Veendam Rescues Pilot of Ditched Aircraft

Over the weekend, Holland America’s Veendam was involved in a rather unusual rescue off the coast of Maui.

A small plane was having a mechanical issue with its fuel system and had to ditch in the ocean near the ship 230 miles northeast of Maui. Veendam quickly rescued the pilot (the sole occupant) while a Coast Guard HC-130 circled the area capturing some incredible video.The video was, of course, edited for time, and it makes it look like Veendam arrived just after the aircraft went into the water. They were nearby, but not quite that close. The pilot was only in the water for about 30 minutes, however.

The complete story appeared in the January 26 edition of Cruise News Daily. 

After Refit, Queen Victoria Begins Her World Cruise

Cunard’s Queen Victoria sailed away from Southampton earlier this week under a canopy of fireworks celebrating the start of her world cruise in Cunard’s 175th anniversary year.

Passengers aboard Queen Victoria are enjoying a refurbished ship just back from a 20-day refit at Blohm+Voss in Hamburg, updating the ship with many of the features recently added to Queen Elizabeth.

In this video, can see just how it was done - in Cunard style.




The complete article appeared in the January 23 edition of Cruise News Daily.

The Casino Comes to You

If you’ve sailed aboard Carnival Breeze or Carnival Freedom recently, you got a chance to try a new service Carnival was testing called the Carnival Mobile Casino. It’s an app that runs on your smart phone or tablet and lets you play casino games for real money - legally, any time the ship is in international waters anywhere on the ship.

Details appeared in the January 23 edition of Cruise News Daily.

Carnival Details Features aboard Carnival Vista

Carnival Cruise Line showed off Carnival Vista this afternoon at a media event in New York, and in a breath of fresh air, they returned to the days of unleashing the entire product instead of letting features dribble out one by one in an endless series of live webcasts or press releases.

Carnival has apparently realized the public loses interest fast. They collected all their hype and let it explode today.

There’s good news and ok news. (No bad news, unless you were expecting to have your socks knocked off by everything about Carnival Vista.)

There are lots of good features. We can say that with confidence because Carnival has used many of them on other ships, and they’ve evolved them for Carnival Vista. Almost all the ones that aren’t coming from Carnival ships, however, are coming from some other cruise line’s ships.

The complete article appeared in the January 22 edition of Cruise News Daily.

An Amenity No Other Private Island Has

Beginning this year, Windstar will be providing passengers on each of their cruises worldwide with a Private Event. In the Caribbean, it will be an Island Experience, designed to give passengers the feeling of having their own private island for the day.

The inaugural Island Experience will come at the end of the month on Prickly Pear Beach in the British Virgin Islands, and it will have a special host.

The complete article appeared in the January 21 edition of Cruise News Daily.