For those who do not know, the Empress was RCI's Empress of the Seas (ex Nordic Empress) up to a few weeks ago. I was wondering why I was not seeing her here on Saturdays but she obviously was in drydock somewhere.

She is now carrying a magenta/red funnel with a large white 'ñ' on it. She starts a new life.

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Originally posted by Trish:
link taken from another site -- enjoy

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Originally posted by Waynaro:
Interesting that EMPRESS doesn't have the big red block "pullmantur cruises" on the hull. There is just a smaller
pullmantur" towards the lower aft.

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On OCEANIC it is bigger, while on ZENITH the "cruises" from the previous livery has just been painted out.

Pam

[ 03-28-2008: Message edited by: PamM ]

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Originally posted by dougnewman:
This is also the case on SKY WONDER.

On OCEANIC it is bigger, while on ZENITH the "cruises" from the previous livery has just been painted out.

ZENITH
SKY WONDER
OCEANIC

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Originally posted by Waynaro:
YIKES! SKY WONDER looks hideous with the blue boot topping, blue name, and the orange funnel.

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IMO, OCEANIC looks the smartest in the new Pullmantur livery. She only has a relatively darker blue boot topping, white hull, and a red funnel. With the ZENITH, theres the black mast and name, white hull, and silly red funnel cage. Now the SKY WONDER, the funnel color seem to be off. It looks red-orange, whereas the other two has a darker red color. Also, the WHOLE funnel is the same color!

That said, I think anything would be an improvement over the old livery, which to me just looked amateurish. The worst was when the old Star Cruises funnel livery was partially left on HOLIDAY DREAM - see here.

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Originally posted by cruiseshipluver:
Yesterday (03/27/08) the m/v Empress sailed into the Bridgetown harbour with two of her former fleetmates, Serenade of the Seas and Legend of the Seas.

For those who do not know, the Empress was RCI's Empress of the Seas (ex Nordic Empress) up to a few weeks ago. I was wondering why I was not seeing her here on Saturdays but she obviously was in drydock somewhere.

She is now carrying a magenta/red funnel with a large white 'ñ' on it. She starts a new life.

cruiseshipluver

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Much better livery, if you must splash the company logo all over the side of your ships then this is better than the previous version. Empress looks quite classy.

I think she looks better than she did as EMPRESS OF THE SEAS, when she was just too plain-looking. However, I think she looked best by far in her original livery as NORDIC EMPRESS. Here is a nice photo in her original form. Compare with this after she was re-painted and re-named.

She is actually a very nice ship internally. Originally her interior layout strongly reflected her intended purpose for short three- and four-night cruises; it was very much like a very nice cruise ferry with a big show lounge and night club, another (secondary) show lounge and only one smaller bar, along with a very big conference center, the biggest casino at sea - strategically designed so that one had to walk through it on both main public room decks - and fairly large duty-free and spa/gym areas. Today this has been totally reworked: the casino is now on one deck only, taking over the old video arcade and photo gallery, with those relocated to the former lower level of the casino along with a coffee bar; the main conference room has become an alternative restaurant while the smaller boardroom is now a library; a card room, internet cafe, art gallery (for the ubiquitous art auctions) and concierge lounge were created on the upper levels of the atrium and the gym was moved to the upper level of the oversized, two-deck nightclub to make way for an expanded spa. The result should be a ship with more than enough public space, whereas the original version was very much suited to short "party" cruises but not really the longer ones (seven nights or even longer) that she has mostly done later in her career.

Pullmantur appears to have tweaked this further be shrinking the casino yet again to create a new kids' center, moving the gym out of the nightclub into the old one, and moving the library up to the atrium and replacing the existing one with a cigar lounge, which will probably create the best version of this ship yet. Each successive refit seems to carve more and more different public rooms out of this ship - a testament to how versatile her layout is, intentional or not.

Her only real flaw, I guess, is that most of her cabins are quite small - serviceable, but small, especially the insides. (They are, however, not as tiny as on the SOVEREIGN-class ships - designed at the same time for cruises twice as long!)

It is easy to forget now that this ship was really state-of-the-art when new - she is the first I can think of with a two-deck-high dining room with a glass wall at the stern, for example, and also the first to have an atrium that spanned every passenger deck, with a glass dome atop. As she nears 20 years old, I think she looks pretty good for an old girl.

I agree she was an impressive ship when introduced, and still retains a certain charm about her. It's nice there is only one of her, which in itself makes EMPRESS rather unusual.

I have always thought the dining room and atrium were very impressive spaces. They still are today and can hold their own against many newbuilds.

Besides her cabins being small, a lack of deck space has always plagued EMPRESS. EMPRESS does not have a 'sun walk' above the pool deck like most ships. As Doug mentions, she was custom designed for the short cruise market. A large pool and pool deck were not considered a priority as designers felt most people would be ashore in Nassau. The ship was designed to spend most of her time in port. Of course things have changed considerably in her career.

Her biggest competitor upon introduction was Carnival's FANTASY. Two brand new ship designs destined for the short-cruise market. At the time it was pretty unheard of to place a brand new ship into the short cruise market. Actually it still is. I remember there was a lot of publicity and comparisons made between the two at the time.

The dining room and atrium are both extremely impressive, especially the dining room. It's nice to see that the original furniture has been kept (ROYAL VIKING SUN had the same ones, but they're long gone, gotten rid of by Seabourn). The only problem there is that when the ship is reversing the vibration is easily the worst I've ever felt on any ship... Not good when the ship happens to be leaving port in the middle of dinner.

I have also thought her Windjammer Café is one of the nicer buffet restaurants at sea, the design having been basically copied for the Vision-class ships as well as the SUN PRINCESS-class.

Rich - Not only was she ground-breaking at the time, she is still really the only ship of her kind, designed for short cruises. The only ship I can think of built since then with something of a similar purpose would be BIRKA PARADISE, but of course that was designed for even shorter (one-night) cruises and in a very different climate.

They both ran a Monday/Friday rotation and one of my earliest cruising memories, a month or so before my sixth birthday, is of looking out the window of our cabin on NORDIC EMPRESS as we returned to Miami on a Friday morning in February 1994 and seeing the glowing, blinking, multi-color fiber-optic-lit FANTASY looking like she was arriving from another planet!

That my second cruise, meaning I was already a full-fledged ship nut, and the other highlight of that morning was seeing the grand old BRITANIS arriving, the 180-degree opposite of FANTASY. Whereas FANTASY looked like she had sailed in from another world, BRITANIS looked she had sailed in from 1932! A month or two later, she would be out of service, unbeknownst to us at the time.

That year, 1994, there was quite a menagerie of new and old ships on short cruises from Miami. All younger than six years old were FANTASY, NORDIC EMPRESS, SEAWARD and newest of all, ROYAL MAJESTY. Meanwhile, one could also sail in the ancient BRITANIS or DOLPHIN IV. And that's not even mentioning the ships that did longer cruises from Miami - SOVEREIGN and MAJESTY OF THE SEAS NORWAY, SEABREEZE I, the short-lived AMERICAN ADVENTURE, the new and ultra-stylish COSTA ROMANTICA and ALLEGRA... What a collection of ships!

Now you're getting me all nostalgic... My 20th birthday is on Monday and I feel old already !

[ 03-29-2008: Message edited by: dougnewman ]

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Originally posted by dougnewman:

That year, 1994, there was quite a menagerie of new and old ships on short cruises from Miami. All younger than six years old were FANTASY, NORDIC EMPRESS, SEAWARD and newest of all, ROYAL MAJESTY. Meanwhile, one could also sail in the ancient BRITANIS or DOLPHIN IV. And that's not even mentioning the ships that did longer cruises from Miami - SOVEREIGN and MAJESTY OF THE SEAS NORWAY, SEABREEZE I, the short-lived AMERICAN ADVENTURE, the new and ultra-stylish COSTA ROMANTICA and ALLEGRA... What a collection of ships!
[ 03-29-2008: Message edited by: dougnewman ]

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And that really sums up the strange, transitional state of cruising in North America during the late '80s, early '90s. On one hand, you had all of these old, traditional, converted liners serving duty as cruise ships. At the same time there was an exciting buzz with all the new, state-of-the-art purpose-built cruise ships coming on line. Look at Admiral Cruises themselves, operating a ship from 1944 and one from 1955--of course they were excited about their new FUTURE SEAS!

Now, we lament the loss of the old liners, with lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the demise of the last few in operation. But 20 years ago, I was spending my vacation time sailing on as many classics as possible. My friends and colleagues thought I was crazy to want to cruise on an old AMERIKANIS or a CARLA C, when I could go on a brand new SONG OF AMERICA or NOORDAM. I did also sail on the new ships, which were exciting at the time because they were so different from the status quo. But I am sooooo glad that I sailed on literally dozens of the classic ships before they disappeared.

Ofcourse, Empress name was just painted over and the 'of the Seas' part has been whited out. No time of grind off those letters.

Empress has replaced Holiday Dream as far as I was told.