World Renaissance to become another condo ship???
shiploverny
RENAISSANCE into a condo ship... I find it a bit curious that their
website http://2qz.com/ shows in the Virtual Tour of WORLD
RENAISSANCE, many photos that are very obviously either of OLYMPIA
EXPLORER or VOYAGER (though some of these photos ARE of the right
ship). There's even one of NORWAY... And some deck plans are from
WORLD RENAISSANCE, while others look again to be the new ROC sisters,
and one of them comes from ODYSSEUS (these are at the bottom of the
"about the ship" page).
They also seem to be chartering VIRGINIA SKY (the name sounds familar,
though I can't quite connect it to a "face" if you will), and one
photo depicts a suite on an HAL S-class ship, another the exterior of
COSTA RIVIERA, complete with name!
Forget that many of the cabins are very small, the prices not exactly
cheap, considering the monthly maintenance rates, the itineraries are
fixed, and so on, and the whole thing to me looks frankly a bit fishy.
There are even cartoons instead of pictures of the corporate
executives!
Has anyone heard anything about this, or is it just someone's idea of
a joke?
Doug
PS: For those of you who read Liners List et al, and have probably
seen this about 50 times already today, sorry. Unfortunately nobody
seems to know about this (not surprising), so I am going to as many
places as I know...
Eric/Kim
retired cruise ships for homeless shelters......maybe these are the leftover
berths:)
KimMCarr
"shiploverny" <shipl...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:23a89322.0301...@posting.google.com...
shiploverny
the people whose ship it supposedly is have not even managed to get
the name right! The photo on the site is of SILVER STAR - a decidedly
more attractive looking vessel. VERGINA SKY looks like a real tub to
me... See:
http://shiplover2.virtualave.net/Greece/VerginaSky.html
At some places on their web site it in fact says that the ship is
SILVER STAR, just adding to the confusion and the "fishy" feeling.
Both VERGINA SKY and SILVER STAR are for sale, though the latter is
worth about six times as much...
Doug
Raoul Fiebig
wrote:
>Just to follow up - the second vessel in question here is VERGINA SKY,
>the people whose ship it supposedly is have not even managed to get
>the name right! The photo on the site is of SILVER STAR - a decidedly
>more attractive looking vessel. VERGINA SKY looks like a real tub to
>me... See:
Hi Doug!
Now, that's where I knew the name from. "Vergina Sky" - yes. I have
no doubts that this is not a serious enterprise.
Regards from Germany,
Raoul Fiebig
E-Mail: <firstname><AT>ruderhaus.de
"Das Ruderhaus": http://www.ruderhaus.de/
Chris Mullin
This gets even more interesting...
There are actually two competing sets of websites for this project.
See
http://www.adventurespacruise.com/ for a much more detailed
presentation of the whole thing. There are actually several other
ships under consideration for purchase, including the Big Red Boat II
and the Rembrandt (ex-Rotterdam) The guy running the
http://www.2qz.com/ site is the accountant of the project, and is
only pushing the Verginia Sky and the World Renaissance, which are, I
suspect, both owned by people who at least know each other quite well.
Reading between the lines, I kind of suspect the accountant is trying
to get people to sign up with him, at higher prices, so that if this
ever does get off the ground he will pick up the difference between
what you pay if you go through the AdventureSpaCruise site and his own
higher prices. Evidently, he just does this in his spare time.
Mostly, he apparently tries to get people to pay him money for his
day-trading system.
I suspect the guy running http://www.adventurespacruise.com/ (the
President of the company) may actually be honest. If you go through
his whole site, the plan is comparatively risk-free, at least until
something meaningful happens. At this point, all they are doing is
asking people to sign a letter of intent. When and if they have
letters of intent to buy 200% of the cabins on a particular ship,
they start asking people to put their money where their mouths are.
With twice as many letters of intent as is needed, they might actually
get enough people following through to make this work. The buyers
will, as a group, buy the ship (or ships-- if this actually works
once, these people will, I am quite sure, try to make it work again)
and will form a condo association. The promoters do NOT own the
ship-- the cabin owners do. The money for the promoters comes from
running the ship(s). 10 percent of the gross from maintenance fees
goes to the company doing the promoting. Maintenance fees are set at
actual non-profit operating costl, plus 10%, in other words. The
company president is a naval engineer, and there will apparently be
money set aside for maintenance. The ship shuts down in Gdansk two
weeks a year for an overhaul, and live-aboard people get put up in a
cheap hotel, with meals. If the condo association doesn't like how the
management team are running the ship they can vote them out. There's a
one-year transition period. Of course, then the condo association
will have to find somebody else to run the ship. If the initial
managememnt group, which looks like it's actually made up of people
with some experience in the cruise ship industry, can keep the
association happy, they will make a lot of money on this. And if the
association is happy, that means the individual cabin owners are
happy, right??
There are a couple of other wrinkles here. Note the name
--AdventureSpaCruises. These ships will feature fairly elaborate
spas, with good high prices. It's obviously hoped that a lot of
buyers will be the sort of people who like to spend a lot of time
getting facials, etc., and a cabin owner only gets 3 hours/week per
cabin unless they pay extra. If you buy now, you get 50% off on spa
prices forever! Also, there will be a casino....
If you do a Google search on "Adventure Spa Cruise" (in quotes like
that) you already get over 4200 hits. There are already a lot of
virtually identical subsidiary websites, like
http://www.cruise-ship-vacations.org/ which were, as of May 2002,
already trying to sell you Caribbean cruises on something called the
"Adventurer cruise ship" for $350. Two guesses what the first ship
bought gets renamed, if there's enough actual cabin buyers to actually
buy a ship. Unsold cabins will, naturally enough, be sold by the week
to people who want a budget cruise. It will only cost them a LITTLE
more than Carnival, and they will get a VERY different cruise
experience. The lowest-cost inside cabins on what's now the
Verginia Sky are 64 square feet each, including the bathroom. This
was originally a Japanese ship remember. In Tokyo they have motel
rooms that are like big drawers....
For cabin buyers, Adventure Spa Cruises suggests taking two of these
and turning them into a suite, with a bigger bathroom. If you like
inside cabins, I suspect such a suite could be made quite liveable.
And if you are only four feet tall, you might be quite happy with a 64
square-foot cabin anyway. It will be CHEAP! Probably around $15,000.
You could buy a lot with an elderly travel trailer for even less,
and have more room, but that would stay in one place, and you don't
get room service. For another $15,000 or so a year, you can live
year-around on a two-star cruise ship, with all meals and linens.
I think the main goal here is to sell true year-around condos, but
there will probably be some time-share condos sold too. The ship will
make some port every Saturday (other stops likely most weeks, except
for repositioning). Buying a time-share on a cruise ship is a REALLY
bad idea, of course. Either the ship will be in the same place every
year, which will tend to bore the live-aboard people, or (more likely)
the itinerary will change yearly. One year, your week may be in the
Caribbean, the next year in South America, the next year in the South
Pacific. But you don't get to choose, and getting to your
embarkation point is up to you. Even if it's in Siberia.
For people who want to live aboard for at least several months a year,
and who don't gamble or use a lot of spa services, this could
actually be a pretty good deal. A small outside cabin will cost you
the purchase price (which depending on what the ship sells for is
$50,000-$150,000) and probably around $20,000 a year after that.
For that money, you can cruise until you are sick of the ship and
your fellow-passengers. If you have someplace else to live for
several months a year, it might work for you.
If it doesn't, and if the ship gets going and stays going, I'd expect
you'd be able to sell your cabin. There will actually only be a few
hundred cabins at most, and there must be a lot of retirees who are
intrigued by this idea. You can certainly try and rent your cabin
unless the ship is chartered as a private yacht. If you let
Adventure Spa Cruises do the renting for you, you won't get as much
money, but you will probably have an easier time getting it rented.
If the owners of a ship (that's YOU, the condo association, remember)
choose to take the private yacht option it will mean there's less
regulation, and probably lower costs for that reason. Or so the
management promises. They make their 10 percent either way. Their
books are open to inspection. No good reason I can see that they
shouldn't run the whole thing perfectly honestly-- they'll make lots
of money anyway. Especially if the managing directors spend any time
on board, I'd expect them to be honest. Can you say "Walk the
plank?"
If I were ready to retire, and had a spare million bucks lying
around, I'd send these folks a letter of intent, with the intention to
sign up for a $100,000 cabin. The social dynamics aboard will be
fascinating. Some people will want to live cheap in their cabins.
You will be able to do that cheaper than you could live ashore-- if
you don't tip the stewards. Some people will want to rent their
cabins out nearly all the time, and will be in conflict with the
people who a want to cruise the world. The first year will probably
be spent mostly in the Med and the Caribbean, and the people who live
aboard will mostly want to spend most of the next year elsewhere.
But for people who plan on renting out their cabins, renting a cruise
up the Amazon might be tougher. So THEY will push for Carribean in
winter, Med in summer. One suggestion from the management is that
people can buy the fuel and just determine where their fuel will take
them. That may be attractive to those in the live-aboard group with
enough money. The nicest cabins on these ships are pretty nice,
after all, and the people who buy them might want to spend most of
their time on shipboard. This is all a LOT cheaper than Residensea-
therefore, you have more money left over for things like taking the
ship where YOU want it to go. Or trying to do that.
As a special added attraction, in 2010 (as
http://www.adventurespacruise.com/ is perfectly willing to tell you)
everything flammable will have to be removed from your cabin (at your
expense) and from the rest of the ship (at a pro-rated expense for all
the owners). I'm not sure if that's true of a private yacht or not,
though. And that IS one reason there are a lot of smaller, older
cruise ships laid up right now. Totally refurbishing them, so
there's no wood in the passenger cabins, and yet the cabins look
nice, would get expensive. But that cost will all be bourne in 2009
by the cabin owners of any condo ship. And, as the promoters point
out, people are looking for a totally non-flammable spary coat that
will allow those older ships to stay in service without a refit. As
they say, if such a magic spray coat is found, the cost of old cruise
ships will go up. "Buy now the boat is leaving!" (to quote the
promoters).
I'm quite serious when I say that if I were retiring and had enough
spare money that I could afford to put 10% of it into buying a cabin,
I'd do so. It would be really nice to own my own cabin on even a
cruddy old cruise ship. --Chris
Margie S.
mainly just to see what happens. What would the timing be? Who knows? I'm
quite sure I could stand to live on board a cruise ship for a year and then
maybe sell it -- or be so hooked I would stay there. The prices are very
reasonable, or so it seems. Anyway, nothing ventured at this point. Am I
just dreaming?
Margie in Houston
"Chris Mullin" <mul...@selway.umt.edu> wrote in message
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