Naturally, passengers flock to the closest media medium to post about it: CruiseCritic I’ve been incredibly vocal in my absolute revulsion for the site and in cases like this my views are confirmed. They just posted the article: Why Did Freedom of the Seas Sail Into a Storm Two Other Cruise Ships Avoided?

Yes CruiseCritic, RCI and their extremely experienced crew decided to forego passenger safety and sail into a storm on purpose. Obviously its sarcasm here (I don’t want RCI upset with me.)

Their argument in the article mostly focuses around the following:

“two other vessels — Disney Dream and Carnival Sensation — delayed their departures until weather conditions calmed”.

RCI fired back via their spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez:

“Freedom of the Seas was the first ship scheduled to leave Port Canaveral on Sunday — making it something of a guinea pig. ‘When Freedom of the Seas departed Port Canaveral, the port was still open and the pilots were still taking ships out’ ”

I think its also important to note that Freedom has further to go  has a significantly deeper draft [7.9m vs 8.53m]. Besides, if the port is open, its captains decision. He knows his ship better and knows what she can and cant handle.

Carnival’s take was the following:

"We felt it was best to keep the ship in port until conditions improved for the comfort of the guests and crew," explains spokeswoman Jennifer De La Cruz.

As any experienced mariner will tell you, the most dangerous place to be in, in a storm is along the pier. There is so much that can snap, break, and objects the ship can slam into. Why do you think that when a hurricane is approaching, ports close down and ships flee for open water?

Anyways, here are photos of the inside of the Freedom. You’re on a ship. IT MOVES. That’s what they do!

UPDATE: We got video. Notice how the ships railing tends not to move in relation to the horizon. Freedom is 4 wave lengths in, well, length. This helps minimize the total movement of the ship. Stabilizers help too, but I doubt they were deployed in this rough of weather.

“Anti-cruise” pundit Jim Walker over at Cruise Law has reports that yet another group has filed a suite against RCI for fraud stemming from RCI’s admission of an accounting error. While this certainly wont turn into a scandal or anything juicy, it certainly isn’t good for Royal Caribbean PR.

(Photo Credit: Flickr user GoboNdc via Creative Commons license)

From FAIRPLAY24

ROYAL Caribbean’s two largest owners – Norway’s Wilhelmsen family and America’s Pritzker family – have dissolved their shareholders agreement, the cruise giant confirmed. The Wilhelmsen family, through A Wilhelmsen AS, owns 19% of Royal Caribbean. The Pritzkers, through Cruise Associates, own 15%. For many years, the two owners agreed to vote their shares for four board nominees of the other. Royal Caribbean confirmed after market close yesterday that this arrangement has ended. Royal Caribbean’s articles of incorporation required the approval of at least one board member from each family for certain corporate actions. Now that the Wilhelmsen-Pritzker pact has been dissolved, the cruise company no longer requires such approval. The Pritzker family’s business holdings are controlled by a collection of trusts. Royal Caribbean said: “It is our understanding that with the termination of the shareholders agreement, Cruise Associates plan to distribute its Royal Caribbean shares to its partners which, in turn, may further transfer shares to their respective owners.” Royal Caribbean maintained that the situation does not imply that either family has a negative view of the industry, nor is it related to financial turmoil. “We understand that this is simply a private matter between the two parties,” it said. The question ahead is whether the demise of the shareholders agreement is a precursor to ownership divestments by either of the two owners – for example, portions of the Pritzker family. “We have no information about the ongoing intentions of the two shareholders,” Royal Caribbean said.

So what does this mean to the end cruiser? Absolutely nothing. What does this mean to the industry. Probably nothing but it is interesting this news comes a month after RCI disclosed an accounting error and executives face a claim of stock fraud. BUT in reality its probably more tied into the tanking economy and the looming thread of a second recession.

When Royal Caribbean International (NYSE:RCL) announced their 2Q 2011 Earnings they shocked everyone by admitting that their erred in their accounting. Upon hearing this, the stock plunged yesterday quite a lot. It should pick up today assuming it’s a good day for the market, but with the looming debt crisis, its gonna be a long ride uphill for the Miami based line.

Heres what they reported:

(1) Management identified an error in the previous accounting treatment of interest expense relating to its amortization of certain financing fees and has revised its past financial statements to reflect the correct accounting (the "Interest Expense Revision").

(2) Second quarter EPS was 47 cents before the Interest Expense Revision. After adjusting for the revision, the company reported earnings of 43 cents per share which is the midpoint of previous guidance range of 40 cents to 45 cents.

(3) Excluding the Interest Expense Revision, full year 2011 EPS guidance is now expected to be $3.05 to $3.15, reflecting a 10 cent reduction to prior guidance on continuing pricing softness for Eastern Mediterranean sailings, partially offset by strong cost savings. The Interest Expense Revision is forecasted to reduce 2011 EPS by 20 cents resulting in full year 2011 EPS guidance of $2.85 to $2.95.

(4) The Board of Directors reinstated the quarterly dividend at a rate of 10 cents per share.

you know, at least they admitted their error instead of burying it in other accounting figures that barely anybody understands *cough* Enron *cough*

Shortly after taking delivery of the 122,000grt ship, Celebrity and parent company Royal Caribbean international christened the panamax ship. The event took place dockside in Hamburg, Germany.

The godmother of the 2,886-pax ship is Signature Travel Network president and CEO Michelle Morgan. The ship debuts several new venues for a solstice class ship. The Lawn Club Grill overlooks the real grass lawn, and features culinary demonstrations. Guests can watch demonstrations and cook their own cuts of meat with the careful eye of their expert chefs.

Another venue is The Alcoves. a series of eight cabanas lining the edge of the lawn. Each cabana comes with an interactive media guide, wifi, fresh fruit plates, hand-held fans, chilled towels and four bottles of water. A cabana attendant is available should guests require anything.

While talking to the crowd of lucky travel writers, Celebrity Cruises CEO, Dan Hanrahan, stated that after the Celebrity Reflection is launched in 2012, the line plans no more newbuilds. The Silhouette and Reflection will be the 4th and 5th ships in the highly acclaimed Solstice-class. Instead they will focus on upgrading their older tonnage in a process dubbed “Solsticizing.”

Celebrity Just took delivery of their newest addition to the Solstice class, the Silhouette.

The 1,033ft vessel will be christened in Hamburg tomorrow. At 144,000grt she will be the largest ship christened in the German port.

That’s RCI CEO Richard Fain the the middle there toasting the transfer of the funds (total amount of $750 million) and receiving the Ship in return.

Big money and Champagne; ah! the life of a Cruise line CEO.

More photos can be found here.

A new ship project like Project Sunshine is a remarkable phenomenon. The physical ship won’t be ours until well over three years from now. Yet we already live with an unending series of deadlines that drive our team as the customer for the project. The shipyard, Meyerwerft in the case of Sunshine, metes out these deadlines so that our actions support the successful completion of their incredibly complex undertaking to create a state of the art cruise ship on time and on budget.

Since I cannot divulge anything about the new ship concept, I will write a little bit about the process. If you know anything about our company, you know that our Chairman & CEO Richard Fain is intensely interested and involved in all of our new ship projects. The only reason I use the word intensely is because I cannot think of a more intense word to use to describe his level of attention, fascination with and contribution to our new ship.

We have a specialized department at the company for these mega-projects called Newbuild. I think the real name is Fleet Design & Newbuild but everyone just says Newbuild. The short-hand is a misnomer because the department is involved in much more than new ships including our Royal Advantage revitalization program which has Radiance of the Seas in the dry-dock in Victoria, British Columbia getting a make-over as I write this. But the new ship design and construction process is the key involvement that Executive VP Harri Kulovaara, chief designer Kelly Gonzalez and the rest of the Newbuild team focus on the most. Harri’s number one responsibility is to make sure the ships come out as amazingly as Richard has in mind for them to do.

Our design process is immersive for our Marketing and Operations teams. We believe that the teams who have responsibility for understanding consumer desires and delivering the products and services should be directly involved in the Newbuild creative and design processes. This may sound obvious but I believe different cruise companies have different opinions about who to involve and when to involve them. In our case, there is an Executive Steering committee for Project Sunshine that is led by Richard, Harri and myself that oversees all aspects of the effort. Most of my leadership team participates on the committee. We meet every month, usually for a full day, to go over critical aspects of the project.

Another typical aspect of our company’s approach to new cruise ship design is to utilize a roster of design firms under our central direction. There is no one master designer who takes the project and runs with it. Harri and Kelly are constantly working with the designers on the various ship features and then the designers regularly must present to the Steering Committee and receive our feedback. This interaction is always interesting. To paraphrase former football coach Bum Phillips, there are two types of designer/architects you never want to have on your team – the ones who always push back and the ones who never push back. In fact, we are extremely fortunate to have an incredibly talented roster of creative and committed professionals who are determined that their particular assignment will add something very special to Project Sunshine. Many of these designers have been with us on previous projects and know the drill well.

The Executive Steering committee normally meets in Miami which requires a number of people to fly regularly from the shipyard in Papenburg, Germany to our headquarters. However, in May the Miami-based committee members traveled to the shipyard and held our monthly meeting at Meyerwerft. We might do this once or twice per year and in this case we had a very successful session that has the team even more enthused about Project Sunshine if that is possible. It certainly underscores the reality of the project when you go to a working shipyard and go through everything in detail. Shipyard CEO Bernard Meyer advised me that the larger of his two enclosed building halls is either the largest building in Europe or second to the building hall for the A380 airplanes.

Before we left, Richard, Harri and I took a quick tour of the nearly completed Celebrity Silhouette, our sister brand’s 4th of five Solstice-class ships. We have a long way to go on Project Sunshine before similar finishing touches are applied. But rest assured that behind the scenes, a lot of dedicated and knowledgeable people are propelling us towards the finish line in 2014. Eventually, we’ll tell you all about it.

Following Carnival’s Spirit and Celebrity’s Solstice, Royal Caribbean announced that they will move their former flagship, Voyager of the Seas, to Asia starting in June of 2012. She’ll base out of Shanghai, China and sail everything from 4 to 10 night trips. Destinations will primarily be in Japan, Korea and China.

After her season in Asia, she’ll repo down to Sydney and sail Australia for the winter 2012.

Voyager was scheduled to be in the Med for that time frame. No word yet on if a replacement ship will take her place. The sluggish bookings for this summer may make a replacement ship unnecessary.