| IMO | 9070620 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 69,472 GT |
| Length | 264.26 m |
| Beam | 32.0 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 2074 |
| Service speed | 24.0 knots |
| Builder | Chantiers de l'Atlantique |
| Hull number | A31 |
| Launched | 1994 |
| Maiden voyage | 1995 |
| Operator | Marella Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Marella Discovery 2; Legend of the Seas; TUI Discovery 2 |
Overview
Marella Discovery 2 began life as Legend of the Seas, the lead ship of Royal Caribbean International's Vision class, and spent twenty-two years with that line before beginning a second career in the British market. Built by Chantiers de l'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire, France, she entered service in May 1995 as the first of a six-ship class that defined Royal Caribbean's mid-1990s fleet: glass-rich, mid-sized ships built for worldwide deployment rather than a single region. Sold in 2017 to what became Marella Cruises, she was renamed twice in a single year — TUI Discovery 2, then Marella Discovery 2 — as her new owner rebranded around her. She is a clean example of the directory's core pattern: one hull, three names, two quite different cruise markets.
Key specifications
The dataset records IMO 9070620, 69,472 GT, dimensions of 264.26 m by 32.0 m, a maximum capacity of 2,074, a speed of 24.0 knots and yard number A31. Her published record largely agrees, with small definitional differences: tonnage also appears as 69,130 GT in some sources, reflecting re-measurement over a long career. The published beam of 32.0 m is the waterline figure; maximum beam including structures is greater. Capacity published for the ship is about 1,836 passengers at double occupancy, with 2,074 the maximum — the figure the dataset carries — and a crew of about 771. She has 11 decks and an air draught of about 50 m. Her machinery is five Wärtsilä Vasa 12V46B engines driving two fixed-pitch propellers — a conventional, fast (24-knot) plant for a ship designed to range worldwide.
Design and construction
The Vision class was Royal Caribbean's answer to a strategic question of the early 1990s: how to build ships that could go anywhere, in the years before the line committed to ever-larger Caribbean resort ships. The design put glass at its centre — acres of glazing, a glass-canopied pool area and the line's signature Viking Crown lounge wrapped around the funnel — so that scenery, from Alaskan glaciers to Baltic archipelagos, was the entertainment. Legend of the Seas, as hull A31 and lead ship, set the template: an atrium-centred interior, two pools, a theatre, and, as the class evolved in service, the rock-climbing wall and mini-golf that became Royal Caribbean trademarks. She was launched at Saint-Nazaire on 5 September 1994 — the dataset's 1995 is her entry-into-service year.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
Her maiden voyage as Legend of the Seas took place on 16 May 1995. The "Legend" name belonged to Royal Caribbean's practice of aspirational naming for the Vision class — Grandeur, Rhapsody, Enchantment, Splendour, Vision — and it proved durable enough for the line to revive it a generation later: Royal Caribbean's third Icon-class ship, a vessel more than three and a half times her size, was given the name Legend of the Seas, explicitly as an homage to the original. Few renamed ships receive that compliment. Her later names are corporate rather than romantic: TUI Discovery 2 on her May 2017 debut for Thomson Cruises (first appearing under that name at Málaga on 14 May 2017), then Marella Discovery 2 in October 2017 when Thomson Cruises rebranded as Marella Cruises.
Career by operator
| Name | Operator | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Legend of the Seas | Royal Caribbean International | 1995–2017 |
| TUI Discovery 2 | Thomson Cruises | 2017 |
| Marella Discovery 2 | Marella Cruises | 2017–present |
The dataset's operator history ("Marella Cruises; TUI Cruises") compresses this: the TUI Cruises in the row is the British TUI/Thomson operation, not the German TUI Cruises joint venture, and the table above follows the ship's published record. Royal Caribbean announced the sale on 2 June 2016; her last Royal Caribbean cruise ended on 26 March 2017. In Royal Caribbean service she was described as the most-travelled ship in the fleet, having been based at various times in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific, Alaska, Central America, the Caribbean, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Middle East — worldwide deployment exactly as her class was designed for. From 2009 she was based year-round in Asia for a period, a deployment interrupted by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, after which most of her North Asia programme was cancelled and she later returned to European and Caribbean seasons.
Onboard character
The Vision class's era-defining feature is glass. Where the megaships that followed turned inward to interior promenades and enclosed attractions, the Vision ships were built to look out: a two-deck main restaurant with panoramic windows, lounges placed high and wrapped in glazing, and the Viking Crown as a viewing platform as much as a bar. Onboard character in Royal Caribbean service centred on the atrium, the theatre, the solarium's sliding glass canopy and outdoor features including the climbing wall. Under Marella, the same hull was re-presented for the British inclusive market, with the line's refurbishment programme remaking public rooms and dining around its own product style. The architecture underneath — the glass, the sightlines, the modest scale by modern standards — did not change, and it remains the reason the ship feels different from the larger vessels built since.
Major refits and incidents
No major casualty is recorded for this hull in the sources consulted. Her significant physical events are refurbishments: periodic Royal Caribbean drydockings across twenty-two years, during which class features such as the rock-climbing wall were part of her fit-out, and the conversion refit of spring 2017 between her last Royal Caribbean cruise (ending 26 March 2017) and her reappearance as TUI Discovery 2 at Málaga on 14 May 2017 — a fast turnaround typical of a sale between operating fleets rather than a rebuild. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake affected her programme commercially, cancelling most of her North Asia sailings, but the ship herself was not damaged. Where a directory entry has no fire, grounding or collision to report, it says so; that is this ship's position.
Sister ships and class
The dataset leaves the class field blank, but the ship's published record is explicit: she is the lead ship of Royal Caribbean's Vision class. The class's six ships, all built in France or Finland in 1995–1998, are Legend of the Seas (this hull), Splendour of the Seas — which followed her into the same British fleet as Marella Discovery, making the two sisters fleetmates again under new names — Grandeur of the Seas, Rhapsody of the Seas, Enchantment of the Seas (later lengthened) and Vision of the Seas. Four of the six remained with Royal Caribbean into the 2020s; the two that left both went to Marella, a neat measure of the class's suitability for the mid-market second career.
Fate and where she is now
The dataset records the ship as active for Marella Cruises, and published listings agree. She sails on under her third name, for the British market, nearly three decades after her maiden voyage — a longer front-line career than most of her 1995 contemporaries achieved. Her historical footnote is already assured by the naming decision of her first owner: when Royal Caribbean needed a name worthy of its largest-ever class, it reached back to hers. The original Legend is now Marella Discovery 2; the name sails on a ship launched in the 2020s; the hull sails on in the Mediterranean fleet of a British line. Both continuities are recorded here without embellishment.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Seas_(Vision_class)