Dubai World Buys Queen Elizabeth 2
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 06.18.07 | 4:05 PM ET
Goodbye, high seas. Hello, Palm Jumeirah. One of the world’s grandest cruise ships, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2, has been purchased by a division of a Dubai-owned corporation and by 2009 will become yet another mega spectacle in a land of mega spectacles. According to the AP, Istithmar, a division of government-owned Dubai World, purchased the famed British ship—it has carried royalty, troops to the Falklands War and the Norovirus from Acapulco to San Francisco—for $100 million and plans to turn it into a “floating hotel, retail and entertainment destination” off the coast of the manmade Palm Jumeirah island.
While Dubai hardly seems to need more spectacles, it actually sounds like a fine turn of events for the 38-year-old QE2. The new owners will apparently refurbish the ship, recreating its original decor. It’s good to see the legacy of a travel legend protected. Just think, it could have become 70,000 tons of scrap.
The BBC and others have more details on the sale.
Related on World Hum
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* Dubai on the Cheap?
* ‘The Cultures That Produced Dubai and Las Vegas Surely Must Have Something in Common’
* Illuminating ‘Dark Travel’
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Alexander Groppe 06.19.07 | 11:30 AM ET
She’s been THE icon of ocean travel since her inception.
She has exterior style and grace hitherto unmatched. Aside from setting millions-mark records (in terms of ocean miles traversed and numbers of passengers), QE2 will always represent a triumph in competant marketing:
she was able to do what no other true liner had been able to do at the dawn of the Jumbo Jet age: survive and prosper doing what she was built to do: cross the Atlantic on regularly scheduled runs and cruise to exotic destinations.
If there is one ship in the long history of ocean travel that most deserves a respectable retirement, it is QE2. Bravo to Carnival Corp. for not callously tossing her to the scrapyards.
I am lucky enough to have booked passage on her for January 2008 - tandem crossing with Queen Vic~ Boy am I glad I reserved that spot several months ago!
Guess many of us who never dreamed of visiting Dubai will be visiting Dubai in the not-so-distant future!~