New Cruise ship Concept

[FIRELT5]

Ships may be getting bigger, but a new cruise ship planned for Japanese

owners will dwarf anything in service today.

 

Princess Kaguya is described as an 'International Urban Cruise Ship' and

will be 500m long with over 20 decks. The 370,000gt vessel will be able to

accommodate 8,400 passengers and 4,000 crew, with cabins being housed in

three 'hotel blocks'.

 

 

Freedom of the Seas, at 154,400gt, is the largest cruise ship presently in

service, but is less than half the size of the Japanese giant. And Cunard's

Queen Mary 2 is even smaller, at 148,530gt and with a passenger capacity of

just 2,620.

 

 

More than 50 restaurants and 9,500m² of lounge and bar space will cater for

passengers' needs aboard the Princess Kasuga, and diesel electric propulsion

will give the ship a speed of 20 knots. It is hoped to place an order for

the ship by the end of 2008, with delivery expected in 2012.

 

 

http://www.princesskaguya.com/

[Krazy Kruizers]

No way do I want to be on that ship!! Way too large for us!!

[FIRELT5]

Could you imagine embark/Debark process ????

[serendipity1499]

No way do I want to be on that ship!! Way too large for us!!

 

I second that! OMG That's Crazy!:eek: :eek:

[Old As Dirt Mom]

Thanks Firelt5, very interesting! I'm still looking at your link, but I was reading where they describe this behemoth as being "an urban extension of any port they visit". HA HA, what port city is going to want to deal with an instant population explosion?!! I bet this floating monstrosity ends up never going anywhere, because no port city will permit it to dock.:eek:

 

PS See, it helps if I read the entire thing.....apparently the concept is for the ship to indeed become part of the city where it docks. The shops, theatres, restaurants, amusement venues, etc. are going to be open to the locals. So it really will be an urban port extension.....

WOW!

[jtl513]

I would never go on a ship with more than double the number of people as the town I live in! Maybe the Japanese are used to such mob-scene conditions, and it might work there, but I sincerely hope they don't try to use it in small-port itineraries, such as Alaska or Hawaii. :eek: :eek:

[jhannah]

Well, an extension of the home port would work for the Japaneese. Their available land is virtually all used up. But I agree that cruising on it would be unthinkable for me.

[Jade13]

No way. Have you sen how snall the hotels are in Japan? I'd be curious as to the cabin sizes.

[CruiseBumm]

What a behemoth. Where will it cruse to? It seams too large except for maybe navel carrier docs. You could get lost for the entire trip. With this floating city who needs ports of call. :eek:

[Denn33]

Wouldn't it be a logistical nightmare, if they allow non-cruise passengers onto the ship while it is in port, to make sure that everyone who wasn't a passenger on the ship was off before it departed?

[BruceMuzz]

This is not a new idea.

 

You should google "Freedom City" or "Freedom Ship" or "Phoenix Project"

These ship/city ideas have been bouncing around for about 30 years. They never get past the finance point. No single bank has the resources to finance it. No consortium of banks is dumb enough to take a multi-Billion or even Trillion dollar gamble on an idea that could go belly-up very fast.

 

Residensea (The World) started out as the first version of this idea to be actually built. Nobody would finance it in it's original mega size. So they downsized and downsized until it was affordable and do-able. At only 40,000 tons, it still went bankrupt in only one year.

[DFD1]

BruceMuzz: I haven't kept up with Residensea and did not know it had gone bankrupt. I have seen a Travel Channel documentary about her and done quite a bit of reading about the ship, and found the concept quite interesting.

 

I'm sorry she has gone belly-up. What is her status now?

[BruceMuzz]

Residensea went into bankruptcy not long afer her debut. There were many flaws in her design and concept. Primarily, she was too small to offer the many perks, facilities, and amenities that the original concept was pushing so hard.

Some of the more affluent condo owners needed to protect their already sizeable onboard investments. So they formed a co-op and bought the vessel from the owners. Now they operate it themselves. After several years, they are still unable to sell all the condos onboard.

[localady]

I really don't think that there are enough people with the financial resources to actually cruise in that league. I know I couldn't even afford the monthly maintenance cost!!:eek:

I saw the conceptuals of the Freedom Ship....

it was a friggin suburb....who wants to own a piece of that????

[RetiredMustang]

What a behemoth. Where will it cruse to? It seams too large except for maybe navel carrier docs. You could get lost for the entire trip. With this floating city who needs ports of call. :eek:

 

CB,

 

Actually, that ship would be almost twice as long as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, would carry a bit more than twice as many as a carrier does fully loaded with an air wing, and would displace almost four times as much as a carrier. I have no idea of its beam or draft, but I doubt it could moor at a USN carrier pier even in the largest Navy base in the world (Norfolk, VA), or frankly anywhere else at existing piers except maybe ones designed for those huge oil tankers.

 

I've had my fill of waiting for boats on a carrier, and I, for one, would NOT embark such a vessel. Can you imagine the lines for tenders in, say, Cayman?

 

Dave

[rxralph]

Can this vehicle pass through the Panama Canal?

[SWeaster]

8400 passengers. No problem. That's only about 15 plane loads on the new 550 passenger Airbus A-380. :rolleyes:

 

For a sense of scale, 500 meters long is 1640 feet, nearly a third of a mile. I doubt than any waterway with locks would be able to handle this behemoth. It might even be a tight fit going through the Suez Canal which doesn't have locks. Are there any sailors out there reading this that have passed through the Suez on a flat top that can relate how tight a fit it might be for a half kilometer long ship?

 

Bill