Azamara Acquires P&O's Adonia Cruise Ship, Set to be Rebranded as Azamara Pursuit

Only joking [emoji854] honest, I remember just how popular the idea wasn’t last time.

 

 

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Well I thought your post was amusing!

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I’ll see what I can find out.

Phil

It's fun to speculate what will and won't be done to the Pursuit. However this is what Larry said in an interview which is linked in another thread on the subject.

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LP: "We’re in final negotiations between Cadiz and Marseilles—two different yards—and it will end up in the Mediterranean. Once it ends up there, we will go through a long refurbishment. The ship’s going to be refurbished from bow to aft significantly just as the Quest and the Journey were. It normally would not take that amount of time, except the shipyards have so much work, we have to wait for our turn to get in line.

TP: Might there be any new features coming onboard just for the Pursuit?

LP: I don’t think so at this point. We’ve got the plan. We’ve executed it last year. It’s very fresh. We’ve got the supplier network. We’re not looking at anything different. We’re looking at what we do on Quest and Journey being quite viable. These R-ships are a decade-and-a-half [old], but when you look at some of our newest suites, the average guest would say, ‘This stateroom looks brand new.'

I think today there’s so much that can be done in reconstructs and reimagined sort of facilities and revitalizations of ships, but I think we got a good formula. It fits with our brand. The guests are responding, and we’re not messing with that. So, you’re not likely to see anything different. You’re likely to see a lot of the same because our objective is to make the three sister-ships look as they are: three sister-ships.”

Azamara know the areas that are popular and important to their customers so I’m sure these will be replicated on Pursuit. What will be interesting is to see how the updates to Prime C & Aqualina are received, and if the reaction is positive whether Journey & Quest would get the same treatment.

One of the problems Princess and P&O had was the lack of the larger mini suite type cabins on deck 8, there was a large gap both in price and space between full suites an other cabins which stopped some people booking. Azamara are going to correct this as they did with R6 & R7 to widen the choices available, which is good.

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Things are still being worked through for Pursuit, but it looks like Mosaic will be on the other side of the ship where the desk is because the shops have been extended on R8 and they aren’t going to knock walls down. There is no Sunset Bar on Adonia and this will not be added to Pursuit, so there will be more tables and chairs, the Smoothie Bar area will be used for bar purposes. No plans for an Asian Specialty restaurant! So there will be a few structural differences between what we have and Pursuit. As I said, this as of now and things might change.

Phil

Great update Phil thanks. I like that they are going to be as close to the current ships but avoiding significant structural limitations

Things are still being worked through for Pursuit, but it looks like Mosaic will be on the other side of the ship where the desk is because the shops have been extended on R8 and they aren’t going to knock walls down. There is no Sunset Bar on Adonia and this will not be added to Pursuit, so there will be more tables and chairs, the Smoothie Bar area will be used for bar purposes. No plans for an Asian Specialty restaurant! So there will be a few structural differences between what we have and Pursuit. As I said, this as of now and things might change.

 

 

 

Phil

Quite surprised about that Phil, as they’re going to cut open deck 8 to add the CC suites I would have thought taking a partition wall down to add Mosaic Cafe would be fairly minor.

Although I’ve always thought the Sunset Bar was too big I’m not sure not having one will go down too well.

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I was on the Adonia when it operated for Fathom. Where Mosaic is, I thought Fathom had a wall of postcards and a video booth that was their version of reality show “confessionals”. The ship was truely geared to volunteerism in the Dominican Republic and not Cuba. They had one specialty restaurant and on the other side was a lounge/bar area. No casino.

Quite surprised about that Phil, as they’re going to cut open deck 8 to add the CC suites I would have thought taking a partition wall down to add Mosaic Cafe would be fairly minor.

Although I’ve always thought the Sunset Bar was too big I’m not sure not having one will go down too well.

 

 

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Funnily enough, we think the Sunset Bar is a bit small, it’s always difficult to find seats there at breakfast and lunchtime in warmer climes!

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Funnily enough, we think the Sunset Bar is a bit small, it’s always difficult to find seats there at breakfast and lunchtime in warmer climes!

 

 

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I think you will find the comment relates to the space being taken up by the bar (serving) area which I would agree could certainly be smaller

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I think you will find the comment relates to the space being taken up by the bar (serving) area which I would agree could certainly be smaller

 

 

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Right - I agree with that, doesn’t need to be so big, would give more room for seating.

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Right - I agree with that, doesn’t need to be so big, would give more room for seating.

 

 

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Yes that’s what I meant, however while I agree the smoothie bar is an under utilised area I’m not sure that serving drinks there for the Sunset terrace is going to give it the same ambiance. Really think that Azamara should give this a lot of thought, it can be small things that cruise lines think insignificant that put passengers off of booking certain ships.

Likewise the Mosaic area, when we cruised on Adonia back in 2012 that shop area was the future cruise office, the coffee shop was in the Discoveries bar area. Last thing we need is more room for the shops, enough they take enough space as it is. P&O removed the casino when they took over the ship from Princess to enlarge Anderson’s Bar area which is a popular location on their older ships. Azamara are almost bound to reinstate the casino hopefully with modern compact machines so it takes less space, although as we never use casinos wouldn’t worry us if they didn’t. We do realise that many do however enjoy the facilities, but with so many late departures and overnights it does always seem to be closed more often than open.

Hopefully although there are obviously time constraints Azamara will give passengers a chance to say what’s important to them as they did with the reimagining of Quest & Journey.

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We have cruised with HAL on a brand new ship - but the experience was nothing like Azamara. The ship was beautiful, but it didn’t feel happy, or like ‘home’.

I guess the issue here is people’s priorities - some people are more interested in their environment than the experience - and vice versa. Nothing wrong with either, just different.

 

 

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Thank you for this post. It is exactly why we are so very excited to sail with Azamara next year. Since our first cruise 18 years ago we have noticed a huge decline in customer service on the larger ships. On our last cruise we were treated like a number and it felt awful. We don't care how old the ship is as long as it is in the best working order it can be.

Right - I agree with that, doesn’t need to be so big, would give more room for seating.

There is a reason the bar is as big as it is. If you sit at the bar it becomes obvious. That is not only serving the sunset bar area but it is where all the servers get both sides of their Windows Cafe drink orders filled. They also store all the canned and bottled non alcoholic drinks for the servers to grab. Plus it needs to be wide enough to allow multiple bartenders to be able to work and pass by each other.

If it's not big enough to be functional then it should be removed. But then everyone would have to go to the pool bar for their service like the Patio servers currently do.

I don't recall how many tables long the bar is but if it's three or four, you'd only be able to add one more row between the doorways I suspect