Premier’s parent company, Dial, sold the company after posting profits for 1995, 1996, and 1997. New owners and new leadership followed, with Larry Magnan as president in 1998.
However, the company would file for bankruptcy and cease all operations on September 14, 2000, with passengers on the still-running cruises being docked and given flights home on a first-come, first-served basis; the company’s primary lender had seized its existing fleet, which had been put up for collateral.
The older ships were designed before the current disability acts coming into effect, requiring reasonable access for persons with physical disabilities, were even envisioned, let alone enacted into law. Much later, after 1997, Premier was sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (passed in 1990) for not making accommodations for people with disabilities.
Premier ships included the Majestic (the former Sun Princess of Princess Cruise Lines), the former Home Lines flagship Oceanic, the Atlantic (another former Home Lines ship), and the Royale, a former Costa Cruises liner known then as the Frederico C. The original four ships had the prefix “Star/Ship” before their names.
During Premier’s reorganization in the mid-1990s all but the Oceanic (Big Red Boat I) were sold off. Premier then became an amalgamation of Dolphin and Seawind Cruises. Later, the Rembrandt, formerly the Rotterdam of Holland America Lines, was added to the line.
The SS Oceanic (Big Red Boat I) was still sailing until 2012 when she was sailed to Yokohama for scrapping. The Big Red Boat II, formerly Eugenio Costa, was put up for sale and was laid up in Freeport, Bahamas. She had no potential buyers and remained there until 2005, eventually being sold to the breakers and was scrapped in Alang, India in late 2005.
The Big Red Boat III, formerly Carnival Cruise Line’s Festivale, was also sold for scrap. The former Frederico C (called the Seabreeze I) was to be scrapped at India but instead sank in a storm 220 nautical miles off the Virginia coast. Lastly, the Rembrandt, formerly the Rotterdam, was purchased by the city of Rotterdam, The Netherlands to be restored and kept as a historic landmark.
FROM 1985 TO 1992, Premier Cruise Lines’ “Big Red Boat” partnered with Disney featuring its bright red-hulled cruise ship that operated out of Port Canaveral to provide Disney-costumed characters for the cruise line’s Bahamas cruises in connection with a multi-day vacation stay at Walt Disney World. Starting in 1985, the ships Majestic, Oceanic and Atlantic offered 3-day and 4-day vacations to the Bahamas.
– Wikipedia contributed to this report
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Publish date : 2024-09-20 17:04:00
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