Psychedelic Cruise Ship

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 5

Psychedelic Cruise Ship

(Reprinted from "Newsweek

by arrangement) Te old-time ocean | voyagers, the spectacle of the SJS. Independence steaming into New York Harbour recently was scarcely to be believed. Fresh from the Maryland dockyard where she had been refitted at a cost of $3.5 million, the 17-year-old 23,754ton American Export Isbrandtsen liner was emblazoned across 500 feet of her 683-foot hull with a psychedelic mural—an orange, yellow and raspberry sunburst out of which leered a huge pair of eyes. Driving the point, home was a giant banner over the stem urging “Turn On.” Not For Health The go-go runs throughout the ship, from the swimming pool with a pop-art “SPLASH” spelled across the bottom, to the posters in the brightly coloured stairwells, right down to the bathrooms labelled “Bonnie and Clyde.” AU this, said an accompanying advertising campaign, means “the end of the shuffleboard era.” “People don’t take our cruises for their health,” declared one full-page advertisement We’ve got live entertainment and a couple of really great late night bars.” Added a shipping company brochure: “The Independence is wild.”

The shipping line and its general passenger agents, the Diners/Fugazy Sales Corpora-

tion, don’t care a fig about the old-time voyager—the kind who spends all his time bundled in a deck chair reading a book and waiting for bouillon. “We’re aiming at the youth market, the young people who always felt the cruises were deadsville,” says Mr W. D. Fugazy, aged 43, who heads Diners/Fugazy and recently became president of its parent Diners Club. European Plan Of more practical appeal than all the razzle-dazzle was the European plan, an innovation of ocean travel, which the Independence and her sister ship, the Constitution (to be similarly restyled), are introducing on Caribbean cruises. For as little as $9B, a passenger can enjoy all shipboard privileges for seven days and pay what he feels like for his food and drink, from Cokes and hamburgers to seven-course dinners.

Already, the new approach appears to be paying off. “In the two months since we announced this concept,” said Mr Fugazy, “our total Caribbean bookings have numbered a phenomenal 12,054, more than anybody has ever done in a similar period.” And if the over-all result is a shot in the arm for ocean i travel in general, as Mr Fugazy expects, then even the most crotchety old-timer may come around like the Isbrandtsen family itself. As Ralph Weiser, executive vicepresident of American Export Industries, parent company of American Export Isbrandtsen, put it: “For a family like the Isbrandtsens, with several hundred years of seafaring history, to accept a change like this is really something.”