They are going to call it Liberty of the Seas.

RCI announced a flurry of new ports for the 2007 season.

Liberty of the Seas will be based out of Miami.

Empress of the Seas will make its traditional Bermuda runs from Norfolk and Philadelphia.

Grandeur of the Seas will offer nine night Canada/New England, five night Bermuda, and nine night Eastern Caribbean routes out of Baltimore.

Navigator of the Seas will offer four and five night runs out of Miami.

Enchantment of the Seas will offer four and five night runs from Fort Lauderdale and later Tampa.

Splendour of the Seas will be based out of the Dominican Republic from December 2007 through March 2008 on a pair of seven night runs.

Galveston will host the Voyager of the Seas most of the year, with the Rhapsody of the Seas filling in during the summer.

RCI has announced it will offer year-round cruises on the Explorer of the Seas from its near-New York port across the Hudson from NYC.

RCI held a three day opening celebration for its third call center. Located in Springfield Oregon, the 160,000 square-foot building sits on 24 acres of land, and employees more than 230. Built at a cost of $60,000,000, it joins call centers in Miami and Wichita in serving RCI clients.

Speaking of what changes might take place in 2009 when the first Genesis class ship begins her career in the RCI fleet, the most obvious area for change might be in dinning.

To the chagrin of traditionalists, cruise lines have been implementing dinning options which increasingly deemphasize the single dinning room and two seating formats. Norwegian Cruise Lines uses Freestyle to describe their approach, and the term has become generic in the industry since its introduction. The NCL model centers around having several restaurants which passengers can eat in, rather than reporting to a single dinning room at a fixed time. Other cruise lines have experimented with this to much more limited degrees. Most cruise lines have long had casual dinning options, such as the Windjammer Cafe’s on RCI.

With the advent of the Genesis class, and a substantial increase in passengers, dinning could be one area of major change. The trend in RCI ships, from new tonnage (newly built ships) to older vessels being refit, extra options for dinning are being added. The odds favor something new being added to the Genesis project. What is less certain, is if an active effort will be made to offer non-traditional options as an alternative to twin seatings in the main dinning room.

RCI has a well defined brand, and to introduce a ship which totally departs from the proven model is unlikely. NCL introduced Freestyle dinning out of the need to differentiate itself. RCI has not such need. More likely to be seen, would be a middle ground, where the main dinning room remains, but passengers opt to pursue other dinning options, such as an all casual program. If nothing else, I can not presently see how RCI will avoid having to use more than one dinning room.

With a delivery date in 2009, there are likely two more years of development before steel is cut for the Genesis project. So the ideas being beat around Dodge Island and the colder parts of Europe are not yet set in stone.

Talk about the new Freedom of the Seas has almost given way to talk over project Genesis. Size is the main topic of conversation. Some people I have talked with, who have already traveled on the Voyager class, have expressed hesitation to embrace the idea of an even bigger ship. The raw numbers seem to give people pause when considering the next step in cruise ship design. It is hard for people to comprehend how nearly six thousand passengers could move about freely on a single ship.

However I think these same fears have been expressed with each major increase in ship size. RCI has a long history of building new and bold ships with no precedent. The jump from the 17,000 GRT range to the mammoth 72,000 GRT Sovereign of the Seas in 1987 was considered staggering at the time. Yet the ship gained praise for how well large numbers of passengers were able to move about the ship. RCI had done its homework well in advance, and that experience has carried through to the current Voyager, Radiance, and Freedom Class’. Indeed, RCI pioneered the art and science of passenger flow.

So I don’t have much worry that I will find either the Freedom or Genesis class of ships to be any less comfortable than the Voyager and her siblings. But there are going to be a lot of people wondering what changes from the current RCI experience might take place.