| IMO | 9200940 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 30,277 GT |
| Length | 181.0 m |
| Beam | 25.46 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 777 |
| Service speed | 18.0 knots |
| Builder | Chantiers de l'Atlantique |
| Hull number | Q31 |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Maiden voyage | 2000 |
| Class | R-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Azamara |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Azamara Journey; R six for Renaissance Cruises until 2000; Blue Dream for Pullmantur Cruises until 2005 |
Overview
Azamara Journey is an R-class cruise ship, sixth of the eight near-identical ships built in France for Renaissance Cruises around the turn of the century, and one of the two ships with which the Azamara brand was created in 2007. She began life in 2000 as R Six, survived Renaissance's bankruptcy and a period laid up, sailed for the Spanish line Pullmantur as Blue Star and then Blue Dream, and was transferred in 2007 to become a founding ship of Royal Caribbean's new premium brand. Azamara's own media material dates her inaugural voyage under its flag to 6 May 2007.
Two dataset fields need correction at the outset, and both are logged in the batch notes. The dataset gives her launched year as 2007; that is her Azamara year. She was in fact launched on 17 January 2000 and completed on 24 June 2000, as her own article records. And the dataset's name history is compressed and reversed: R Six was her name from 2000 to 2003, not "until 2000," and between 2003 and 2005 she was Blue Star, a name the dataset omits, before becoming Blue Dream in 2005. Her verified history is the one given in the table below.
Key specifications
The dataset records 30,277 GT, 181.0 metres in length, 25.46 metres in beam, a maximum capacity of 777, a speed of 18.0 knots and hull number Q31 at Chantiers de l'Atlantique — all of which her own article confirms, with the capacity figure best read as a maximum: Wikipedia gives 694 passengers, Azamara's media kit 702 guests at double occupancy in 352 staterooms, and a crew of about 390–407 depending on source. She has 11 decks, a draught of about 5.8 metres, and conventional propulsion — two shafts with fixed-pitch propellers, powered by Wärtsilä diesel machinery — in deliberate contrast to the podded ships that followed her.
At 30,277 GT for roughly 700 guests, the R-class offers a space ratio and intimacy the premium brands could sell at high fares, in a hull small enough for ports megaships cannot use, yet with the seakeeping for ocean itineraries.
Design and construction
She was built by Chantiers de l'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire, France, as hull Q31. Ordered in 1997 as part of Renaissance's eight-ship R-class programme, she was laid down on 20 September 1999, launched on 17 January 2000 and completed on 24 June 2000. The R-class was Renaissance's bet on a uniform fleet of mid-sized, premium ships for worldwide deployment, all built by the one yard to essentially the one design — an approach that made the ships unusually interchangeable when the fleet was broken up, and is the reason eight sisters ended up scattered, in pairs and singly, across half a dozen brands.
Her design is that of a classic late-1990s premium ship: a single main dining room, a buffet restaurant high in the ship, forward observation and library spaces, and an emphasis on balcony accommodation unusual for her size and date. She was registered initially at Monrovia, Liberia, the flag Renaissance used for the class.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
As built she carried the class's functional naming system — R Six, the sixth R ship — and entered service for Renaissance in 2000. Renaissance's collapse at the end of September 2001 stranded her: sold in early 2001 to Cruise Invest, the vehicle set up to hold the ex-Renaissance ships, she was laid up, first at Gibraltar from October 2001 and then at Marseille, before being chartered in 2003 to Pullmantur and marketed for its Blue Star operation; from July 2005 she sailed as Blue Dream.
The name Azamara Journey dates from 2007. Royal Caribbean, which had acquired an interest in Pullmantur, decided to use two of the R ships to create a new premium brand, Azamara; the former Blue Dream became Azamara Journey and her sister, the former R Seven, became Azamara Quest. Azamara's media kit gives Journey's inaugural voyage under the brand as 6 May 2007. The name itself was a coined brand word, and "Journey" set the pattern for a fleet whose ships would all carry aspirational single nouns — Quest, Pursuit and, later, Onward.
Career by operator
| Name | Operator | Period |
|---|---|---|
| R Six | Renaissance Cruises | 2000–2001 |
| R Six (laid up) | Cruise Invest (owner; no operator) | 2001–2003 |
| Blue Star | Pullmantur Cruises | 2003–2005 |
| Blue Dream | Pullmantur Cruises | 2005–2007 |
| Azamara Journey | Azamara (Azamara Cruises / Azamara Club Cruises) | 2007–present |
Her Azamara career has had two ownership eras: a Royal Caribbean brand ship from 2007, until Royal Caribbean sold Azamara to Sycamore Partners in a deal announced in January 2021 and reported at $201 million. Her first Australian call came at Darwin on 8 February 2017, during a Singapore–Sydney voyage. During the pandemic she was laid up with her sisters at Glasgow's King George V Dock from June 2020, the last of the three Azamara ships to leave, on 9 August 2021.
Onboard character
The R-class interiors were designed for the premium market of 2000: wood-toned panelling, a library — in Azamara form, The Drawing Room — a forward observation lounge, a martini bar, and a traditional, one-level main dining room, in Azamara named Discoveries, plus two small specialty restaurants, the Italian Aqualina and the steak-and-seafood Prime C. There is a cabaret lounge rather than a theatre, a small casino, and a thalassotherapy pool on the spa deck.
Azamara's era-defining idea, however, was not a room but a schedule: destination immersion, with late-night and overnight stays in port as the brand's signature — a product that a 700-guest ship could deliver precisely because she was not competing on hardware. Journey's interiors have been progressively re-dressed to that positioning, most comprehensively in the brand's stem-to-stern renovation programme of 2016 (see below), which gave the ship a brighter, contemporary finish while keeping the R-class bones — and the intimate scale — untouched. In 2015 she and Quest also became television ships, used for the UK documentary series Cruise Ship Adventures with Nigel Marven.
Major refits and incidents
Azamara's two original ships were refurbished in 2012, and then comprehensively rebuilt in the line's 2016 drydock programme: Journey entered dry dock in January 2016 in the Bahamas for what the line described as a stem-to-stern renovation, with renewed staterooms and suites, new public venues and a modernised spa and dining offer. Azamara's media kit dates her refurbishment to January 2016.
Her one recorded security incident is well documented. On 23 November 2012, off the coast of Oman, during a Suez transit voyage from Piraeus to Mumbai, Journey was approached aggressively by two pirate skiffs. Passengers were moved inside under a "safe haven" call, and the ship's security team drove the skiffs off with warning shots and flares; the attempt failed and no one was harmed. Contemporary summaries usually date the attempted attack simply to November 2012. The Glasgow lay-up of 2020–21, shared with Quest and Pursuit, was her longest period out of service since her Renaissance-era lay-up twenty years earlier.
Sister ships and class
Journey is an R-class ship, sixth of eight sisters built at Saint-Nazaire for Renaissance Cruises between 1998 and 2001. All eight survive in premium service, an exceptional record for the class: R One and R Two sail as Oceania's Insignia and Regatta, R Three as Azamara Onward, R Four as Oceania's Sirena, R Five as Oceania's Nautica — itself a former Pullmantur Blue Dream, a reminder that the name migrated between sisters — R Seven as Azamara Quest, and R Eight as Azamara Pursuit. Azamara's fleet today consists entirely of four of these sisters: Journey, Quest, Pursuit and Onward, which makes Azamara, uniquely, a single-class fleet.
Fate and where she is now
Her dataset status is active, and correct: Azamara Journey remains in service with Azamara, under Sycamore Partners' ownership, as one of the brand's four R-class ships. A quarter of a century after her launch as R Six, she is doing the work she was designed for — worldwide itineraries for about 700 guests — for her third operator group, under her fourth name. No withdrawal, sale or renaming is recorded.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azamara_Journey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azamara, http://castlesoftheseas.nl/azamara-journey.html, https://www.cruisemapper.com/accidents/Azamara-Journey-566, https://www.azamara.com/static-assets/content/B2C-pdfs/azamara-media-kit.pdf