NEWS UPDATE: Pacific Encounter is on her way! NCL hits an iceberg, Vanuatu opens to cruising & more!

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Passengers onboard NCL’s Norwegian Sun got an icy reception this week in Alaska, when their ship collided with an iceberg. In reality, the 78k tonne ship hit what’s known as a growler which is in essence a smaller piece of an iceberg. Thankfully, the ship sustained only minor damage and divers confirmed that the ship was seaworthy - the cruise was cut short and the ship made its way to Seattle for repairs.

In exciting news for our region, Vanuatu has finally reopened to vaccinated international travellers both by air and sea. Cruise ships will once again be allowed to visit the country’s beautiful island ports. The news comes at the perfect time, following the announcement that cruising can resume in Fiji and a couple of months before the Australian summer cruise season begins. Next on the list is New Caledonia of course. The country’s most recent update on June 21st indicated that Australian travellers arriving by air were still required to have a RAT 2 days after arrival. The hope is that New Caledonia joins Vanuatu and Fiji in allowing cruise ships into their ports within the coming months - if that doesn’t happen, I suspect that there will be some changes to South Pacific itineraries scheduled for later in the year but I have faith that they will open in time for our peak cruise season.

Disney cruise lines newest cruise ship, Disney Wish was officially Christened this week. The 144k tonne ship was first announced in 2016. Wish debuts new interactive experiences for kids of all ages taking advantage of augmented reality features of current smartphones to bring the ship to life in new and exciting ways including battling an infamous Disney villain. The ship is the 5th in the Disney fleet and will soon be joined by two additional vessels in 2024 and 2025, with the larger fleet hopefully paving the way for the cruise line to send a ship down under within the next few years.

Last week, the US arm of Carnival Cruises announced a joint venture with Costa Cruises. The new offering will see two Costa branded cruise ships sail as Carnival ships - according to Carnival president, Christine Duffy, the arrangement “will bring Carnival’s guests the ambiance and beauty of Italy. We’re going to invite our guests to Choose Fun with Carnival, Italian Style!” Costa Venezia and Costa Firenze will be sailing from New York in 2023 and California in 2024 respectively. Although it’s very common for ships to be transferred between cruise lines, especially within the Carnival Corporation umbrella, the idea of a two brand mash up is as far as I know, a new one. The Costa ships will retain their branding and design, although Carnival staff will be onboard. The ships themselves are relatively new to Costa and are part of Carnival’s exisiting Vista Class, so they will be familiar to Carnival regulars.

P&O Australia’s Pacific Adventure sailed to Trieste, Italy during the week and met up with sister ship, Pacific Encounter. The ships were docked side by side, making for quite the sight. The meeting provided us with an opportunity to see the ships up close, including this detail from Pacific Adventure. It had been rumoured that Adventure’s smoke stack was going to be reduced in height so the ship could sail under the Sydney Harbour bridge and dock at White Bay cruise terminal, effectively allowing her to operate on a more flexible schedule than ships limited to berthing East of the bridge. This footage confirms that the stack has been reduced in height, especially when compared with the height of sister ship Pacific Encounter’s stack as seen here. We can also see that Adventure doesn’t yet have her twin racing water slides installed and based on the materials on the dock, it’s anticipated that the installation will take place in Italy before she too begins to make her way home to Australia. Pacific Encounter is due to set sail from Brisbane next month.

Royal Caribbean were one of the first to debut high speed internet which they dubbed Voom, and now the lime is looking to connect with Elon Musk’s Starlink service to bring even faster and more stable connections to their ships. Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas has been decked out with Starlink equipment and Royal Caribbean Blog contributor Nicole Feist documented the extraordinary speeds. Using the top tier Surf and Stream internet option, Nicole achieved a download speed of almost 80mbps, which for most of us in Australia is not even possible without opting for a top tier NBN plan. This paints a good picture of things to come for those of us that need to be connected to home or work.

Thanks for watching!