Press release from NCL

I found the press release on the NCL site.

Phil
Seacruise


Norwegian Cruise Line’s Expansion Accelerates
Two more Freestyle Cruising Ships – largest ever built – for delivery
in 2005 and 2006

Miami, September 19, 2003 -- Star Cruises announced today that it has
finalized orders earlier this week for two new Freestyle Cruising ships
for its Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) brand for delivery in Fall 2005 and
Spring 2006, continuing an expansion and renewal program that has seen a
new ship added every year since Star Cruises acquired the
long-established brand.

The two ships will be built at Meyer Werft in Germany, continuing a
relationship that has seen the building by that 200 year-old
family-owned yard of four ships for the Star/NCL group: Superstar Leo,
Superstar Virgo, Norwegian Star and Norwegian Dawn.

“Star Cruises is committed to the North American market and to
completely renewing the NCL fleet by adding at least one new ship a
year,” said Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, Chairman and CEO of Star Cruises
Group. “In just three and a half short years, we have committed almost
$2.5 billion to new ships for NCL with half of that investment already
being in service and the other half under construction. With the
introduction of these latest two ships in 2005 and 2006, we will have
increased NCL’s capacity by nearly 13,500 berths since 2000, all on new,
state-of-the-art ships.”

The two vessels, known currently as hull S.667 and S.668, will be based
in large part on the highly successful Norwegian Dawn/Norwegian Star
design, with modifications in both technical and passenger areas. Both
ships will be capable of the same high 24-25 knot speeds as their recent
sister ships. Gross tonnage will be slightly higher than Norwegian Dawn
at an estimated 93,000 GRT and the passenger capacity of each will be
2,400 lower berths.

The first contract is in dollars and the second in Euro. The two ships
together will cost approximately Euro 703 million or $790 million at
today’s exchange rates, including allowances for owner-supplied items.

“Freestyle Cruising and our break with traditional cruise ship design
have clearly changed the face of cruising," said Colin Veitch, President
and CEO of NCL, “and at an estimated all-in cost of less than $170,000
per berth these additional 4,800 berths will be a huge boost to the
financial success we are already having with our new Freestyle Cruising
ships. These ships will be the largest we have ever built, and will
enable us to continue the expansion of our popular Homeland Cruising
deployment around the coast of North America.“

Already we are selling regularly scheduled cruises out of 14 North
American home ports and our ambition is to bring a modern cruise ship to
every major coastal population center in North America,” Veitch
continued.

The new design will continue many of the features that have proven so
popular and successful on Norwegian Dawn and Norwegian Star, with 10
different restaurants including a steak house, an Asian restaurant/sushi
bar/teppanyaki room (now with two tables versus the current one),
Italian, French, and Spanish restaurants, two main dining rooms, and a
coffee shop/casual eatery located in the center of the atrium; enormous
health, fitness, and spa facilities; generous children and teen areas
with a dedicated children’s outdoor pool area; a 1000+ seat opera-style
theatre; a high-energy top-of-the-ship nightclub; karaoke facilities and
private karaoke rooms; a state of the art casino with player tracking
and the highest table limits at sea; a department store-style shopping
area, and extensive meeting and conference facilities.

Modifications from Norwegian Dawn include several new public areas on
which details will be released closer to delivery.

The new ships will also feature the very latest in environmental and
safety management systems, including advanced wastewater treatment
plants for the treatment of all gray and black water streams,
sterilizing and drying plants for various solid wastes, additional
incineration units and additional water making capacity; water-emulsion
injection systems for reduction of NOX emissions from the diesel
engines, and shore side discharge pumping systems for closed-system
waste disposal to licensed shore side facilities. Each ship will have a
CCTV surveillance system with over 1000 cameras monitoring all areas of
the ship to assist the officers and crew in their safe and efficient
management of operations.

Construction will commence on the first ship at the end of this month
and Meyer Werft, one of the most advanced shipbuilding yards in the
world, expects to deliver the first vessel in a record 22 months from
contract signing.
Commenting on the order, Bernard Meyer, CEO of Meyer Werft, said: “We
are extremely pleased to have reached this agreement with NCL and are
proud that our previous two ships for Star/NCL have had such a
revolutionary impact on the US market that our customer has come back to
us for more ships.”

“We have been refining the design and negotiating the contracts on these
ships continuously since the delivery of Norwegian Dawn last year,"
Veitch said. "The new design is truly an advance on what we have already
done with Meyer Werft, and reflects the excellent working relationship
we have with this yard where creativity and mold-breaking ideas can be
turned into attractive and commercially realistic ship designs.”

Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line is an industry innovator. NCL recently
announced its new brand, NCL America, under which its US flagged ships
will operate. The company is currently building its first US Flagged
ship, Pride of America, which begins inter-island Hawaii cruises on July
4, 2004.

Together, with Pride of America next year, and Norwegian Crown
transferred this month after undergoing extensive refurbishment, the two
new orders bring to 7,950 the number of new berths scheduled to join the
NCL fleet between now and 2006, a 50 percent increase over today’s
capacity.

NCL is also the leader in roundtrip seven-day cruising from U.S. and
Canadian ports, offering its popular Homeland Cruising program
seasonally from Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Los Angeles, Miami, New
Orleans, Philadelphia, Orlando (Port Canaveral), San Juan, Seattle and
Vancouver, and year round from New York, Houston and Honolulu.

For further information on NCL, contact a travel agent or NCL in the US
and Canada at (800) 327-7030; in Miami-Dade County, Fla., (305)
436-0866. To download high resolution photography visit
www.ncl.com/hires.




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