Enchanted Princess

Overview

Enchanted Princess is the fifth ship of Princess Cruises' Royal class, the platform that has defined the line since Royal Princess in 2013. Built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, Italy, she is a 145,281 GT diesel-electric ship for 3,660 passengers. Her career is stamped by the pandemic: she was delivered on 30 September 2020 — the first cruise ship Fincantieri handed over after COVID-19 struck, and the builder's 100th passenger vessel — and then waited more than a year before carrying her first guests, finally making her maiden voyage on 10 November 2021.

Key specifications

The dataset records 145,281 GT, 329.92 m in length and a 38.42 m beam. Her own particulars fill out the picture: draught of about 8.5 m, four Wärtsilä diesel generators totalling 62.4 MW, and two fixed propellers each driven by an 18 MW electric motor. Service speed is 21.9 knots with a maximum of 23 knots. She has 1,830 passenger cabins — 81 percent of them with balconies — and 757 crew cabins, a passenger capacity of 3,660 and a crew of 1,346; maximum capacity of passengers and crew combined is 5,800. These are the class-standard Royal-platform numbers, refined across five ships rather than reinvented for this hull.

Design and construction

The Royal class was Fincantieri and Princess's answer to the mega-ship generation: a large but conventionally arranged ship built around a central Italian-style Piazza atrium, with the class's best-known exterior feature, the SeaWalk glass-floored walkway extending beyond the ship's side, carried over from the lead ship. Enchanted Princess is an evolution within the platform, sharing the accommodation changes introduced on her immediate sister Sky Princess — notably a new top-deck suite category with wide panoramic views — with revised décor and dining concepts of her own. Construction followed the agreement Carnival Corporation signed with Fincantieri in March 2015; the contract for this fifth Royal-class ship was finalised on 2 April 2016, with initial reports already fixing her at approximately 145,000 GT for 3,660 passengers — figures the finished ship matched almost exactly — and her keel was laid at Monfalcone on 14 February 2019.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

Princess announced the name Enchanted Princess on 20 August 2018. She was floated out at Monfalcone on 6 August 2019 — the dataset's "launched 2021" is her entry-into-service year, corrected in the notes log — with yard employee Marinella Cossu as the float-out godmother; Princess held its own ceremony on 17 September 2019, with Doris Magsaysay Ho, the line's Filipino crew recruiter and trainer, performing the honours. COVID-19 then closed Fincantieri's yards for six weeks in spring 2020; she ran sea trials between Monfalcone and Palermo in June 2020, completed them on 8 July, and was delivered three months late on 30 September 2020. Her planned June 2020 debut evaporated with the industry's shutdown. She eventually sailed her maiden voyage from Port Everglades on 10 November 2021, calling at Princess Cays, St. Thomas, Dominica, Curaçao and Aruba, and was named afterwards — on 13 December 2021, in a streamed ceremony — by three godmothers from The Explorers Club: Captain Lynn Danaher, Dr Vicki Ferrini and Jenifer Austin, honoured for work in expedition, oceanography and ocean mapping.

Career by operator

One name, one operator. The only unusual entry in her career table is the gap in it: a completed, delivered ship that spent her first year laid up, a casualty of timing rather than of any defect in the ship herself.

Onboard character

The Royal class's character is scale moderated by a familiar, hotel-like plan: the Piazza as a social centre, a high proportion of balcony cabins, and public rooms arranged as variations on a theme the line's repeat passengers already know. Enchanted Princess follows that formula with the class's later refinements — the Sky Suites introduced with her sister, among the largest balcony spaces in the fleet, and interiors refreshed rather than redesigned. She is also a MedallionClass ship, built around Princess's wearable-device service concept, which was as much a part of the class's late-period identity as any physical space.

Major refits and incidents

No major refit or casualty is recorded for this ship in the sources consulted. Her defining disruption was external: the pandemic delayed her delivery, cancelled her entire planned first season, and left her idle between September 2020 and November 2021. Since entering service she has operated without a major reported incident.

Sister ships and class

The Royal class, all built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, runs: Royal Princess (2013), Regal Princess (2014), Majestic Princess (2017, built for the Chinese market), Sky Princess (2019), Enchanted Princess (2021) and Discovery Princess (2022). At 145,281 GT the later ships are slightly larger than the 142,229 GT lead trio. The class was Princess's flagship platform for a decade, until the LNG-fuelled Sphere class succeeded it.

Fate and where she is now

Enchanted Princess is in active service with Princess Cruises, registered at Hamilton, Bermuda. Delivered into the worst year in cruising's history, she has since settled into the ordinary career her design intended.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_Princess, https://www.marinelink.com/news/fincantieri-floats-enchanted-princess-469292