A ROYAL WELCOME? Half Moon Cay Catalina Island
Haiti) has been Royal Caribbean’s property since the 1980s and has recently been developed with a concrete pier capable of accommodating the biggest cruise ships in the world, Allure and Oasis of the Seas. There are lots of activities available, from jet-skis to a 2,600ft over-water zipline and a roller-coaster ride that looks like a toboggan on wheels. All are designed to extract extra money from the visitors, though: $85 for the Dragon’s Breath flight line, for example. Even the children’s aqua park charges $15 and it’s $12 to hire a floating mat to lie in the sea. Outside the exclusive Barefoot Beach, reserved for suite guests, I found the place disappointingly scruffy. There’s a mar- ket place for local traders and Royal Carib- bean has long been the greatest contributor to Haiti’s underdeveloped tourist trade Half Moon Cay is my personal favou- rite. It’s on Little San Salvador Island in
the Bahamas and was bought by Holland America, although it also welcomes ships from other brands in the Carnival empire. It is personified by the name of its beach bar: I Want To Stay Here Forever. Passen- gers go ashore by tender and paths lead through bushes to the Tropics Restaurant barbecue area, a sports centre and the spa’s massage cabana. Further along the beach is a stable, from where riders can set off for the beach, and across the other side of the island there is sea kayaking and another bar. Only 50 acres have been developed – the rest of the 2,400-acre property is reserved for wildlife. DISCLAIMER: Other private resorts are
available (Princess Cays and Norwegian’s Great Stirrup Cay among them). Terms and conditions apply. Read the small print, blah, blah. Or just lie back and enjoy yourself!
Spring 2012 I WORLD OF CRUISING 31
oyal Princess could well be the most exciting new ship for years when it makes its debut in 2013. Even if the glass-floored SkyWalk and SkyBar 128ft above the waves don’t set your pulse racing, the computer-generated walk- throughs of its interiors should be raising anticipation to fever pitch (calm down, Cap’n, it’s only a ship!). The 3,600-passenger vessel is the first of two being built to a new design for Princess, and a third almost-identical ship will join the P&O fleet in 2015. Royal will cruise the Mediterranean in the summer before crossing the Atlantic for a winter in the Caribbean from Florida. But the most exciting news is, in June next year, it will be brought from a shipyard in north-east Italy to the south coast of Britain. There will be two short preview cruises before it leaves from Southampton on June 16 for its maiden voyage to Barcelona, via Vigo, Lisbon, Gibraltar and Malaga. The move puzzled a friend of mine in America. “Why are they dragging the ship all that way just to turn it round again?” he asked. “Simple,” I replied. “A Royal Princess deserves a Royal godmother.” Now I should make it clear Princess Cruises have not made any announcement about the naming and are unlikely to do so for months. But it makes sense to me, especially if the Royal personage is an attractive young woman who recently married into the family. She may only be a Duchess but she is the consort of our future king and, while he has been serving as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands, she has been making her first solo public appearances. How long before she has to sit for the official portrait to hang in Royal Princess’s splendid atrium?
R
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