Princess Cruises Marks 40 Years with a Real Jewel
 Jerry Brown - Boston Herald
| The 1949-built, 6,062-grt passenger vessel Princess Patricia is seen in this photograph as she was arriving at the port of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada during April of 1975.
(Ray Thorstienson) |
Late in 1965, a small ship (just 6,000 tons and carrying fewer than 200 passengers) pulled away from its berth at the Port of Los Angeles, bound for the Pacific coast of Mexico. It offered no balconies, no alternative dining rooms, no glitzy Broadway-style reviews. It had no lap pools, no putting greens or computerized golf simulator, no lavish casino. In fact, it had little of anything except, according to its owner, Stanley McDonald, enormous potential.
The ship was the Princess Patricia, a converted Canadian Pacific ferry boat, the first vessel in the fleet of McDonald’s then brand-new Princess Cruises. Few could have envisioned that somewhat modest maiden voyage to Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan heralded the start of a company that would develop into an industry giant.
The Princess Pat, as that first ship was affectionately known, is long gone, of course. Princess’ fleet now comprises 14 vessels - nine of them built in this century, six weighing in excess of 100,000 tons and carrying between 2,600 and 3,100 passengers. Over 40 years, its cruise network has expanded to virtually every navigable corner of the globe, from the deep South Pacific to the rocky coast of Maine, from the Caribbean to Alaska, from the Mediterranean and the North Cape to Southern Africa.
But while these other destinations were being added over the years, Mexico remained a staple in the Princess brochure. During its four decades of operation, the company has maintained a regular presence in the Mexican Riviera.
On a recent one-week cruise aboard the Sapphire Princess, roundtrip from Los Angeles, passengers visited Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. The ship is one of the line’s biggest and newest - 116,000 tons of innovation and luxury with room for 2,670 guests. It has six restaurants, 24-hour dining, a wine and caviar bar, a nightclub 15 stories above the surface of the water, a lavish spa and four swimming pools with hot tubs. Princess has come a long way.
Blazing a trail is invariably difficult, as McDonald and his pioneering Princess staff found out early. There was, for instance, the time the original ship sent passengers’ clothes ashore to a laundry in Acapulco; the ship had no such facility. And all the laundry came back in one lump. Absent individual identification, the ship’s crew was forced to set up tables in the lobby and put the freshly laundered clothes on display for passengers to come by and take what belonged to them.
On another occasion during those early months, Princess installed a few slot machines onboard, a forerunner to the grand and multifaceted casinos on bigger ships nowadays. For several days, passengers played - and won. Midway through the voyage, the machines ran out of money. Only then did McDonald realize they were improperly calibrated and were paying off too easily.
”I had to put up thousands of dollars of my own money to pay the passengers using the machines,” McDonald recalled. ”That was our introduction to gambling.”
Princess’ 40-year march to a position of prominence in the cruise business has been marked by corporate structural and management changes. McDonald, in fact, has the distinction of having sold the company not once, but twice. The line is now a member of the family of Carnival Corp. of Miami.
Along the way, Princess gained TV fame with some of the ships featured on ”The Love Boat” series.
In its 40th anniversary year, Princess is not through growing. But you can bet next month’s mortgage payment that Mexico, the destination the line pioneered four decades ago, will figure prominently in the destination mix. |
Vallarta Weddings
News from Around Banderas Bay | December 2005 
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