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Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

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Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#21

Post by EnigmaFlare »

ge96 wrote: post #19
lbriner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prices from $1,000" but shows the picture of the presedential suite to lure people in. "Oh yeah, $1,000 is a room next to the engine room with no window and a single bed" at which point people feel a bit embarrassed and accept that it is another $10K just to get a window. On the other hand, lots of people are returning customers so maybe there is something to be said for moving slowly across the ocean as your life e…

Tape an ipad to a wall, loop an ocean scene... Window

Parallax, sunlight intensity, directionality, heat. It's a pity we don't have affordable (or even any?) artificial windows that even emulate the sun. Just think how much more economically buildings could be made if they had effective fake windows.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#22

Post by dotancohen »

protocolture wrote: post #4

I worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.

It seems that those three hours gave you insight into one particular operators' practices, but obviously not the industry as a whole.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#23

Post by mensetmanusman »

newsclues wrote: post #6
quibono wrote: post #3

I'm amazed that these welds can hold ship sections like that. I wonder if this is regulated in any way? E.g. class and quality of welds required etc. On another note, a 2 billion investment to build a ship seems absolutely crazy. How long does it take to make that kind of money back, and how long does a ship need to sail to pay itself back?

It’s the same way the ship is built to start with

How to build a ship:

Step 1: cut a ship in half…

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#24

Post by zabzonk »

ge96 wrote: post #19
lbriner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prices from $1,000" but shows the picture of the presedential suite to lure people in. "Oh yeah, $1,000 is a room next to the engine room with no window and a single bed" at which point people feel a bit embarrassed and accept that it is another $10K just to get a window. On the other hand, lots of people are returning customers so maybe there is something to be said for moving slowly across the ocean as your life e…

Tape an ipad to a wall, loop an ocean scene... Window

actually, some interior cabins really do this - big lcd screen showing camera views from outside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKgX8mKjmxU

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#25

Post by jajko »

djtango wrote: post #17
lbriner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prices from $1,000" but shows the picture of the presedential suite to lure people in. "Oh yeah, $1,000 is a room next to the engine room with no window and a single bed" at which point people feel a bit embarrassed and accept that it is another $10K just to get a window. On the other hand, lots of people are returning customers so maybe there is something to be said for moving slowly across the ocean as your life e…

I don't much like cruises but I do really enjoy being out at sea and would be more than happy to "raw dog" (in gen z parlance) some trips out at sea.

There are many ways to enjoy seas, cruise ships are by far the worst. As per people who worked on those, they are mostly for people who simply don't know how to enjoy life well but have money, are quiet alcoholics, and/or suffer massive loneliness.

You can do amazing traveling experiences for less, you are in control of your own life and what happens next and you will feel like spending much more time when discovering world, culture, history and people compared to same white box with same things at same places.

But its the same mentality of going to some properly amazing exotic place and then spending 2 weeks in luxury bubble of some 5 star resort. I don't complain - those folks leave interesting places and experiences for rest of us, but respecting that I cannot.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#26

Post by ge96 »

zabzonk wrote: post #24
ge96 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tape an ipad to a wall, loop an ocean scene... Window

actually, some interior cabins really do this - big lcd screen showing camera views from outside https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKgX8mKjmxU

I want to do this one day inside an apartment using one of those thin flat TV's, put two in a corner and make a city skyline view

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#27

Post by tssva »

pintxo wrote: post #10
quibono wrote: post #3

I'm amazed that these welds can hold ship sections like that. I wonder if this is regulated in any way? E.g. class and quality of welds required etc. On another note, a 2 billion investment to build a ship seems absolutely crazy. How long does it take to make that kind of money back, and how long does a ship need to sail to pay itself back?

Icon of the seas, back of the envelop calculation: Revenue: 52 weeks of sailing x 5.6k passengers [1] x 1.8k $/week [2] ~= 525m $/year Costs: Interest [3] 160m $/year + Crew [4] 118m $/year + Hospitality [6] 200m $/year = 478m $/year Profit ~= 47m $/year or ~9% [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships [2] https://www.cruzely.com/heres-how-much-money-cruise-ships-ma... [3] 8% on 2b$ [4] Crew: 50k…

The CEO of Royal Caribbean has stated that the new large ships such as Icon are cash flow positive at 35% occupancy vs 50% occupancy for previous generations. The larger ships also have additional revenue generating experiences onboard so it is likely the average revenue per passenger is higher than the current industry average.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#28

Post by lotsofpulp »

ta1243 wrote: post #13
pintxo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icon of the seas, back of the envelop calculation: Revenue: 52 weeks of sailing x 5.6k passengers [1] x 1.8k $/week [2] ~= 525m $/year Costs: Interest [3] 160m $/year + Crew [4] 118m $/year + Hospitality [6] 200m $/year = 478m $/year Profit ~= 47m $/year or ~9% [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships [2] https://www.cruzely.com/heres-how-much-money-cruise-ships-ma... [3] 8% on 2b$ [4] Crew: 50k…

You've got to factor in deprecation. If the vessel cost $2b and lasts 20 years you need to repay $200m a year to repay the amount over 20 years. However I suspect 8% would be far higher that the rate they'd get. You'd also have to include maintenence costs, and also the reduction in revenue as it gets older (people will presumably not pay as much to travel on an older ship than a newer one), or the refurb costs you'l…

I feel like it’s just easier to use the existing cruise companies’ public financials. It looks like 10% to 15% are the real world profit margins, but with quite a bit of volatility.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RCL/royal-caribbea...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CCL/carnival/profi...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NCLH/norwegian-cru...

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#29

Post by Hnrobert42 »

timrichard wrote: post #14
quibono wrote: post #3

I'm amazed that these welds can hold ship sections like that. I wonder if this is regulated in any way? E.g. class and quality of welds required etc. On another note, a 2 billion investment to build a ship seems absolutely crazy. How long does it take to make that kind of money back, and how long does a ship need to sail to pay itself back?

Tonight's on-board movie will be The Finest Hours....

Ha! I just read that book because of a different HN thread. It was excellent. As I read about this process, I thought of the same thing.

For those not familiar, "The Finest Hours" by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman recounts the 1952 rescue mission off Cape Cod. In a tragic coincidence, a storm split two different oil tankers in half. Both tankers split as a result of a construction process, at least superficially, similar to the one in TFA.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#30

Post by icegreentea2 »

cm2187 wrote: post #15
frognumber wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Regulation is non-existent in the cruise industry. You shop for the venue with the most lax regulations of the ≈200 countries in the world. * The equivalent is insurance. Insuring a $2B ship carries pretty good due diligence. A ship simply failing is rare. Of course, ship insurance doesn't care about employee rights, safe food, medical care, or other things one might expect to keep people safe. It's about protectin…

And the original hull wasn't made of a single piece of steel in the first place, it is already a patchwork of steel plates welded together, isn't it? And I think it is assembled as vertical sections like the one being added.

Yeah, exactly how a ship is built will differ, but generally you build up fairly large structural blocks, and then assemble (uh, a lot of welding) them together.

Example time lapse of another cruise ship being built about a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_JIHel7To

Depending on the ship, shipyard, and I imagine a host of other factors, you might assemble a ship directly out of the order of ~50-100 blocks, or you might pre-assemble into order of ~10 "mega-blocks" which then get assembled together.

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