At Sea with Doug Newman

It’s official: after weeks of rumors, Norwegian Cruise Line has announced that its subsidiary NCL America’s Pride of Aloha will return to the main NCL fleet as Norwegian Sky. If this gives you a sense of déja vu, it’s because the 77,104 GT, 2,002-berth ship was first entered service in 1999 as — you guessed it — Norwegian Sky! She was transferred to the US-flag NCL America fleet in 2004 and renamed Pride of Aloha for cruises in the Hawaiian islands, but in February 2008 NCL announced that she’d leave the fleet on 11 May 2008 and move to the Asian-based fleet of NCL’s part owner and former parent Star Cruises. Then — after no further information was forthcoming from Star — came rumors that the ship was for sale, including reports that Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. subsidiary Pullmantur Cruises made and then retracted a $310 million bid for the ship. Finally, NCL has put an end to the speculation by announcing that the ship won’t be leaving the fleet but will instead return to the NCL international fleet on 14 July 2008 with a program of three- and four-night cruises from Miami to the Bahamas.

NCL touts Norwegian Sky as the “youngest and highest quality ship sailing three- and four-day cruises from Miami”. Fans of Carnival and Royal Caribbean will dispute the “highest quality” bit, but there’s no doubt that Norwegian Sky will be the newest ship on the three- and four-night Miami-Bahamas run: Carnival’s Carnival Fascination was built in 1994 while Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas is even older, built way back in 1992. Both those ships have recently undergone major refits, but Norwegian Sky boasts modern amenities they simply can’t match, including a large number of balcony cabins (240 to be exact), and a choice of six different dining venues. And of course, NCL’s Freestyle Cruising concept, with no formal dress code or assigned dinner seatings, is bound to be a hit with short-cruise passengers. The ship will receive all of NCL’s Freestyle 2.0 enhancements, a reversal of executive vice president Andy Stuart’s February 2008 statement about Pride of Aloha that, “…[A]s we move forward with Freestyle 2.0 to take our product to the next level across what is already the youngest fleet in the industry, we cannot justify further investment in this ship.”

NCL competed in the three- and four-night Miami-Bahamas market from its foundation Norwegian Caribbean Lines in 1966 until 2003, operating the cruises with its first ship, the original Sunward, followed by Sunward II, Sunward (III), Seaward, Leeward, Norwegian Majesty, Norwegian Sea (ex Seaward) and finally Norwegian Majesty (again). With a much larger, more modern and desirable ship that, unlike many of her predecessors, will be bigger, newer and more up-to-date than her Carnival and Royal Caribbean competitors, NCL obviously felt the time was right to return to its roots in this market.

Norwegian Sky is a ship with an interesting and colorful history. She was originally ordered as one of a pair of ships in December 1993 from the Bremer Vulkan shipyard in Bremen not by NCL but by Costa Cruises, then still an independent Italian cruise line. The first ship entered service uneventfully in July 1996 as Costa Victoria, having left Bremer Vulkan for Lloyd Werft in nearby Bremerhaven, where she was fitted out, in September 1995. A few days after Costa Victoria’s float-out, the keel of the second ship, Costa Olympia, was laid, but financial problems at Bremer Vulkan — then Germany’s biggest shipbuilder — forced work to stop in July 1996. About 35% completed, Costa Olympia was floated out of the drydock in Bremen in October 1996 with an uncertain future.

Costa decided not to buy the unfinished ship, and instead NCL came to the rescue in December 1997, buying Costa Olympia and announcing that the ship would enter service in August 1999 as Norwegian Sky. Tillberg Design, one of the firms involved in the original design of Costa Victoria and Costa Olympia, was hired to redesign the ship to NCL’s specifications. One of the biggest changes was the addition of two decks of balcony cabins — the original Costa design didn’t include a single balcony, acceptable in 1996, but no longer three years later, a sign of the changes in the industry at the time. Other changes, along with completely new decor, included the addition of three more restaurants, a number of new forward-facing balcony suites, and a forward observation lounge and top-of-the-ship spa that necessitated moving the bridge down a deck.

The 1990s were a tough decade for NCL, and Norwegian Sky was NCL’s first new ship since Windward (later Norwegian Wind; now Star Cruises‘ SuperStar Aquarius) — a signal that NCL, which teetered on the brink of oblivion only a few years before, was back in the game. Norwegian Sky, delivered on time in August 1999, “only” five and a half years after she was originally ordered by Costa and just under four after her keel was laid, was enthusiastically received by passengers and the press. It’s also been said that it was she that caught the attention of Star Cruises, who started and won a bidding war with Carnival Corporation to buy NCL in 2000. NCL was pleased enough with the way that Sky was turning out than in 1998, before she was even delivered, it ordered a sister ship — the hull to be built at Aker Yards‘ MTW Werft in Wismar, and the fitting out again handled by Lloyd Werft — which entered service in 2001 as Norwegian Sun, and became the first new NCL ship delivered under Star’s ownership and the first “designed for Freestyle Cruising”, a concept NCL imported from its new Asian parent and one that took the American cruise market by storm.

The ship entered a new chapter in her life in 2003 when NCL announced that she would become Pride of Aloha, the second ship in its new US-flag operation, NCL America, that was scheduled to begin operating in Hawaii in 2004. Norwegian Sky would become the Hawaiian-themed Pride of Aloha in October 2004, following the purpose-built Pride of America, which would enter service in July 2004. But in January 2004, a shipyard accident at Lloyd Werft caused major damage to Pride of America, postponing her entry into service indefinitely. (She eventually entered service nearly a year late in June 2005.) Pride of Aloha would instead be pressed into service, and into the spotlight, as NCL America’s very first ship, receiving a major refit in San Francisco before being renamed by Margaret Inouye, wife of Hawaii Senator and major NCL America supporter Daniel Inouye on 4 July 2004, the day Pride of America was scheduled to leave on her maiden voyage. (Sen. Inouye himself named Pride of Hawaii in 2006.)

Pride of Aloha would spend nearly four years in Hawaii, being joined in 2005 by Pride of Aloha and 2006 by NCL America’s biggest ship yet, Pride of Hawaii. But NCL America found itself unable to fill three ships at profitable fares, and in April 2007 NCL announced that it would temporarily transfer Pride of Hawaii to the main NCL fleet as Norwegian Jade in February 2008. Soon talk of the transfer being temporary faded away, and when Star sold 50% of NCL to Apollo Management in August 2008, Star and Apollo entered into a sub-agreement that would require Star to absorb NCL America’s losses for an unspecified period of time. If NCL America still wasn’t profitable at the end of the agreement, Star would receive Pride of Aloha, while Pride of America would stay with NCL. In February, NCL announced that it had come to a new agreement and that Pride of Aloha would move to Star Cruises in Asia while Pride of America would remain in Hawaii until at least 2010. However, Star apparently didn’t need the extra ship (which would be one of the largest in its fleet), nor could it sell her, hence the ship’s return to NCL.