On this Valentines Day edition, we’re getting Lost and saying good bye to cruises. Let’s start with the good stuff.
- With the writers’ strike over, Lost should begin production in Oahu soon. Yippee! Rumor has it that production will begin again March 10th and that we’ll probably have 13 episodes this season rather than the 16 that were planned.
- Don’t plan on taking the Superferry until after March 3rd. It’s drydocked at the moment.
- Oh dear, NCL’s Pride of Aloha will be saying the goodbye version of aloha to Hawaii in May.
Happy Valentines Day!
Sheila Beal
Andy Beal
3 comments
Pride of Aloha has an interesting history. When Costa Cruises began construction on her in 1996, she was intended to be the “Costa Olympia.” The builder went bankrupt and NCL bought the hull and had it towed to Germany for completion. In 1999 she was launched as the “Norwegian Sky.”
By 2003 she was in San Francisco undergoing refitting to become the second of NCL America’s US flagged ships, “Pride of Aloha.” “Pride of America” was intended to be the first, but sank in 2004 during construction. The refitting of “Pride of Aloha” was rushed ahead so that she could enter service in it’s place.
When she got to Hawaii “Pride of Aloha” was roundly criticized for poor service and an outdated layout. Seems as if NCL was never able to recover and has been losing money on it’s Hawaii cruises ever since.
Here’s a trivia question. Why did NCL make it’s three Hawaii ships US Flagged vessels?
Trivia, huh? Hmmmm….. my guess would be so that the cruise ship can either stay docked to a particular Hawaiian island overnight and/or to prevent having to go to a nearby foreign island. Am I anywhere close?
You got it. They could leave out the trip to the (not so) near foreign island.