Is Royal Caribbean building any small ships?

[Charles4515]

15 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

You will likely be surprised at the pricing scheme. 

Someday I might price it but ironically for the subject of this thread I am currently into small ships. Not smaller though, small ships which Royal won’t ever have. So until we can get our old gang back together, or another group which may never happen, that cruise on super mega sized ships I won’t be pricing Icon although I would like too. Have you done Icon yet?

[Biker19]

9 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

Have you done Icon yet?

Biker usually looks for value and itinerary - neither of those are likely to be an Icon thing for a while.

[Tolkmit]

32 minutes ago, blt23 said:

Vancouver-Alaska and Eastern Med are both high yield markets that can't accommodate mega ships yet are core itineraries for attracting and retaining guests who want to cruise in multiple different regions.

 

With Vision, Voyager, Radiance classes all getting old, Royal will need to build some new "smaller" ships if they want to stay in those markets long term. Vancouver/Alaska is the more restricted one and even that could easily fit a ship of at least 3k guests/130k tons, which feels like it could still work financially for Royal on those itineraries.

 

By comparison, Tampa and Baltimore are lower yielding, have tighter height limits, and have alternative ports relatively nearby which all makes it much less likely that Royal tries to build new ships for them.

 

It makes sense for Royal to build some new medium sized ships for their key non-Caribbean markets, but I can also envision a future where basically every ship sailing Caribbean cruises in the summer is Icon/Oasis sized.

 

Alaska can handle Quantum class size ships. The vast majority of ports Royal regularly sends Radiance class ships to in the Eastern Med can as well in fact. Project Discovery is likely to be a "smaller" ship compared to Icon the same way Project Sunshine (aka Quantum Class) was to be a "smaller" ship compared to Oasis... still fairly large by every other measure.

 

People who want something new that is closer to Radiance or Vision size... I think are likely to be disappointed. They would cost around half of what Icon cost, fit around half as many passengers as Icon, so they would need to charge similar rates to what they are getting for Icon to make it worth building them instead of just more Icon class ships... and it seems doubtful the market would support that sort of pricing.

[woodscruise]

From reading through this topic, one thing comes to mind that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. With the Oasis and Icon ships, they are primary based in the Caribbean, and more recently in the New York region, with another doing a European season in conjunction with a dry docking. What happens if there is another financial crisis as we saw in 2008. By building these mega ships, Royal is limiting to where they can put their assets. I personally, cannot see an Oasis or Icon ship based in the Pacific region, unless China improves dramatically with the Spectrum and Ovation being based there from 2025.

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, woodscruise said:

From reading through this topic, one thing comes to mind that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. With the Oasis and Icon ships, they are primary based in the Caribbean, and more recently in the New York region, with another doing a European season in conjunction with a dry docking. What happens if there is another financial crisis as we saw in 2008. By building these mega ships, Royal is limiting to where they can put their assets. I personally, cannot see an Oasis or Icon ship based in the Pacific region, unless China improves dramatically with the Spectrum and Ovation being based there from 2025.

They don’t have their eggs in one basket.They have plenty of ships other than Oasis class or Icon. That is why they can take their time with the new class of medium size ships. 

[c-leg5]

10 hours ago, Hoopster95 said:

Totally wrong. Name ports in the Med that Voyager Class or Quantum class do not go to compared to other mass market lines like NCL, Princess and HAL only.

I am not an authority on cruising in the Med. I only use TA’s as a mode of transport from A to B. If I wanted to travel in Europe I would take a land vacation. 
 

However, my statement is totally correct regarding cruising from my example of Galveston. 7-day sailings used to alternate, eastern and western and now it is the same route week after week due to Oasis ships being unable to dock on the other route.
 

I would be surprised if this is the only area of the world experiencing restrictions. 

[PhillyFan33579]

3 hours ago, woodscruise said:

From reading through this topic, one thing comes to mind that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. With the Oasis and Icon ships, they are primary based in the Caribbean, and more recently in the New York region, with another doing a European season in conjunction with a dry docking. What happens if there is another financial crisis as we saw in 2008. By building these mega ships, Royal is limiting to where they can put their assets. I personally, cannot see an Oasis or Icon ship based in the Pacific region, unless China improves dramatically with the Spectrum and Ovation being based there from 2025.

I have never heard anything remotely close to RCi’s future fleet consisting of only Oasis and Icon class ships. 

[Biker19]

The seeming trend and the case listed in the article below in particular may work against RCI's (and any other cruise line) idea of having only big ships:

 

Greece Considers Imposing Cruise Ship Restrictions (cruisehive.com)

[RobInMN]

1 hour ago, Biker19 said:

The seeming trend and the case listed in the article below in particular may work against RCI's (and any other cruise line) idea of having only big ships:

 

Greece Considers Imposing Cruise Ship Restrictions (cruisehive.com)

Agreed.

There's been a number of popular locations that have or are looking at limiting ship size.

[latebuyer]

Itt sounds more like they are limiting cruise ships in general.

[smokeybandit]

3 hours ago, Biker19 said:

The seeming trend and the case listed in the article below in particular may work against RCI's (and any other cruise line) idea of having only big ships:

 

Greece Considers Imposing Cruise Ship Restrictions (cruisehive.com)

Looks like Greece is trying to blame cruises for why tourist areas have gone to hell by trying to make us forget that even in 2022 cruising wasn't back to normal loads in most places. Then trying to say "look at the massive increases!"

 

Edited Monday at 03:36 PM by smokeybandit

[Liao]

On 6/13/2023 at 12:26 PM, latebuyer said:

I think they are shooting themselves in the foot as a lot of ports don't like these mega ships and it means more ports refusing cruise ships altogether unfortunately.

This is why they have Celebrity 

[blt23]

12 hours ago, Biker19 said:

The seeming trend and the case listed in the article below in particular may work against RCI's (and any other cruise line) idea of having only big ships:

 

Greece Considers Imposing Cruise Ship Restrictions (cruisehive.com)

Or it might work in favor of having only big ships if the places where small and medium ships are most successful (Alaska and Europe) are now the ones trying to limit cruises.

[PhillyFan33579]

8 hours ago, Liao said:

This is why they have Celebrity 

Royal Caribbean International has nothing directly to do with Celebrity Cruises. They are two separate cruise lines that are owned by the same parent company, Royal Caribbean Group. 

[gumshoe958]

46 minutes ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

Royal Caribbean International has nothing directly to do with Celebrity Cruises. They are two separate cruise lines that are owned by the same parent company, Royal Caribbean Group. 

True, but they are becoming more closely aligned and Jason Liberty’s strategy is clearly to position Royal as the younger, family-oriented brand that feeds passengers to Celebrity as they get older.

[Liao]

7 hours ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

Royal Caribbean International has nothing directly to do with Celebrity Cruises. They are two separate cruise lines that are owned by the same parent company, Royal Caribbean Group. 

I know but they own Celebrity and it is offered as an alternative style of cruising to Royal style of cruising. Very plain to see.

[Fairsky84]

And they recently combined the loyalty programs for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. I think that's a clear indication that Royal Caribbean Group wants to make it easier for RCI to move customers looking for sailings only possible for medium-sized ships over to their Celebrity brand.

Call me skeptical, but I think Royal Caribbean wants to be an all mega-ship brand targeting families. I'll be very happy if they announce new medium-sized ships, but I'll believe it when I see it. 

Edited Tuesday at 02:03 PM by Fairsky84

[Charles4515]

4 minutes ago, Fairsky84 said:

And they recently combined the loyalty programs for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. I think that's a clear indication that Royal Caribbean Group wants to make it easier for RCI to move customers looking for sailings only possible for medium-sized ships over to their Celebrity brand.

Call me skeptical, but I think Royal Caribbean wants to be an all mega-ship brand targeting families. I'll be very happy if they announce new medium-sized ships, but I'll believe it when I see it. 

They did not combine the programs. They made some changes in the tier levels reciprocity and added Silversea to the reciprocity. 

[smokeybandit]

23 minutes ago, Fairsky84 said:

And they recently combined the loyalty programs for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity

This is not true.

[alfaeric]

22 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

This is not true.

Partially it is, as it should help move passengers up the market if they want to.  Especially if you are in a largely static level like D+ or Pinnacle- it's not much of a loss to miss the points compared to keeping the benefits.

To me, it's not totally unreasonable that the leaders would like to use Celebrity for more of the "smaller" ships (as 4k isn't exactly small, but relative to all of the Oasis ships...).   The hard part is the overall value (cost to what you get) between Celebrity/ Silverseas and RCI.  

[smokeybandit]

3 minutes ago, alfaeric said:

Partially it is

It really isn't. They aligned reciprocity, but the two programs are still very distinctly separate.

[alfaeric]

46 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

It really isn't. They aligned reciprocity, but the two programs are still very distinctly separate.

Gaining the points is totally different, sure, but the reward levels are now bridged across systems.  Which is why I said partially.  It does change the value equation when going from Royal up to Celebrity or up.  We barely considered moving to Celebrity with our P status, as it didn't add much considering the extra cost of the cruise.  Now, we will think harder about it.

 

Again, IMHO, the idea of Royal being more the 4-7k passenger ships and Celebrity being more the 2-5k passengers (not totally, just more) makes sense to me.

 

The "small" ship we all keep hearing about is far closer to a 3-5k replacement for Voyager and Freedom than the 2-2.5k of the Vision or Radiance.  

[latebuyer]

I feel i'm repeating things but for me I can't afford celebrity and it would be nice if royal caribbean could have small shops at an affordable price.

[Cruisin'allovertheworld]

On 1/1/2024 at 5:34 AM, latebuyer said:

I also don’t know if its been considered if this is what gen z and millenials want? I thought there’s a lot that don’t even have kids. Not sure what their view of these big ships is.

My view (as a Dec '86 baby) is that I'm all about itinerary- as are everyone I know who cruises is.

Most of our friends have not cruised, most of our friends have children.

Those that have children and have cruised did so before their children.

I have never wanted children and my husband isn't fussed- so we have no children and no plans to ever have any.

I don't particularly enjoy being around children and particularly not a whole heap of them. I am on the spectrum and easily irritated by what I perceive as the frequent misbehaviour and noise that children bring, also.

We live in Australia, though and our particular location (Perth) means that essentially if we ever wish to cruise we have to fly.

So would I choose to spend the time/effort/money to go cruise with a whole tonne of children and a whole other tonne of big drinking etc parents who may be ignoring their children? No.

I've been cruising with Cunard lately...but now they're leaving Australia.

All it means is that I will continue to less frequently cruise and less likely to cruise with RCL. I will/would spend more, ultimately, to be away from children.

[la_croisiere_s'amuse]

1 hour ago, latebuyer said:

I feel i'm repeating things but for me I can't afford celebrity and it would be nice if royal caribbean could have small shops at an affordable price.

You might be surprised if you haven't looked at Celebrity recently. I'm sure this isn't always the case, but in many instances a comparable ship & itinerary is actually cheaper on X than RCI (at least for balcony and concierge class cabins). Out of the four cruises we currently have booked, the X cruise was the lowest fare. By a wide margin.