ARTEMIS - 9 August - Norway and Spitsbergen

Is anyone else on this cruise?

Has anybody any feedback on this ship yet.

Many thanks

Sailed on her four times as Royal Princess, and she remains one of my favorite ships.

Hated to see her leave the Princess fleet.

We're on the cruise. I did almost the same one (without the Lofoten islands) in the early 70s on Canberra. The scenery was breathtaking and the high arctic cruising an experience I'll never forget. - glaciers, small icebergs in the water, strange sea birds accompanying the ship, and hot toddies were served on the observation deck. Looking forward to it - and it should be more personal than on the giant cruise ships

Judy and Michael

We are looking forward to the cruise very much. We have been to Norway on two other cruises over the years but have never been to Lofoten Islands or Spitzbergen. I have seen pictures of the Lofotens and always said I wanted to go there so hence the Artemis. I hope the ship is good. It is the largest we have been on. I guess we will need to take some winter clothing for Spitzbergen.

I am fascinated to know how Artemis, Arcadia and QM2 are all going to get into Bergen on the same day. It is going to be a bit crowded!!

Angela and Peter

ARTEMIS, ARCADIA, and QM2 in Bergen in one day? That should be interesting!

They'll make an interesting line-up though - P&O Princess ships medium, large, and really, really large (if you haven't been on QM2, it's almost impossible to grasp just how enormous she is) ;) !

It's rather amusing to me to see ARTEMIS considered small and intimate... I have to admit that personally I have a hard time calling something that carries 1200 pax "intimate", but I guess compared to ships like QM2 or even ARCADIA (I have been on QM2 and on ZUIDERDAM, a sister of ARCADIA) she is.

Even only ten years ago or so, she was considered a large ship, or at least mid-sized. Now she is one of the smallest ships in the whole P&O Princess empire - all the genuinely small ones like the old ISLAND and PACIFIC PRINCESS, SEA PRINCESS/VICTORIA, and whatnot are all gone now.

Sorry Host Doug - a typing error it should have been QE2.

Yes I have seen QM2 in Southampton when we were sailing in on Black Prince - quite a contrast.

Sorry Host Doug - a typing error it should have been QE2.

Ah well, not as much of a contrast there size-wise as she and ARCADIA are roughly the same size (ARCADIA has a larger tonnage, but same beam and a few feet shorter, so virtually the same dimensions - ARCADIA is just more voluminous by way of being squarer).

I guess in this case we could say that it will be an assemblage of P&O Princess ships old (QE2), middle-aged (ARTEMIS), and new (ARCADIA).

I have seen QM2 in Southampton when we were sailing in on Black Prince - quite a contrast.

Now that indeed is quite a contrast. Just think - QM2 is roughly 15 times the size of BLACK PRINCE!

I once saw BLACK PRINCE while sailing in VOYAGER OF THE SEAS - a similar effect, or rather the reverse I suppose as in this case I was looking from the large ship and not the small one. But again I was struck at how diminutive BLACK PRINCE looked. I had always considered her a small ship, but never as tiny as she seemed at that moment. She was well and truly dwarfed.

As for QM2, I think in to really grasp her enormity, one really has to get on her. She is really that big. Standing at one end of a full-length cabin corridor and looking all the way down it is amazing. It is so long, that you literally cannot see the other end!!! Quite something to say the least. I think that must have been the longest corridor I've ever seen in the whole of my life, aboard ship or otherwise.

Standing on her upper decks and looking down at the New York piers was also quite something. The effect is rather like standing atop a skyscraper looking down. The cars on the rooftop car parks on the piers look like toys!

Not so long ago, the lido decks of many of the ships calling in New York were barely higher than the piers themselves; now we have ships like QM2 that are many times higher than the piers.

So be it BLACK PRINCE or the superpiers (which now do not seem so "super"), it really takes putting her next to something one is used to seeing in order to put her size into perspective. I've seen her many times, as well as visiting her and crawling all over her public spaces and decks, and I still can't get my mind around her enormity. And even fully knowing just how big she would be, I am still in awe of her size every time I see her, and was even more in awe when I finally got aboard last week. I think my jaw dropped when I looked into that corridor!

Anyway, sorry for going off-topic here, but then she really is a P&O ship now isn't she ;) ?

Host Doug

I think it would be more accurate to call Arcadia and Zuiderdam half-sisters.

Sure, same hull, but interior design and fittings tweaked several times as ithe ship was redesigned by Cunard and then P&O.

Actually, common hulls fairly common nowadays, particularly in the Carnival family, but very different personalities between the lines.

Artemis (Royal Princess) was considered to be pretty damned big when she debuted in 1984. I still think she has one of the prettiest exteriors afloat.

I think it would be more accurate to call Arcadia and Zuiderdam half-sisters.

 

Sure, same hull, but interior design and fittings tweaked several times

Tweaked, yes, but to me they are basically the same except for a couple of areas.

If you look closely, the changes were very carefully made so as not to cost too much money! Different furniture (the movable stuff - tables and chairs), color schemes, soft furnishings, artwork, and that's about it.

Going through photos of ARCADIA, she looks like an HAL ship that has gone through a refit. Almost all of the ship has the same ceiling finishes, often the same wall coverings, light fixtures, things like doors, railings, basically anything that is attached to the ship is the same! I think the sole area where this is different is in the pub, which is completely new, and of course the Orchid which does not exist on HAL's Vistas. Otherwise she is an HAL ship thinly disguised as a Cunarder (but thankfully, in an ambiguous enough way that they could simply move her over to P&O without having to make any major changes to remove overtly "Cunard" things). Many ships get bigger changes in their mid-life refits than ARCADIA had to turn her into a Cunard vessel.

To me, half-sisters would be, for example, ORIANA and AURORA - related, but definitely not the same. ARCADIA and the HAL Vistas are much more than that - with the exception of that new restaurant added up by the funnel, and a slightly different propulsion system, virtually every change was purely cosmetic. It would be fun to bring one of HAL's Vistas into a drydock and see how long it would take to turn her into a perfect sister of ARCADIA. Except for the fact that ARCADIA has different engines (six diesel generators - the HAL Vistas, at least so far, all have five diesels and one gas turbine), it seems to me that the entire thing would probably only take a few weeks. It is really quite amazing that she actually looks as different as she does, considering how highly superficial the changes were.

On a different but related subject, it to note that P&O would have had little or no influence on the design of the ship - when she changed over from Cunard to P&O, almost everything would have been frozen long ago. Just about the only things that they'd have been able to change would be the names of some of the public areas (they'd have had to have redone most of the signage anyway as it would have had the name of the wrong ship and cruise line!).

Even the art did not have to change, as they thoughtfully did not include any Cunard-related maritime art in the ship's original collection, wanting to project a "modern" feel - thus the art was almost completely generic and able to make the transition from Cunard to P&O unchanged.

I have seen renderings of the interiors as they were intended to be on QUEEN VICTORIA, and they are perfectly identical to what they are now on ARCADIA.

Doug

One important difference between the Vistas and Arcadia - self-serve laundromats.

I think there have been more complaints about the lack of self-serve laundries on the Vistas at the HAL board than any other issue. Very important to some cruisers.