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should or must see the beauty in 95 per cent of modern cruise ships, inside or out, revel in their raison d'etre or hold them in the same esteem I do "classic" liners. And for all good reasons.

Old passenger ships looked better. They did important things like continents, peoples, enabling epic migrations, winning noble and
ignoble wars, symbolising cultures and nationalities, inspiring pride and affection even among people who never sailed in them. New
cruise ships do what? And why should I care? When I disembarked at St. Maarten from MAASDAM onto that swirling mass of fanny packs, shorts, "tees", waterbottles and sun visors, I sure wasn't saying "Gee isn't it great all these people have 'discovered' cruising". Indeed I was wondering just why had. Modern cruise ships
give lots of people pleasure, employ many and profit some. That's good. But then again so do the makers of toasters. That doesn't mean
I should be intrigued and interested in them. Indeed, your average toaster is on an aesthetic level with most cruise ships. But then
again they even make "retro" toasters that show more effort than entire fleets of cruise ships.

Me, I am going back to my article on M/S BERLIN.. she had more character, more to her credit than the entire Miami cruise industry today. How do I know this? Because I printed out 47 pages of articles from the New York Times on her c. 1954-66. How many pages do you think a WHAT'S IT OF THE SEAS will generate over her career?
As my college history professor said about history, it needs to pass the "Who Cares" test to be valid and valuable let alone read. It's Ellis Island vs. Half Moon Cay.

Now far be it from me to yet again stir up the old argument "old ships good - new ships bad" but I presume the statement was initially focussed
on new passenger vessels rather than all new vessels regardless of type.
Judging by much of the discussion on this site I think that one has to accept, whether one likes it or not, that there is a great deal of enthusiasm, interest, passion and nostalgia for the designs of passenger vessels that were built prior to the 1970s. Up until that time ships had been designed along what one might term classical lines, graceful curves, tiered decks, long fore decks, conventionally shaped funnels. Indeed only a couple of days ago even you were hankering after some other operator getting their hands on Saga Rose and returning her to her Scandinavian origins and filling her with your fantasy females all salsa dancing.
The simple fact is that new cruise ships do not appear to generate the same enthusiasm in people as ships did several decades ago. Perhaps this is based upon the simple fact that then people still thought in terms of liners, of family or friends sailing off to new lives in Canada, Australia, South Africa or where ever. The liners were a part of ones lives. Sometimes people took a cruise aboard one of these liners and then a cruise was something that people 'aspired to.' Now travel is so much easier, cheaper and thus available to all.
A cruise is no longer s omething to be done "when I retire" or "when I win the pools". It is something to do now, when ever it takes your fancy, it is cheap, the ships are glitzy and fun, it is like being in Las Vegas or Miami and yet different places as well. Its just like being in this really cool hotel and yet it moves.
And there you have it. For most people it is a hotel and does anyone work up any excitement about the hotel they might stay in in Torremolinos, Benidorm or even Ft Lauderdale .....?
Yes, you are right there are an enormous number of interesting ships out there in the world, of all kinds. Indeed, even some of the new cruise ships are interesting - they may well be pig-ugly but interesting non-the-less. I find the Celebrity Millennium-class ships compulsive photographic material, I wouldn't want to sail on one but looking at them is of great interest.
I suppose that someone out there thinks they are beautiful - beauty is after all in the eye of the beholder. But it is interesting to see there are those who mourn the loss of graceful-looking ships.

Let go of me! Let me get at that beehive!! Don't try to hold me back - I'll give it a kicking!

Mass leisure, it could be argued., has been the ultimate dream of mankind since the beginning of time. It's at the very heart of most belief systems (paradise is always a leiusure-orientated environment full of sumptuous baroque design, floaty clouds, plenty of food and drink, virgins gagging for a good rodgering, and all the rest. In the twentieth century, thanks to the application of ingenious technologies, such leisure became a temporary reality for ever larger groups of people. Tasting paradise in a mass resort hotel or cruise ship more or less defines our era.

So, that's why one should care. The Carnival Destiny is important.
We may not find it conventionally 'beautiful', but it has many very carefully designed elements to bring pleasure to the masses. And a very fabulous-looking funnel!

Right, that's the beehive in splinters and I'm braced for a good stinging by the angry swarm.

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[ 11-14-2007: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

[ 11-14-2007: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

Comparing the old liners to the cruiseships of our time is simply not logical. It's like comparing a horse and a car. The meaning of the passengership has changed so much that it would be nonsense to have the same kind of ship being built now like they were built in the 1920's. The world of passengerships has always been a market where profits have to be made. It's not just a voyage to nostalgia.
When steamships made an end to the sailingera i think a lot of people disliked this new form of transport because of the smoke and fire involved. A lot of people chose to travel by sailingship a long time after steam was introduced. They just hated these new ships.
Big liners like the ones from the 1920's and 1930's were also not liked by everybody. A lot of people wanted to travel with the slower but more personal intermediate ships, because of the big crowds at the expressships.
Now we dislike the modern ships because they are not as beautifull as the old ones.

Changes has always been part of the passengership industry and they will continue to happen. When you compare each generation of passengership throughout history, we'll see that their looks changed every 20 years. Not a little, but radical.

But when we talk about old and new, we mean mostly just the biggest ships like Grand Class, Destiny Class and Vista Class. Do not forget that in our time we have a lot more to choose from. No way you can compare Sea Cloud 2 to Carnival Destiny, or Grand Princess to Sea Dream I or II, Queen Elizabeth 2 or Regatta.

So many different kinds of cruiseships are built nowadays that just talking about New vs Old is just not right. The diversity is just so big that i think that thought is just very one-sided.
When you looks at passengerships like the Disney ships, the Crystal Symphony, Oriana, Sea Cloud 2, the Seabourn sisters, Artemis i think in our time a lot of nice ships have been built.

How many of us have talked with friends, relatives, neighbors who have taken a cruise within, say, the past five years, and have found that said individual did not have a clue as to the name of the ship or the line on which they cruised? With me, it is a significant number. Should we really be crushed, to realize how parochial our interests are in that great big world out there? No. To each his own.

But yet, they did have a good time. they did spend their money. They probably know the name of at least one of the ports they visited, say "Acapulco, Alaska." But they did not care, they had a good time, and so be it.

Remember. somewhere out there there are purists who are shocked, shocked, that none of us remember the tail numbers of the aircraft that transported us to our last port of departure!