Fortunately ORIANA is still in service and still pretty much unchanged from her original form, and I hope that is still the case in another 14 years. And hopefully by then I will have sailed in her.

To me it was a beautifull ship to look at back then.

It is amazing to think it was designed and entered service at the same time as the Sun Princess, Oriana is far more beautifull, has larger cabins, has the spectacular terrace decks, the pool and spa area is larger on Oriana. Oriana is even the same length, width, and height in decks as the Sun Princess and has a heavier deadweight, but Sun Princess ends up with 77,000 gross tons and Oriana 69,000 gross tons. When you look at both ships today Oriana appears in much better condition.

I taped it from the TV at the time & I watch it often (I have just watched it yet again). At the time, the Oriana was one of the newest cruise ships & features in the series. There is footage of her in the Suez Canal & in Sydney on her maiden voyage.

The Carnival Destiny also features, as the first passenger ship to exceed the size of the Queen Elizabeth & also to exceed 100,000 tons. On my recent Regal Empress trip, we came into Nassau along with Carnival Destiny. I am sure that her historical importance was as lost on most of those present, as was that of Regal Empress!

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Originally posted by NAL:
Has anyone seen drawings of how ORIANA will look with her new built up stern? What will be the new capacity? It has been described as a similar stern to EURODAM.

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Originally posted by bmajor:
[QUOTE] I was only 14 when I saw Oriana for the first time in 1996 on its Maiden World Voyage in Sydney. 18th February 1996 it was a Sunday and the ship arrived late as it had to sail around a massive storm in the Tasman on its way from New Zealand. I still have the brochure of the Maiden World Voyage.
[QUOTE]

There was no storm Sutho...
What a nonsense
We were on the maiden voyage from Auckland to Sydney.
It was a stage managed event on behalf of P&O.
We actualy waited outside the heads until the helicopters and the TV cams were ready for us to enter the harbour, and then on demand, the ship made its entrance, welcomed by a swarm of small boats.
Excellent marketing by P&O.

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Well 13 years is a long time to remember details, but it was originally scheduled to come in early. I still have the brochure and all news reports in the lead up to its arrival kept indicating it would be arriving late. The weather was foul here the week before it came and finally on the Sunday it was a great day.

It doesnt matter why it was late to me because it was good to have the ship come in to Sydney at the time it did and see it come through the harbour and dock in day light.

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Originally posted by bcscot:
Channel 4, (in the UK) came out with a brilliant four part documentary series in 1998/9, called 'The Liners', based on a book by Rob McAuley.

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Yes it was excellent. You can sometimes find it on UK DVD (2 seperate discs, four episodes) via Amazon etc.

[ 04-15-2009: Message edited by: Malcolm @ cruisepage ]

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Originally posted by NAL:
From what I gather, the plans are to add two decks on the top, and to add cabins at the stern which will be balcony cabins.

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Frankly it doesn't sound likely to me - I can almost believe building up the stern but adding two decks to the ship?

Can she possibly have the deadweight capacity to absorb changes like this?

I certainly hope this is not true, I can deal with "clip-on balconies" but it sounds like they are going to really murder the ship.

Before we know it we are going to wind up with another one of these! (It used to look like this!)

But really, I think P&O ought to tread lightly on what it does with this ship ... as far as I know she has a very, very loyal following. I'm not sure how kindly they'd take to massive changes.

[ 04-15-2009: Message edited by: VanGogh (Tom...) ]

In 2005 around that time Artemis did a Grand Voyage of that similar length around Soth America across the Pacific, NZ, Australia and back through the Panama. Maybe an early long voyage.