January 28, 2004 -- On January 14, a storm in Germany severely damaged a Norwegian Cruise Line ship under construction at the Lloyd Werft shipyard. The vessel, Pride of America, began taking on water in the early morning hours and settled to the bottom of its berth, flooding up to deck 3.
Pride of America was scheduled to enter Hawaii service in July as part of NCL's much-heralded American-flagged operation. While NCL has not released exact details of a new schedule, representatives said the delay would be a matter of "months rather than weeks."
In response to the incident, NCL is shuffling its fleet in order to satisfy customers booked on Pride's early sailings. The line's Norwegian Sky, which had been scheduled to undergo renovations at a later date in preparation for reflagging and renaming as Pride of Aloha, will be rushed to drydock for those renovations beginning May 17. The ship will take over Pride of America's schedule beginning July 4 and guests will be rebooked into equivalent cabins and sailing dates. If equivalents are not available, NCL is offering a number of discount and cancellation options.
Taking over Norwegian Sky's summer Alaska schedule will be a vessel from NCL's parent company, Star Cruises, the 77,000-ton, 2,000-passenger SuperStar Leo. Built in 1999 at Germany's Meyer Werft shipyard, the vessel is a sister-ship to NCL's Norwegian Star and Norwegian Dawn, and offers the same type of multi-restaurant, "freestyle" experience as NCL's newest ships. She'll begin her Alaska season on May 15.
Guests booked aboard any of these vessels should contact their travel agent for specific details or phone NCL at 800/456-3054, a dedicated line set up to deal with this situation. Norwegian can be found online at www.ncl.com.
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