All The Fun Is Getting There

By Stephen Koepp

As she steamed across the Atlantic last week, the majestic white passenger liner evoked memories of such grand old ships as the Queen Mary and the Normandie. Yet this $200 million craft, built at a French shipyard during the past 21 months, is very much a space-age creation. Cantilevered from her single smokestack, 14 stories above the waterline, is a flying cocktail lounge. Inside the ship, an atrium five decks high forms a main lobby, complete with glass elevators and towering fountains. There is nothing modest about the new ship, from her name, Sovereign of the Seas, freshly painted in bright blue letters across the bow, to her size. Sovereign ranks as the largest cruise liner in the world, capable of carrying 2,690 passengers and 750 crew members. The venerable Queen Elizabeth 2, by comparison, accommodates 1,909 passengers.

The Sovereign, scheduled to arrive in the Port of Miami this week to begin service for the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, is a glittering symbol of a new Golden Age for passenger ships. In the 1950s the onset of jet travel left the * cruise industry dead in the water. But through the '80s the business has been growing at flank speed. Roughly 1.5 million North Americans took cruises in 1982; by 1987 that figure had doubled.

Cruising has developed a new identity and allure. The ocean liner, no longer just a vehicle for getting from one continent to another and eating well along the way, has evolved into a floating amusement park, health spa and classroom. The ships, and the trips, are increasingly designed to suit the young and the restless.

Even October's stock-market crash and the cloudy economic outlook have so far failed to dampen the industry's robust bookings, which reached $5 billion in 1987. One reason is that travelers no longer view cruises as an extravagant expense. Because many passenger lines are trying to lure more first-time, middle-class customers, prices have moderated in comparison with other types of vacations. Besides the traditional luxury cruises that cost a daunting $400 to $600 a day, many lines offer so-called contemporary excursions that run about $140 to $220 (including meals and activities).

Cruising's routes have changed drastically from a few decades ago. Only one ship, the QE2, still makes the regular transatlantic run from New York City to Southampton, England. Instead of connecting distant cities, many ships now embark from home ports nearer to the scenic waters in which they will cruise. Today the world's most crowded port for cruise liners is Miami, where 24 major ships glide in and out of the harbor as they pick up passengers for excursions in the busy Caribbean and points beyond. Other booming ports are Los Angeles, where ships embark for the Mexican Riviera, and Vancouver, B.C., a departure point for Alaskan summer cruises.

While North America accounts for the vast majority of the world's cruising market, business is strong in other choice spots, from the Aegean Sea to the South Pacific. Even the Soviet Union has built a fleet of 27 ships, which carry mostly West European passengers on voyages in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic regions. Few Soviets are allowed to travel on the ships because the purpose of the fleet is to earn Western currency.

Though passenger ships once drew a mostly well-to-do, cosmopolitan crowd, the clientele has become far more diverse. Two factors, ironically enough, are cheap air travel and fly-cruise packages, which have made it easier for heartland residents to reach port cities. At the same time, cruise lines are spending as much as $200 million a year, five times the amount of a decade ago, on advertising and promotion. Perhaps the biggest public-relations windfall of all was the TV series The Love Boat, which ran in prime time from 1977 to 1986 and is currently in syndication.

If a real-life Love Boat existed, she might be owned by Miami's Carnival Cruise Lines, the industry's largest and most trend-setting company. By offering low prices and lots of lively onboard entertainment, Carnival's seven "Fun Ships" command nearly 25% of the U.S. cruise business. The company was launched in 1974 by Ted Arison, now 63, an Israeli immigrant who had earlier helped start another major Miami operator, Norwegian Cruise Line.

With the business deep in the doldrums, Arison came along with an idea for festive cruising. But his company got off to a rough start when his first ship, the Mardi Gras, ran aground just beyond the Miami harbor on her maiden voyage, leaving the 300 travel agents aboard none too impressed. After a few shaky years, however, Carnival decided to take its name seriously and make its boats so busy with activity that passengers would barely want to disembark at exotic ports. One spur was the rising cost of fuel in the 1970s, which boosted operating costs drastically. Says Arison's son Micky, 38, who serves as chief executive: "It started to make sense not to go full speed to ports of call. So we went slower and had fun along the way." Carnival installed casinos in all its ships, splashed the liners with bright colors and offered Las Vegas- style feathers-and-flesh shows.

Carnival's party atmosphere makes its ships popular with singles, but the smorgasbord of activities also appeals to a new kind of clientele: young families. "I want to skeet-shoot," enthused Kathleen Hickinbotham, a Fresno, Calif., schoolteacher, as she boarded Carnival's Jubilee recently for a cruise in the Caribbean with her husband Leslie and three children. Many ships offer putting greens and driving ranges (no need to retrieve the balls from the water trap) as well as workout rooms for weight lifting and aerobics classes.

"The key word is choice," says Tor Stangeland, captain of the Sovereign of the Seas, which contains five nightclubs and two cinemas. "People want to have a large selection of things to do. That is why our ship got so big." One of the most fully packed ships is Cunard's QE2, which returned to the sea last April after a $162 million refitting. Among the ship's amenities are a 24-hour IBM computer center with 16 terminals, a branch of Harrods, an American Express bank and a shopping promenade of boutiques, including Gucci, Dunhill and H. Stern.

Theme cruises are among the most popular attractions. The Seattle-based Holland America line offers a voyage for fans of Big Band music, which last year featured concerts by Patty Andrews of the Andrews Sisters and Nanette Fabray. Norwegian Cruise Line has organized a magic-act voyage and several sports cruises in which passengers mingle with star athletes. Other trips have been designed specifically for chocolate lovers, wine tasters, backgammon players and country-music fans.

Some lines still deliver the old-fashioned, ultra-posh service reminiscent of the 1920s. Aboard the three ships of the San Francisco-based Royal Viking Line, which are among the few that still make extravagant, 100-day round-the- world cruises, passengers frequently don tuxedoes and evening gowns. Perhaps the most luxurious ships of all are Cunard's Sea Goddess I and Sea Goddess II, on which a crew of 79 attends to just 116 passengers (daily rate: $600 a person).

Though the majority of today's cruise-line companies are U.S.-based, their profits do little to ease Washington's foreign trade deficit, since few of their ships fly the American flag. Carnival's ships, for example, are registered in Panama and Liberia. Most liners carry such flags of convenience for economic reasons: the companies can avoid U.S. corporate taxes and hire low-paid foreign crews. That strategy has its drawbacks. Under an 1886 federal law, foreign vessels are not permitted to transport people between ports in the U.S. A foreign ship that sails from New York City, for example, cannot pick up passengers in Miami en route to the Caribbean. This regulation has kept most foreign-flag firms out of Hawaii, where U.S.-registered lines are just beginning to take greater advantage of their unique ability to offer island-hopping excursions.

With the number of passengers up an estimated 11% in 1987 alone, the cruise industry has embarked on a shipbuilding binge that is likely to increase competition and may result in even more variety and better prices. All told, the number of available passenger berths on cruise ships is expected to jump from today's figure of 61,000 to some 77,000 by 1991. Carnival intends to launch three 2,000-passenger superliners, starting with the Fantasy next year. FairMajesty, the first of three 1,400-passenger ships ordered by Sitmar < Cruises of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be delivered in January 1989.

The veritable armada of giant ships due to follow in the wake of Sovereign of the Seas could produce overcapacity in the industry and a shake-out sometime in the next few years. Already, many cruise lines offer discounts of up to 25% to keep their berths full. But the industry's leaders point out that only about 5% of the U.S. population has ever taken a cruise. They figure that there are enough potential cruise converts among the remaining 95% to pack the new megaliners, especially if those landlubbers keep watching Love Boat reruns.

With reporting by Wendy Cole/New York and Don Winbush/Miami