Princess Cruises Adding a New Ship

       Led by Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean; the cruise industry has seen an explosion of new state of the art ships entering service over the last several years.   Even thou Princess Cruises has added two new ships since 2013, the Royal and Regal Princess, the parent company of Princess, Carnival Corporation,  has been late to the game adding new ships to its other North American based lines.  This is being addressed as both Holland American and Carnival Cruises will be adding a new ship into service over the next several years.  The new Carnival ship, the Carnival Breeze, is expected to offer both a revolutionary design and features.  It was thought that Princess would be left out of getting any new ships for the the next decade as Carnival Corporation was expected to focus new ship building on Holland America and Carnival.

       So it came as a surprise to the cruise industry when Princess announced this week, it will add a third ship of the Royal class.  The ship will be delivered in 2017, and will be slightly larger than her sister ships, a 143,000 ton vessel with a capacity to carry 3560 passengers.  It assumed she will have more enhancements than either the Royal or Regal, and their are rumours that the design changes may be more radical, in line with new Carnival Vista; in order to better compete with the cutting edge designs of Royal Caribbean's Quantum and Anthem of the Seas.