She won an Oscar for her stunning portrayal of the Queen in the film of the same name.
And now Dame Helen Mirren has been deemed regal enough to perform a duty often reserved for Royalty: she is to launch her first ship.
But in a break with tradition, the 62-year-old movie, stage and TV star will not be swinging a bottle of champagne against the hull of the new P&O cruise ship Ventura, which is the largest liner designed exclusively for the British market.
Instead she will name the ship, but then hand the bubbly to a squadron of Royal Marine Commandos, who will abseil down the hull, smashing the champagne as they go.
It is a move designed to ensure there is no repeat of the “Curse of Camilla” - when Prince Charles’s wife failed to break the bottle at the launch of another cruise ship in December.
Topics: 'Ventura'
“Passengers on Britain’s largest & newest superliner Ventura will be able to fly high above sea level at Cirque Ventura – the first circus school at sea. Located high up on deck 19, highly skilled performers will run workshops with a host of exciting activities on offer including tight wire, acro balance, clowning, break-dancing, juggling and stilt walking. In addition, the area will be equipped with two thrilling
centerpieces – four bungee trampolines, which will enable passengers to soar 60 meters above sea level, and a flying trapeze.
P&O Cruises managing director, Nigel Esdale said: “Cirque Ventura is set to be a firm favorite and is just one of a host of innovations onboard Ventura. Any guest aged eight and over will have the chance to ‘run away with the circus’ and learn some innovative skills.
“We are delighted to be working with the Generating Company and look forward to seeing Ventura’s circus school come alive with all the excitement and color of a contemporary circus.”
Cirque Ventura, onboard Ventura in April 2008, will be operated in partnership with leading UK circus skills powerhouse the Generating Company.”
Photo by squaw
While P&O’s splashy new-build Ventura, due out in spring 2008, has been monopolizing much of the line’s attention, Artemis, the smaller, older fleetmate, has been the beneficiary of a significant sprucing up.
The 20-plus-year-old ship just completed a 15-day facelift in the German seaport of Bremerhaven. The refurb saw the public rooms outfitted with new carpeting and furnishings, and the Horizon Lounge and Coral Dining Rooms were both given an updated look (see photo of Coral Dining Room).
Staterooms were also updated to include brand new eight-inch “slumberland” mattresses, Egyptian cotton linen, new bed presentation with stylish bed runners and scatter cushions.
The refurbishment came just in time for its 84-night South America cruise, which departed on 17 December.
“While P&O’s splashy new-build Ventura, due out in spring 2008, has been monopolizing much of the line’s attention, Artemis, the smaller, older fleetmate, has been the beneficiary of a significant sprucing up. The 20-plus-year-old ship just completed a
15-day facelift in the German seaport of Bremerhaven. The refurb saw the public rooms outfitted with new carpeting and furnishings, and the Horizon Lounge and Coral Dining Rooms were both given an updated look (see photo of Coral Dining Room).
Staterooms were also updated to include brand new eight-inch “slumberland” mattresses, Egyptian cotton linen, new bed presentation with stylish bed runners and scatter cushions. The refurbishment came just in time for its 84-night South America cruise, which departed on 17 December. Originally built in 1984 as Princess Cruises’ Royal Princess, the ship was transferred to the P&O fleet in 2005, and now serves as the line’s pathfinding vessel, featuring itineraries in South America, Europe and the Caribbean.”
Photo by newsimg.bbc.co.uk
Hell’s Kitchen star chef Marco Pierre White is set to add his expertise to two restaurants on board P&O Cruises superliners Aurora and Oceana.
The chef is already working on The White Room and Frankies Bar and Grill for the newest ship Ventura which is set to launch in April next year.
Aurora’s Cafe Bordeaux will have a French bistro style menu created by the Michelin-starred chef and Oceana’s Cafe Jardin will be offering a Frankie’s Bar & Grill menu with Italian dishes. Cafe Jardin will be upgraded during the ship’s refit in March 2008.
White said: “I have very much enjoyed working with P&O Cruises creating the White Room and Frankie’s Bar & Grill for Ventura, so I leapt at the chance when invited to expand the Marco Pierre White experience to Aurora and Oceana.”
Photo by thisislondon.co.uk
Ship outfitters Trimline have landed their biggest ever soft furnishing manufacturing contract after P&O Cruises awarded the Southampton firm a deal to make more than 18,000 items for its latest superliner Ventura.
The 115,000 tonnes Ventura (right), will make its debut in Southampton in April 2008 and is aimed to be “the most family friendly superliner sailing from the UK”.
Currently in the final stages of construction in Italy, Ventura is being designed for British passengers and Trimline will supply the soft furnishings for more than 1,500 passenger cabins and over 600 crew cabins.
Among the items being supplied are window curtains, bed valances, bed throws and scatter cushions. In addition, a Trimline team of about ten specialists will visit the ship to fit curtain tracks in all the passenger cabins.
Once complete, the furnishings will be shipped out to Italy in a fleet of containers ready for the Trimline crew to complete the finishing touches before the ship sails to Southampton for her maiden cruise.
Although better known for refurbishing and refitting passenger and other vessels, Trimline has gained a strong reputation for supplying soft furnishings with previous projects including Cunard’s vast Queen Mary 2, where more than 12,000 items were made for passenger cabins.
This year will end with a record number of Britons taking cruise holidays with the majority of passengers having passed through Southampton.
It is expected that a record-breaking total of 1.35 million people from the UK will have stepped aboard the increasing number of cruise ships during 2007. Pedictions for next year estimate the number of passengers will grow by a further 14 per cent to 1.55m.
Demand is now so high the port of Southampton is set to see the development of a fourth passenger cruise terminal aimed at boosting dockside capacity.
These figures are set to grow with the arrival in Southampton next month of Cunard’s brand new vessel, Queen Victoria, while in spring 2008 P&O Cruises will introduce the giant Ventura, the largest cruise ship ever to be built specifically for the home market, and Royal Caribbean International’s vast, Independence of the Seas, the biggest vessel of its type in the world, will also arrive in the city.
Norwegian Cruise Line is taking a whole new approach to cruise ships. It has created a hype website for its new Girl of the fleet.
“Ships are commonly referred to as “she,” but Norwegian Cruise Line’s taking this maritime custom a step further with the launch of its Norwegian Gem, coining it the “It”
Girl of the fleet and creating a special Web site — gemitgirl.com — dedicated to hyping its launch.
These smaller Web sites, sometimes called “sitelets,” are created to explore a topic, concept or an idea too specific for a “regular” site — and are a hot trend in the cruise world. P&O recently launched virtualventura.co.uk to generate excitement for its upcoming Ventura and Royal Caribbean introduced it’s largest-ever Freedom of the Seas via freedomoftheseas.com.
NCL’s gemitgirl.com offers all of the nitty-gritty details you’ll also find on ncl.com like deck plans and itineraries, but is more interactive. It’s actually designed to look a bit like a MySpace profile: on the left, a big splashy photo and fun stats (favorite food: escargot from Le Bistro); on the right, a blog and select photos of her “friends” (here called the Entourage).
To join the “It” Girl’s Entourage you’ll need to create your own digital avatar, or virtual self. A few mouse clicks confirm your skin tone, eye color, hair, outfit and backdrop. Once created, your avatar is automatically pictured in the Entourage Gallery (look for me, TravelMel!). At the beginning of the process, you can choose to enter a weekly drawing to become “It” Girl’s BFF (Best Friend Forever) of the Week; the weekly prize is a $50 American Express gift card. You can also enter on the site to win a Nintendo Wii.”
Photo by Gemitgirl
Continuing the cruise industry’s slow embrace of the latest Web trends — building individualized Web sites to coincide with ship launches, “friending” cruisers on MySpace, creating user-generated photo galleries — P&O Cruises has introduced its own blog. In August, “The Making of Metropolis” became part of virtualventura.co.uk. That site showcases P&O’s Ventura, due out in 2008 and one of the U.K.’s most highly anticipated new-builds in years.
The blog will document a film crew as they gather international video content to be featured on a 20-ft.-long video wall in Metropolis, a top-deck, back-of-the-ship nightspot. The wall-screen will display a series of fluidly shifting, high-definition cityscapes from Paris, London, New York, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Sydney.
The project is huge, requiring extensive global travel to capture 10 hours of potentially usable footage from each city on each camera (three are needed; the footage will be fused together in order to span the 20-ft. wall). Therefore, P&O has decided to record the project for posterity with a bi-weekly blog written by Duncan Swinhoe, the owner and director of the production company responsible for capturing the footage.
It is estimated that the seven-city tour will result in the gathering of 10 million megabytes of footage. To put that in perspective, that’s enough memory to store 160 million of Cruise Critic’s large home page photos.
Expected Cruise Launches for the next 3 years. This is a list of all expected cruise ships including the time they are set for launch. Though its hard to predict the next five years. These charts give a good estimate of what to expect.
“Expected Launch in 2008
|
Carrier and vessel name |
Passengers |
|
Carnival Cruises Splendor — July |
3006 |
|
Celebrity Cruises Solstice — Fall |
2850 |
|
|
2044 |
|
MSC Cruises Poesia — March |
2500 |
|
MSC Cruises Fantasia — Spring |
3300 |
|
P & O Cruises |
3100 |
|
Royal Caribbean Cruises |
3634 |
Expected Launch in 2009
|
Carrier and vessel name |
Passengers |
|
Carnival Cruises Carnival Dream — October |
3652 |
|
Celebrity Cruises Equinox — Summer |
2850 |
|
MSC Cruises Serenata — Spring |
3300 |
|
Royal |
5400 |
|
Silversea Cruises Unnamed — Year-end |
540 |
Expected Launch in 2010
|
Carrier and Vessel name |
Passengers |
|
Royal |
5400 |
|
MSC Cruises Unnamed |
2500 |
|
Celebrity Cruises Eclipse — Summer |
2850 |
Expected Launch in 2011
|
Carrier and Vessel name |
Passengers |
|
Carnival Cruises Carnival Magic — June |
3652 |
|
Celebrity Cruises Unnamed — Fall |
2850 |
|
Disney Cruises Unnamed |
2500 |
Expected Launch in 2012
|
Carrier and Vessel name |
Passengers |
|
Disney Cruises Unnamed |
2500″ |
