Ship Tour:
SUPERSTAR GEMINI
by Jonathan Boonzaier

SUPERSTAR GEMINI - Star Cruises' little Gem, page one

All photos by and copyright Jonathan Boonzaier 2006, unless otherwise noted.

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Owners: Star Cruises

Star Cruises is well known for its large, modern mega-ships that sail under its own and the Norwegian Cruise Lines banner, but it is the company's baby, the 19,100-gt SUPERSTAR GEMINI, that is often regarded as the darling of the fleet.

In the ten years or so that the SUPERSTAR GEMINI has been sailing the waters of Asia, she has garnered an excellent reputation from an international clientele, many of whom have become loyal devotees, and return to cruise on her time and time again.

The Beginning

The SUPERSTAR GEMINI has her roots in the boom of the United States cruising market that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was one of a pair of ships ordered by Scandinavian ferry operator Effjohn International's US-based cruise subsidiary Commodore Cruise Lines. From the outset she was something of an anomaly in the cruise industry. Whereas most other cruise lines were ordering increasingly larger cruise ships, Commodore went the other way and ordered two 820-passenger vessels that were considerably smaller than anything else being built for the US cruise market at the time.

Before the two sisters were delivered, Effjohn decided that they would need a more upmarket operator than the decidedly budget Commodore. They purchased a fledgling cruise operator, Crown Cruise Lines, which was also trying to operate in the competitive cruise arena using a small newbuilding, the 15,300-gt Crown Monarch, which had been delivered from Spanish shipbuilder Union Navale de Levant. Coincidently the yard was also building the two Commodore ships. Effjohn thus assigned its own two newbuildings to Crown Cruise Lines. The first to debut was the CROWN JEWEL (now SUPERSTAR GEMINI) in 1992, followed in 1993 by an identical sister, the CROWN MAJESTY (currently sailing as Fred Olsen Cruises' BRAEMAR).

The Crown Cruise Lines trio was deployed out of US ports on cruises to the St Lawrence, Alaska, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Despite the good reputation these ships enjoyed with the cruising public, Effjohn and Crown Cruise Lines found it very difficult to compete against larger companies with their giant ships in the mainstream cruise market. In 1993 Effjohn tried to salvage the situation by tying up with Cunard to market the ships under the Cunard Crown Cruise Lines banner. Cunard assigned two of its smaller ships, the CUNARD COUNTESS and CUNARD PRINCESS to the venture, while the former Crown ships had the prefix Cunard added to their names, at least in the brochures.

Sadly this venture was also doomed to failure for a variety of reasons. Effjohn want out of the cruise business to focus on its ferry interests, while Cunard was taken over by the Carnival Corporation and wanted to concentrate on the upscale segments of the cruise industry. The Cunard Crown Cruise Lines fleet was slowly disbanded with the ships either sold or chartered out.

Sailing over to Star

The SUPERSTAR GEMINI undergoes a touch up in dry-dock.

It did not take very long for the almost brand new CROWN JEWEL to find a willing buyer. The ship was taken over by a fledgling cruise line in Asia, Star Cruises. Star had just finished converting two modern Baltic cruise ferries into the first mass-market cruise ships based in Asian waters for a predominantly Asian clientele. The ships were extraordinarily successful and paved the way for a massive fleet expansion programme that included both good quality second-hand purchases and large newbuildings.

Star wanted to tap the inbound fly cruise market and offer weekly sailings out of Singapore geared to an international clientele. The CROWN JEWEL, with its modest size, was deemed the ideal ship for this kind of service.

The ship debuted out of Singapore as the SUPERSTAR GEMINI in 1995. She operated 5-night cruises up the Straits of Malacca to ports in Malaysia and Thailand. These were geared to the international market, while on weekends she operated a short two-night cruise to Tioman Island in Malaysia, which was marketed to a Singaporean clientele.

The popularity of the longer cruise was such that it was soon extended to a full seven days while the short weekend cruises were dropped.

SUPERSTAR GEMINI docked in Phuket in her original Star Cruises livery. The ship was later painted all white and the stern rebuilt to increase stability.

The SUPERSTAR GEMINI continued her weekly cruises along the Straits of Malacca, but bookings were badly hit after the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11th 2001, and the bombings in Bali that followed shortly thereafter.

Early in 2002 Star pulled the SUPERSTAR GEMINI from Singapore and sent her off to China to try develop the market for mainland Chinese cruise passengers. This was not particularly successful, and within a year she was redeployed to Keelung in Taiwan, where she was well received and enjoyed several years of successful sailing on short cruises geared towards a Taiwanese clientele. By late 2005 international travel to Asia was well on the road to recovery, and with other cruise lines such as P&O Australia moving in on its turf, Star decided it was time for the SUPERSTAR GEMINI to return to Singapore and once again offer longer cruises for the international market.

The ship's return to Singapore at the end of 2005 was warmly welcomed by its legions of Australian and British fans, who have since flocked back to this jewel of a ship. To cater to its many repeat passengers Star has devised numerous interesting itineraries that operate beyond the Straits of Malacca, and call at ports in Vietnam, Cambodia and Borneo.

Dyak warriors and maidens welcome SUPERSTAR GEMINI's passengers to Sarawak.

Several longer itineraries of up to 21 days sail as far a field as Hong Kong, and are proving to be extremely popular with the SUPERSTAR GEMINI loyalists, some of whom have clocked up close to 100 cruises on the ship.

Click here for SUPERSTAR GEMINI TOUR page two

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