ASSOCIATED PRESS
The cruise ship Norwegian Sky, right, left Juneau, Alaska, yesterday. The ship will be refurbished by Norwegian Cruise Line and renamed Pride of Aloha.
Norwegian renames
2 ships for HawaiiPride of America and Pride of
Aloha will cruise isle waters
Norwegian Cruise Line, which announced yesterday the names of the ships it will soon add to its Hawaii service, says a lot of work will be done to create a Hawaii experience for passengers.
The first of the two ships scheduled so far will be called Pride of America and the second will be Pride of Aloha, NCL said.
People "expect to find Hawaii on the ship," said Andrew Stuart, senior vice president for marketing and sales for Miami-based NCL. One of the ships being brought under the American flag under special legislation, now called the Norwegian Sky, will be taken out of service for major renovations mainly to install that Hawaii atmosphere, he said.
The ships will feature some surf-style bars and an "aloha cafe" atmosphere that stresses island culture, Stuart said.
The fleet changes were made possible by federal legislation that allowed NCL to take over the built-in-America program launched by bankrupt American Classic Voyages Inc. Two 1,900-passenger ships were started in a Mississippi shipyard before American Classic failed. NCL bought the unfinished vessels and moved them to Germany to be completed.
That could have made them foreign ships but legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye allows NCL to use the U.S. flag as long as the crew is American and all U.S. laws are obeyed.
Pride of America, the first of the two being finished in Germany, will go into Hawaii service in July 2004, offering seven-night cruises around the islands from a Honolulu base.
The Norwegian Sky, a foreign-registry vessel carrying up to 2,002 passengers, will undergo a flag change and enter service in Hawaii in October 2004 as a U.S. ship named Pride of Aloha, offering three- and four-night island cruises out of Honolulu.
Norwegian Wind will keep its foreign registry and take the longer cruises of 10 or 11 nights, including a stop at Fanning Island in the Republic of Kiribati made necessary by U.S. laws that prohibit foreign ships from carrying passengers between American ports without a foreign stop.
NCL has the right to bring a third ship into the Hawaii market under the U.S. flag
Stuart said NCL's move into the new Hawaii program is a significant step for the company.
By 2005, NCL expects to be bringing 400,000 passengers a year to Hawaii, about 30 percent of NCL's total business.
