Fred Olsen and Ocean Village.

Check out Cruise Critic for a handy round-up of who's doing what.

Just to prove there is no such thing as bad publicity, USA Today's Cruise Log reports hits on the Oceania Cruises website went through the roof on news of the attempted attack by pirates.

Not only has the world now heard about Oceania Cruises, but one agent is reported as saying the great American public has now discovered where the Gulf of Aden is and is interested in going there.

And here are the cruiselines thinking they have to sell at rock-bottom prices to get people to book.

I'll be in Naples in a few hours, to watch the naming ceremony for MSC Cruises' new ship MSC Fantasia.

As usual, Sophia Loren is doing the honours so there's no news there, but there should be lots to say about the vessel, which is the biggest MSC has ever built, with room for almost 4,000 passengers. So keep looking here for news and pictures.

Norwegian Cruise Line and STX Europe have broken their silence and announced an agreement on the building of NCL's new-build project, code-named F3.

The deal means instead of two vessels, as scheduled, the shipyard will now build only one of these 4,200-passenger ships. Delivery is scheduled for May 2010.

And that's all we know for now. NCL promises more info about what's on board another time.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that MSC Cruises' new ship MSC Fantasia seems to have shrunk somewhat according to my blog entries, now holding 3,274 passengers where once it held almost 4,000.

I guess it's the ship equivalent of clever accounting. Most cruiselines "size" their ships on double occupancy, with a second higher figure to show the maximum that can be squeezed on with third and fourth berths in cabins filled.

MSC Cruises has always quoted the maximum occupancy in relation to MSC Fantasia - 3,959 passengers - but as that doesn't allow for proper comparisons with other ships I am now going to quote the double-occupancy figure.

I know it doesn't sound so big, but it means the space ratio rockets from 33.7 to 40.7. Which means there is more room for everyone. Surely a bigger selling point for Brits after a bit of peace and quiet?

MSC Cruises' new ship MSC Fantasia is beauty and the beast all rolled into one. From the outside big and boxy, really not very attractive, yet elegant and stylish inside. Not "the most beautiful cruise ship in the world", as MSC would have us believe (but they are biased, after all), but certainly a contender.

Interestingly, for this day and age, they have kept the design under control. Take the theatre. Grey seats, red carpet with white flecks, silver railings and a wavy ceiling. And that's it. No drapes, bright colours or wow. But it works. And it's huge, with room for 1,800 people, yet it has only two pillars to get in the way.

Deck seven is nice, with bars and coffee shops, each with their own style - the Manhattan Bar with brightly-coloured stripes around the bar and windows, the elegant liner-looking Transatlantico piano bar, the Wild West-themed Cantina Toscana, a wine-tasting bar outside the Tex Mex restaurant.

My favourite, the Piazza San Giorgio, is just below, on deck six, an "outside" piazza but indoors, complete with wrought-iron chairs and stone floor.

But things are not so great further up the ship. The VIP Yacht Club is the big new feature and fine, but nothing special. The cabin I saw was the same size as my non-VIP one but had a walk-in wardrobe and bathroom with a tub and shower (the shower is in the bath though).

I am told VIPs get toiletries while my cabin was notable for the absence of anything other than a couple of bars of soap and cheap shampoo in a dispenser.

On the VIP open deck area, tacky plastic sun loungers lower the whole tone of the place.

This water slide also caught my eye. Great fun for kids, but look where the slide ends. I hope no one slides very fast. The picture below it is the entrance to the French Restaurant, taken when it was shut I admit, but there is no name anywhere. Lots of people couldn't find it and no wonder. A shame, because it's quite nice inside.

I wondered whether I had listed my profession incorrectly when I opened the door to my cabin on MSC Cruises' MSC Fantasia. Having taken in the uber-red décor inside, I checked outside to see if there was a red light.

Seriously, it is a bit OTT - really the only thing that is OTT on the ship - but I rather like it. It gather all the decks have different colour schemes, green for deck nine, brown for 12 and so on. Makes life in the laundry a bit more interesting.

At a meeting at Royal Caribbean International's UK HQ in Surrey in October, I heard about the innovative "green" aspects of the giant new Oasis of the Seas.

I also heard how building was progressing fast, prompting me to ask if, as with other new ships of late, it would launch earlier than planned. Very unlikely, I was told.

I asked the question again in November, when I went to Turku for the Oasis float out and heard sea trials would be in June and September. Same reply.

But now - surprise - Royal Caribbean has announced that Oasis will indeed enter service earlier than originally scheduled.

A new four-night cruise departing December 1 2009 will call only at Labadee, Royal Caribbean's private island - to celebrate the opening of new facilities and excursions there - while the seven-night Eastern Caribbean inaugural will now depart December 5.

Anyone booked on the original December 12 inaugural has until January 11 2009 to switch to the either of the new sailings, or they can put the two new departures together to make a longer cruise and get $200 per cabin on-board credit as well.

It held on and on, but Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has at last announced the end of fuel supplements. They were dropped last week. Anyone who has already paid them will get them refunded as on-board credit.

Seatrade's Insider News website reports that Star Cruises, which owns 50% of NCL (Apollo Investment owns the other half), is pulling out of Norwegian Cruise Line's ill-fated NCL America operation.

It's no surprise. NCL America started with such a great fanfare. A US-flagged operation with three ships all sailing within Hawai'i, cutting out the need for the four days at sea - in both directions - for ships sailing to the islands from the US east coast. It sounded brilliant.

Only problem was, it wasn't making any money and having a mainly US crew also produced massive staffing problems. So one ship came out, then another, leaving just Pride of America to continue to fly the Stars and Stripes. Papers were drawn up in September 2007 allowing for either or both parties to exit or disband NCL America at the end of 2008.

In the event it is just Star that wants out so it doesn't mean the end of NCL America. Its Hawai'i programme has been confirmed until 2012 and it is making money, according to NCL president and ceo Kevin Sheehan.

Thank goodness we at least had the good news that one of its F3 new-build ships is back on track, because otherwise it's not been the greatest December for Norwegian Cruise Line.

On Christmas Day it was reported that Star Cruises is getting out of NCL America, suggesting Star has no confidence in its future although the brand sails on. The following day Cruise Critic said a passenger was missing, presumed overboard, from Norwegian Pearl. She disappeared while the ship was at sea east of Cancun, Mexico.

Sadly there was no sign of the woman, 36-year-old Jennifer Seitz, from Florida, during a four-day sweep of the area by the US Coast Guard and Mexican Navy. The search was called off on Monday and the FBI is now investigating her disappearance.

Service at dinner that took so long the diners were not able to have dessert, poor foor - as in quality and temperature, crew trained only to say "is no possible".

It's hard to believe Matts' review of MSC Cruises new flagship MSC Fantasia on Cruise Talk could have been any worse. Oh, but then I neglected to mention the three and a half hours he waited to check in ( I refuse to use the word queue when discussing an Italian ship), unhelpful shore-ex staff and a refusal to serve iced water at dinner.

Can he really be talking about a cruise, where crew are always to polite and helpful, food is wonderful (hmmm -- always a moot point, I find) and the waiters usually try to drown you in iced water. Can he really be talking about MSC Cruises, which makes such a virtue of its Italian-ness, right down to the Italian crew?

Sadly yes, because I can relate to so much of what he said, both from previous experience with MSC Cruises - although I did think things were improving on MSC Poesia - and my two nights on MSC Fantasia after the naming.

Unlike Matts, I found the crew are trained to say "no" or "I don't know". Both usefully negative though and guaranteed to make you walk away in frustration so they don't have to do anything. Either that or they ignore you. I had two trawl three bars one evening before I could find one where the barman acknowledged my presence, let alone served me a glass of wine.

I will put in a good word for the spa though. The woman behind the desk took time and trouble to show me around. She even smiled. She was from Indonesia. Just a shame that with one day to go before paying passengers came on they did not even have brochures ready listing treatments and prices.

Reminds me of the time I was on board for the naming of MSC Musica. In the speciality restaurant - their first one, actually part of the self-service, but it looked the part - I asked to see the menu. "Not open" was the gruff response.

I tried again, pointing out I just wanted to see what they served. The answer was they didn't have any menus. But in fewer words. And yes, paying passengers were about to come on. Italians mainly, of course. I suspect either they have the magic words to get things done - or maybe they are just too used to chaos to care.

I'm off to Dubai with my daughter tonight, to join Costa Cruises' ship Costa Victoria. We're doing a cruise around the Gulf, calling at Abu Dhabi, Fujairah, Oman and Bahrain.

This is Costa's big new destination - so big they are putting new ship Costa Luminosa there next winter, when Royal Caribbean International is quitting winter cruises in the Med and moving into the Middle East with Brilliance of the Seas.

Naturally I am very keen to see what it's all about.

If all goes according to plan, my next blogs will be from the ship, with news and pictures about the vessel and the destinations. Fingers crossed the internet works.

As our transfer car from Dubai airport approached Port Rashid, what did we see lurking next to the ship with a yellow funnel and big C?

None other than QE2, which is still tied up in port, presumably waiting to move to the shipyard where conversion work will turn the vessel into a luxury floating hotel. How sad to see people coming and going from the Costa Victoria as the 40-year-old veteran sat quietly in the corner, ignored.

Or so I thought, until a security guard leapt out to stop me going near to take a picture. I finally managed to persuade him to let me get a bit closer, but had to leave my daughter with him as a guarantee. Of what I have no idea.

One of the nice things about Costa Cruises' Middle East cruise itinerary is that you have a bit of time to see Dubai. We had all day Saturday, when guide Wahid, from Lama Tours, took my daughter Ilana and I on a tour of the city, and Sunday morning. And we'll have more time to explore on Friday afternoon, when we get back.

The city is a strange mix of new and, well, new. It's famous for skyscrapers, stunning hotels and cranes, and it certainly has plenty of those. It also has lots of cars, but Wahid skillfully manoevered us through the traffic, letting us out here and there to take pictures.

The Burj Al Arab Hotel, that's the one designed like a sail, is a must-see of course, and is excess in every sense of the word - no entry without a reservation and deep pockets, and a strict dress code to keep out the riff-raff.

We admired it from the outside and instead joined the sightseers in the new Atlantis Hotel on Palm Jumeirah, one of the man-made islands off Dubai's coast. It's another byword for excess - think Atlantis in the Bahamas or Disney to get an idea of the OTT design - and was full of tourists having a look-see and paying a fortune to get into the aquarium, which costs an extortionate £20 per person.

It contrasts rather with the Dubai Museum, in the Mina Bazaar area, a buzzing part of the city with shops, people and cars. For an altogether-more-affordable 70p you get an interesting insight into the history of this booming little emirate.

And it really is little. Abu Dhabi covers some 87% of the territory of the United Arab Emirates, while Dubai - the second largest of seven - covers just 4.9%. It's 4,000 square kilometres - about the same size as Cornwall - and there are 1.5 million people. And it feels like at least as many cars.

Low-rise Mina Bazaar was the last stop of our tour. Next morning at breakfast, sitting in the al-fresco bit of Costa Victoria's buffet, Ilana and I looked across to the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, around 160 storeys, 780 metres high. It's not finished, although I gather there is just a spire to add on the outside and work to do on the apartments, offices and Armani Hotel inside.

"Isn't that rather a target...." Ilana mused. A room at the top certainly doesn't appeal to me, but I put it down to my fear of heights.

At lunchtime on Sunday, Costa Victoria's bottom started to pull out from the pier while the front end was still tied up. Never seen a ship leave like that before. But it worked and we are now on our way to Muscat.

My daughter Ilana wasn't the only one to get that sinking feeling when we went on a 4X4 desert safari in Oman on Monday.

There were 12 jeeps in our convoy, each with four passengers from Costa Cruises' Costa Victoria, and we all had a good laugh as this one went nose first into the sand.

"He didn't follow my tracks, you have to follow the lead car because the sand are always shifting," our jeep driver Waleed told us. Then promptly blazed his own trail, slip-sliding across the sand. But not before telling us he had been doing this for 11 years.

Those who had been in the jeep found it less amusing, but emerged unscathed. Amazingly they managed to get the car out so we could carry on our way.

The excursion lasted nine hours and it was interesting to see a bit of Oman, which is basically made up of mountains, desert and drivers with a death wish. Costa had done a good job pairing up the English speakers so we were able to make some new friends on the trip, but overall the day out didn't quite live up to its billing.

We had only barely 10 minutes skidding around the sand in the jeep, 20 minutes to take pictures while they figured out how to get the car out and 45 minutes at Wadi Bani Khalid for packed lunch and a wander.

The rest of the time - and remember it was nine hours - Waleed was hammering along tarmaced roads and motorways, dodging would-be Schumachers, to make sure we got there and back on time. At £122 each, it was quite an expensive day of driving. 

Last evening, Costa Victoria's daily newletter Today, left each night in the cabin by our stewardess Ruby Gail, had useful information on Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, the next stop on our cruise around the Arabian Gulf.

There would be a free bus to take passengers to the port gate or a shuttle bus to the Safeer supermarket for €6 return per person. I consulted the city map left in the cabin, which helpfully did not show the whereabouts of the supermarket.

"It's just a supermarket," a receptionist explained, marking an x on the map. "There's nothing to see in Fujairah. But take the port bus and walk to the souk. Sometimes it can be nice to look at new things even if they are not interesting."

I think I know what she meant.

So my daughter Ilana and I took the port bus and started to walk. One and a half hours later we reached the souk that was supposed to be 15-20 minutes away, risking life and limb on what passes for a pavement here.

Actually I enjoyed the walk, but Fujairah is just a building site. It'll probably be very nice when it's finished. The souk is two rows of shops selling veg and clothes (we skipped the meat and fish bit). After five minutes trying to look interested, we took a taxi back to the ship.

I am not a great fan of that great cruise ship tradition of fixed dining, so I was not looking forward to dinner time on my Costa Cruises' voyage around the Arabian Gulf on Costa Victoria.

In fact I was dreading it so much that even before leaving home, I planned to avoid it by paying to eat to the speciality restaurant every night.

My dread was heightened because it was a Costa cruise, packed with Italians, Germans, French and countless other nationalities. Imagine sharing a table for a whole week with people who do not speak any English.

But here we are, four nights into the cruise, and my daughter Ilana and I have yet to set foot in the speciality restaurant.

Food and the service has been good - and full marks to our assistant waiter Yang Li, from China, who on discovering I like iced-water makes sure there is a jug waiting at the table when we arrive for dinner - but best of all, my daugher Ilana and I have a table for two, by the window, so I don't have to make pathetic attempts to converse in French or German. Italian, I'm afraid, floors me completely.

This is actually our second table. The first was allocated for second sitting, on my request before I know that on Costa that means 9.15pm or 9.30pm, which is too late to eat for me. First sitting is 7pm, which is OK. Certainly not so appalingly early as the 6pm first sitting on other cruise ships.

The change was organised by Fausi, from Tunisia, to whom I explained we needed a table for two because of the language problem. He smiled - somehow I got the idea I was not the first Brit with such a request - shook his head several times and came up trumps. What a star!

Incidentally, the Dutch couple - more correctly he's Dutch, she's English and they live in Holland - we met on our excursion in Oman were allocated a table sharing with others from the Netherlands.

Costa's maitre d's clearly put a lot of thought into this sharing table business. I'm impressed.

Cruising on Costa Victoria is a bit like being in the film Cabaret, with every announcement in at least four language and usually many more.

You have to take your hat off to the crew for their ability to switch languages at the drop of a hat. At dinner, our waiter Jose Sanchez, from Peru, speaks English to Ilana and I, Italian to the people on the next table. His native language is Spanish and he also speaks Portuguese. All fluently, without even an "um" or "err".

Captain Mario Moretta was great at his welcome cocktail evening, switching so casually between English, German, Italian, Dutch and French that in the end I really didn't know which language he was speaking. But even he had to use his notes to read a welcome in Japanese and Russian. That got an applause.

Unlike the boat drill, when we had to endure an explanation of what to do when the alarm sounded in eight languages, including Japanese and Russian, then stand by the lifeboats in our lifejackets while more instructions were read. Again in eight languages.

"I wonder what would happen in a real emergency," someone near me commented. "We'd have sunk by the time they got through that lot."