Setting sail on December 15th, the maiden voyage of the new British Iglucruise ship was promising to bring skiing to the Caribbean while sailing the open seas. Not water skiing, but a snow-like downhill skiing experience on a slope “situated on the top deck and…made with the innovative Perma-Snow all weather ski carpet and serviced by a button lift.” According to the itinerary, the cruise should now almost be complete. As many websites and blogs, including Yahoo, wrote of this new vacationing option for those wanting to cruise and ski , my curiosity was peaked and I too wanted to see photos and video of this new ship.
Each blog and website that I checked had the same photo… this started to look fishy. Modern cruise ships typically cost $500 million to build with some exceeding $1.0 billion. No one spends this kind of money without promoting it publicly, especially a cruise ship with this reportedly unique feature that takes up well over half of the upper deck. That is prime space for pools and lounge chairs. Having been on a cruise ship before, the Celebrity Equinox, our family knows firsthand the ‘luxuries’ and activities built into these newer ships. Celebrity does not cater to the ‘adventure’ crowd like Carnival does with their rock walls and snorkeling tours, but each cruise line does have their own, unique ‘hook’. It is not completely unreasonable that a new cruise line would try to outdo the old ones with a ski slope onboard. The technology is there, but it appears that the ship is not… at least yet.
I can’t honestly say that I have evidence either way, but based on the information out there, the Iglucruise appears to be “bullship.” It looks to be some clever marketing done by the British travel agency, Iglu.
Well played!