MSC Cruises took delivery of the its 15th ship on Monday, the MSC Seaview, which will spend the summer in the Mediterranean before repositioning to Brazil for the winter season.
With her “beach condo” design and generous outdoor public spaces, the Seaview follows her sistership, the Seaside, which was delivered last fall and is deployed out of Miami on Caribbean cruises.
“The MSC Seaview will bring yet another new distinctively innovative MSC Cruises product to the market as she boasts cutting edge design, and features the latest marine and environmental technology,” said Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Cruises, in a prepared statement. “She is an example of our commitment to bring the best and most innovative tonnage to the market, and our ambition to set each time a new standard in the industry. The Seaside class is yet another brand new, highly-innovative prototype that we have introduced – the 5th to date, since we entered the cruising industry only 15 years ago. Moreover, I am proud to say, together with her sister ship the Seaside, it is the biggest ship ever built in Italy.”
Vago added, “We are increasing capacity at record speeds. The Seaview is the third ship to come into service in just 12 months. These are very exciting times for us, and we are already merely nine months away of the completion of our next ship, the Bellissima, the first of two Meraviglia-class ships that will come into service over a six-month period next year.”
“We will remember the MSC Seaview, without doubt, as an authentic undertaking. Just six months ago, in fact, we celebrated in this same yard the delivery of the largest ship ever built in Italy, the Seaside, a revolutionary prototype,” commented Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Fincantieri. “Today we are repeating this success with her sister ship. This is an amazing performance that we are extremely proud of, carried out thanks to the technical and managerial skills, which made us great and acknowledged as such in the world and which allows us to look to the future with renewed confidence.”
During the delivery ceremony, which pays tribute to an important maritime tradition, Roberto Olivari, Fincantieri’s shipyard director, presented an ampoule holding the first water that touched the hull when the ship was floated out last year to Captain Pier Paolo Scala, master of the Seaview.
The Seaview is the third ship to be built under MSC Cruises’ EUR 10.5 billion ($12.4 billion USD) investment plan which has already resulted in the completion of two out of 12 next-generation ships: the Meraviglia and Seaside in May 2017 and November 2017, respectively.
Leaving the shipyard, the Seaview will make a three-day voyage, arriving in her homeport of Genoa on June 7. She will be officially inaugurated there on June 9 and will commence her inaugural cruise on June 10.
