UPDATE [Feb 6, 2019]:The ship will be renamed Piano Land. She will be sailing for a new cruise line called Well Star Travel Cruise. As stated below it’s a joint venture between China Travel Services (providing sales) and COSCO (providing technical). She will be one of the very few, and largest ship sailing exclusively for the domestic Chinese market.
UPDATE [Oct 30, 2018]: It has now been announced that the new owners will be a joint venture between China Travel Services (CTS) and Chinese container giant China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO). They have signed on V.Ships Leisure to act as the technical managers.
Below originally published on: Jul 2, 2018 @ 16:04
P&O Cruises have announced that they will be saying goodbye to the 1995-built Oriana. She is the oldest ship in the fleet by at least 5 years. She will be transferred out of the fleet in August 2019. This is to make room for the Iona which will bring 5,000 more cabins to the fleet each week. This appears to be a bit of capacity control on P&O’s part.
Her sister, the Aurora, will go through an extensive drydocking next spring and will be relaunched into an adults only ship.
There is no new owner for her, but there’s rumors that she’s going to far east (probably China).