Sun Princess

Sun Princess is the lead ship of Princess Cruises' Sphere class, the line's first genuinely new-generation platform in more than a decade and its largest vessel ever. She was ordered from Fincantieri in July 2018 as the first of a pair of dual-fuel ships that would carry Princess into the era of liquefied natural gas propulsion. The name itself carries lineage - there had been earlier Sun Princesses - but the 2024 ship shares nothing structurally with her predecessors, having been drawn up around a wholly new hull form conceived to maximise the amount of ocean visible from inside the ship.

Construction took place at Fincantieri's yard in Monfalcone, Italy. Steel was first cut in 2021, and the hull reached its float-out milestone on 8 March 2023, after which fitting-out and sea trials followed through late 2023 and into 2024. Fincantieri handed the completed ship over on 28 February 2024. Reported to have cost in the region of one billion US dollars, Sun Princess is the yard's first LNG-capable cruise ship, her dual-fuel engines able to burn liquefied natural gas as the primary marine fuel to cut sulphur and particulate emissions, with conventional fuel as a fallback.

At 177,882 gross tons she is by a wide margin the biggest ship Princess has ever operated, roughly a third larger than the preceding Royal-class vessels. She measures 345 metres in length overall with a beam of 47.5 metres and a draught of about 8.6 metres, and rises across 21 decks, 18 of them open to guests. The ship carries 4,300 passengers at double occupancy - up to 5,189 when every berth is filled - looked after by roughly 1,600 crew, and offers 2,157 staterooms. On entering service she registered under the Bermudian flag at Hamilton, with IMO number 9863118 and call sign ZCHD6.

The defining feature of the Sphere-class design is the way the superstructure has been pulled outward and upward to face the sea. The three-deck Piazza atrium, a signature Princess space reimagined at far larger scale, culminates forward in a suspended glass-walled structure Princess calls the Sphere, which cantilevers over the water to give sweeping ocean panoramas. High on the ship, spanning two forward decks, sits The Dome, a glass-canopied space inspired by the whitewashed architecture of Santorini that serves as a light-filled pool deck by day and transforms into a theatre for acrobatic and cabaret performances after dark. Aft, the multi-level Park19 top-deck zone offers an open-air family activity area with a ropes course, slides and other attractions.

Dining and entertainment were expanded to match the hull. The ship debuted new venues including The Butcher's Block by Dario Cecchini and Makoto Ocean alongside Princess mainstays such as Sabatini's and the Crown Grill, and it introduced Love by Britto, a restaurant themed around the artist Romero Britto. The Princess Arena, a wraparound show theatre seating more than a thousand guests, anchors the entertainment program, while The Sanctuary was folded into a premium Sanctuary Collection experience with private accommodation and reserved amenities. Throughout, the ship runs on Princess MedallionClass technology, the wearable Ocean Medallion that lets guests unlock staterooms, order food and drink to their location and navigate the vessel without physical keys or cards.

Sun Princess was named by British actress and singer Hannah Waddingham at a ceremony in Barcelona in April 2024, following a Mediterranean inaugural season based out of Spanish and Italian ports. In October 2024 she repositioned across the Atlantic to Fort Lauderdale for a Caribbean winter program, and she has since alternated between Caribbean sailings from Florida and European itineraries in the warmer months. She remains in active service as the flagship of the Princess fleet.