Cruising 2010: More ships, better shows, water parks, single-cabins

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The Carnival Dream cruise ship is the longest ever built for Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines and can accommodate 3,646 passengers. It sails alternating weekly eastern and western Caribbean cruise itineraries, originating from Port Canaveral Florida.

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CRUISING has weathered the economic downturn with flying colors. Most cruises are fully booked, more cruise ships are being launched, and they offer more sophisticated programs. Vessels range from hulking floating cities to smaller craft for trendy river cruises in Europe. Beth J. Harpaz reports.

If you are planning a cruise vacation in 2010, get ready for higher prices, better entertainment, water parks and one of the most innovative concepts to come along in a while: rooms designed for solo travelers on the Norwegian Epic, without the supplemental charge that single passengers on cruises traditionally have paid.

"I think it's genius," says Cynthia Boal Janssens, editor and chief blogger at AllThingsCruise.com. "I'm amazed with so many new ships coming on line that this hasn't been done sooner. Lots of single people cruise and want to cruise, but right now, if you are going on a cruise as a single person and you occupy a double cabin, they charge you an additional fee for doing that, sometimes as much as 200 percent."

The Epic, which launches this summer, will offer 128 studios for singles. The cabins open onto a lounge area where solo travelers can socialize.

Paul Motter, editor at CruiseMates.com, says he thinks the single studios "will take off. We have a whole message board on CruiseMates for people seeking cruise companions. It's a huge potential market."

Motter says another emerging trend in cruises is more brand-name entertainment. For years, mediocre musical revues with names like "Salute to Broadway" were standard fare on ships, to the point where they "kind of became a joke," says Motter.

In contrast, the Epic will feature Blue Man Group and Second City improv shows. Royal Caribbean's mega-ship, Oasis of the Seas, which launched last fall, offers a complete production of "Hairspray."

"Hairspray" is "the first time a cruise ship has fully licensed a Broadway production. And it's a really good production, on par with a national touring company," Motter says.

Oasis was the "it" ship of 2009, attracting enormous publicity as the largest cruise ship ever built. It carries 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members, with facilities that include an ice rink, golf course, volleyball and basketball courts, a 1,300-seat indoor theater and seven "neighborhoods," including a boardwalk and a mini-Central Park.

There is so much to do onboard, that when the ship pulls into a port, "a lot of people don't get off," says Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of CruiseCritic.com.

The cruise industry will launch a dozen new ships this year, but Brown says, "Nothing will compete with Oasis."

Ships debuting in 2010 include a sister ship of Oasis called Allure of the Seas, a new Queen Elizabeth from Cunard, and Celebrity Eclipse, the third in a series of Celebrity ships that started with the Solstice in 2008 and the Equinox in 2009.

Despite all these new ships coming onto the market during a recession, the cruise industry has managed to keep them full.

In 2009, ships sailed at 104 percent capacity on average, meaning that every room was occupied, and some rooms were shared by more than two people, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry group with 25 cruise lines representing 97 percent of cruise capacity in North America.

At the same time, the number of passengers keeps increasing: 13.01 million people cruised on CLIA ships in 2008, 13.44 million in 2009 and a projected 14.3 million will sail in 2010.

"Maybe we are not recession-proof, but we are recession-resistant," says Richard Sasso, CEO of MSC Cruises and marketing director of CLIA.

One way cruises have kept ships full is by dramatically increasing the number of international passengers, to make up for slow growth in the North American market.

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