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Originally posted by shipsnorway:
My bet is that BLEU DE FRANCE goes to Saga, but OCEAN DREAM is anyone's guess. Her buyers could be anything from Louis Cruise Lines to Kyma Ship Management...

Has MAJESTY OF THE SEAS been refurbished on the same scale as SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS was a few years prior to leaving the Royal Caribbean fleet?

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The Majesty of the Seas was actually done MUCH nicer than Sovereign and Monarch (in my opinion). I have photography of her here :

Steve - Thanks for the photos. I can't remember if I'd seen them before, but either way she looks great. Still recognizably the same ship I remember from a decade ago, just brought up to date.

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Originally posted by dougnewman:
I think there is a conspiracy to get all the ships I've ever sailed in into the Pullmantur fleet. HORIZON, ZENITH, NORDIC EMPRESS, SKY PRINCESS and now MAJESTY OF THE SEAS? And I've been on two ships after they left Pullmantur, OCEANIC and AZAMARA JOURNEY. Never stepped foot on an actual Pullmantur ship though!

Steve - Thanks for the photos. I can't remember if I'd seen them before, but either way she looks great. Still recognizably the same ship I remember from a decade ago, just brought up to date.

But, and forgive my ignorance, what was done differently in this refit than the ones SOVEREIGN and MONARCH got?

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Doug : I sailed on the "new" MJ just months after being on the "new" MN. The MJ just looked fresher, brighter. She has Johnny Rockets and the MN does not.

One thing most anyone would probably not notice except for a ship's safety system freak like me is that the MN did not receive a hi-Fog system where the MJ did.

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Originally posted by shipcafe:
One thing most anyone would probably not notice except for a ship's safety system freak like me is that the MN did not receive a hi-Fog system where the MJ did.

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I was actually thinking about sprinklers as I was typing that so it is not only you. These (and NORDIC EMPRESS) are the last ships I can think of that weren't built with sprinklers.

MJ was the last of a lot of things really. Last "real" Viking Crown lounge, last RCCL ship with the old style, very small cabins, last without a two-deck high dining room, last that wasn't diesel-electric (or gas turbine-electric in the case of the RADIANCE-class), and so on.

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Originally posted by shipcafe:
Have you seen my YouTube channel?

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Most all of my YouTube videos are not really "cruise" related but just ship's whistles, safety systems in action, etc.

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Originally posted by mike sa:
And of course her new name will be "Majesty" ! How lazy.

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Pullmantur has always had the reputation of using either very bizarre names, or part of a ship's former name. This is nothing new for the line and started well before RCCL took over.

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Originally posted by mike sa:
Well you have to say that whoever is running RCI's second hand ship buying department is sure not that good at it - first Fairsky, then Tropicale and even Europa (fab ship but surely not suited to Pullmantur) - well at least Carnival is laughing all the way to the bank.

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I know you would like to blame RCCL for all Pullmantur's woes, but the fact is that HOLIDAY DREAM and SKY WONDER were purchased before RCCL bought Pullmantur. Sorry to disappoint you.

OCEAN DREAM was purchased by Pullmantur under RCCL's control, and for what reason I don't know?

Not to worry though, Carnival Corp. has plenty of it's own second hand dog-ships to contend with.

I don't recall Carnival specifically buying any second hand clunkers although they do have a few of their own, or that they inherited when buying a line, that are well past their sell date. ??

Surely Pullmantur's only big problems have been old expensive to run ships and too many ships too fast and of course sometimes the wrong ships.

Moving Majesty and indeed Monarch would be good for both companies and then move both Zenith and her sister to the French line ? I would have thought that 3 big ships plus Empress would give them enough capacity and lower costs giving them a base to increase fares and grow from that base. And of course they would then all have names that relate to each other !

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Originally posted by mike sa:
Well you have to say that whoever is running RCI's second hand ship buying department is sure not that good at it - first Fairsky, then Tropicale and even Europa (fab ship but surely not suited to Pullmantur) - well at least Carnival is laughing all the way to the bank.

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The only ships that came with Pullmantur that I expect RCCL ever wanted to keep were the two R ships that are with Azamara now. And Azamara was a case of, "Oops, we don't seem to have been able to buy Oceania, now what?"

As far as I can remember, RCCL has only ever bought two ships from other operators in its entire history - SUN BAY and PACIFIC STAR.

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Originally posted by mike sa:
I don't recall Carnival specifically buying any second hand clunkers although they do have a few of their own, or that they inherited when buying a line, that are well past their sell date. ??

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Originally posted by mike sa:
Surely Pullmantur's only big problems have been old expensive to run ships and too many ships too fast and of course sometimes the wrong ships.

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Originally posted by mike sa:
Moving Majesty and indeed Monarch would be good for both companies and then move both Zenith and her sister to the French line ? I would have thought that 3 big ships plus Empress would give them enough capacity and lower costs giving them a base to increase fares and grow from that base.

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I don't know if CDF could absorb the capacity of both HORIZON - sorry, PACIFIC DREAM - and ZENITH, though.

[ 11-28-2009: Message edited by: dougnewman ]