By Paul Motter, iCruise Blogger | November 07, 2017 ( Comments)
"Welcome to your Lady Ship" are the first words you are likely to hear when you board your first Virgin Cruises' voyage. The phrase “Lady Ship” will be used to refer to each of the three original vessels planned to be built for Virgin Cruises – the first new entry into the cruise market by a major corporation since Disney come in back in 1990. It is actually a “play on words” for the traditional address given to any lady of title in Britain, "Your Ladyship."
Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, is infamously dashing and manly. Branson never creates any new company without first deciding to do everything differently from the other brands already in the business. Virgin Group Ltd today owns and operates Virgin Atlantic (the airline), Virgin Galactic (the space odyssey adventure currently in development in Long Beach, California), Virgin Mobile (cell phones), Virgin Records and many, many more companies.
And so it will be with Virgin Cruises, set to sail out of Miami in 2020. The line will begin with just three identical ships, and the first exceptional thing about these cruise ships is that they will be for adults only. Branson says this decision was made after considerable consumer research that revealed that most cruisers prefer a more refined atmosphere with no children underfoot. This is actually not a stretch of logic since many upscale and luxury cruise lines already have a policy towards children that will “allow them but not encourage them.” Those lines basically say 'You can bring your children if you really want - but we won't provide any special services or activities for them." Branson merely chose to make the unstated policy official.
Virgin Cruises' Ship Design
It is really hard to say how the Virgin Cruises ships will look once they are ready to sail. All we have seen so far are some very basic exterior renderings that look eerily similar to a design that was unofficially drawn by the former Norwegian Cruise Line President, Colin Veitch. Veitch claims he was the original choice by Bransion to be the CEO and president of Virgin Cruises. But according to Branson, not long after the new cruise line was announced, that claim by Veitch was refuted. He was really just more of a consultant who took his a role a little too seriously. The company and Veitch settled out of court with a “no comment” agreement.
At the time, Branson said Veitch’s rendering was not anything like the ships he intends to build. However, to my eyes they look very similar except that Veitch's rendering showed a red ship and these show a white one.
The current president of Virgin Cruise is Tom McAlpin, who was also the first president of Disney Cruise Line. It is notable that when Disney first decided to start a cruise line they also publicly declared their cruise line would do many things differently from other cruise lines; for example they did not believe in having a cruise director, and they invented the idea of rotational dining where guests dine in different restaurants throughout the cruise but they keep the same waiters.
Ironically, within less than a year Disney found out it they do need cruise directors, and they discovered many of their other ideas were far more problematic than they originally predicted. And so Disney ended up adopting many of the policies every other cruise line.
The Virgin ship in the rendering is notably "swole" - a millennium term for "bulky," as in a person who works out with weights. It has a prow like the Titanic, with a straight edged bow that extends down from the top of the hull at a 90-degree angle to the water's surface, rather than curving inwards like the vast majority of other cruise ships already built (the same prow as appeared in the Veitch rendering). It also shows a lot of solid outside surfaces, rather the glass balcony banisters that are far more typical in modern cruise ships today.
By the way, Virgin Cruise balconies will be called “sea terraces.” The only other specific feature the line has identified is a logo of a pristine young mermaid with very long hair holding a large kerchief that says "Virgin” who will take her place on the bow of the ships. She was designed by London-based artist Toby Tinsley, who designed a similar female icon for Branson's Virgin Galactic space adventure enterprise.
One thing we can easily surmise is that the ships will have a great deal of public area for each passenger on board (also known as the "passenger/space ratio"). Each vessel will be 110,000-ton (a measure of size more than weight) - a size roughly equal to the Celebrity Cruise Solstice family, or the Grand Princess family. But the Virgin ships will only contain bedding for 2850 passengers; while those other ships this size can commonly carry 3,000 to 4,000 passengers.
Passengers aboard Virgin cruises will be referred to as "sailors," not as guests, cruisers or the original word from the grand old days of ocean liner days, "souls." The policy of not allowing children on board has been dubbed “adult by design.”
Shipyard: What else do we know? The ships will be built at the Fincantieri shipyards in Italy (near Trieste), the same shipyard most commonly used by the cruise lines owned by Carnival Corp. (the parent company of Carnival Cruise Lines, Cunard, Costa, Holland America, and Princess Cruises). Seabourn is also in that family, but their luxury ships are built in Genoa. Most of the ships built by competitors Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and MSC come from shipyards in Germany or Finland.
Finance: The cruise line is a joint partnership between the Virgin Group and the U.S. equity capital group Bain Capital (also known as the company that once had Mitt Romney on board, but today also owns Guitar Center and several other well-known American brands.)
Publicity: According to Branson, "She will be the most recognizable ship sailing the seven seas, delivering an irresistible sailor experience. We’re also committed to making sure our crew are the happiest at sea and will be proud to sail with us." The first step in building a new ship was just undertaken in Italy last week, laying a coin inside the keel – a traditional done for all sea-going vessels to ensure good luck and smooth sailing.
That was last week, October 2017. In the next three years we will see how Virgin Cruises progresses, and how the ships look when the debuts comes in 2020. Based on what has happened so far, and the adventures of Disney Cruises in creating a brand new cruise line, I expect a few surprises along the way.
