Since the news of ORIANA's departure from the P&O Cruises fleet in August next year there has been pleanty of speculation and rumours and very little information relating to ORIANA's future.
P&O/Carnival themselves have stated very little relating to ORIANA's future role apart from 'Operating in the Chinese domestic market'
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| The epitome of P&O ORIANA in the Norwegian Fjords |
With very little infomation available naturely rumours began to circulate around the ship's future there were some self apponited cruise experts who claim their reliable sources were telling them that Fred. Olsen Criuse line were in fact the buyers, while another source a supposed employee claimed that Cruise & Maritime Voyages had shown an interest in the ship but due to Carnival UK's strict conditions pulled out of a sale, this at least is feasible they have made two purchases from Carnival in the past couple of years including one of ORIANA's former fleet mates the privious ARCADIA now COLUMBUS under CMV.
While for some the reason behind her departure from the fleet has more interest, one blogger claiming it is due ORIANA's custom built mechanical transmission system becoming increasingly unreliable citing several of ORIANA's technical issues as evidence while it is possible of course it is worth stating that the 18 year old AURORA who features an electrical transmission system has suffered many more technical issues than ORIANA,
They also claim many of ORIANA's outdated features and cabin sizes maybe be a factor, some of these being features which she shares with AURORA who is remainig with the fleet for the time being.
Concreate infomation regarding ORIANA's future has been almost impossible to come by in attempt gain further insight we contacted P&O Cruises twice to see if they were willing to give the name of ORIANA's buyer and on both occasions they were not very forthcoming however they did reveal that despite ORIANA's special place in with their passengers and the company they felt ORIANA's time had come and it would be better to invest in the remaing ships in the fleet saying-
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ORIANA is a much loved ship, and I know our guests (and indeed us as a company) are extremely sad to see her go. Although we do love the ship, we did feel that it would be prudent to focus on our other mid-sized and larger ships, especially with the arrival of two new ships in the fleet, and maintaining our high standard."
However today we are able reveal the very little infomation that has come to light regarding ORIANA's post P&O career thanks to the detective work of well known ship
enthusiast and spotter Patrica Dempsey,
On the 28th June just a day before the announcement ORIANA's ownership was transferred to ORIENTAL FLEET CRUISE 01 LTD a company whose address is listed as
'c/o Carnival Plc (Carnival UK) Carnival House,100, Harbour Prade Southampton, SO15 1ST, United Kingdom'
So who is Oriental Fleet Cruise 01 Ltd? well there is very little we can say for sure, investgating a little further found that the company is registered in the Marshall Islands, the company is not registered with Companies House in London or any other register of companies, the only confirmation of it's existence is it's
International Maritime Organization number which also lists it's fleet consisting of ORIANA.
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| IMO/IHS entry for 'Oriental Fleet Cruise 01 Ltd' |
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So what can we deduce from any of this? In all honesty not very much perhaps Oriental Fleet Cruise 01 is a new Carnival venture or perhaps a new company formed in Asia to operate in China as P&O have stated previosly, at this moment we can not say for sure but as soon as we have more infomation we will let our readers know
