Pacific Princess to Survive! One of the most loved small cruise ships and one of the last small ships left offering reasonably low-cost cruises, is to be let go by Princess Cruises.
The Pacific Princess was my favourite of the small ships. She was the successor to the original TV Pacific Princess, which as ‘the Love Boat’ did so much to popularise cruising.
However, all is not lost. She is not heading for the sad fate of the breakers yard. She has been rescued by Sycamore Partners to add to its newly acquired Azamura cruise fleet. Pacific Princess will now be the fourth R-class ship in the Azamura fleet, so those of us that love small cruise ships will have a good option.
Princess Cruises bought the ship from Renaissance which built eight near identical ships. They then went broke….and they deserved to as they couldn’t even be bothered to name their ships! They just numbered them as R1, R2 etc. Pacific Princess was R3.
The photo below are from my book on the Pacific Princess, titled Aboard the Pacific Princess and is
reproduced here with permission of the publisher.