MSC Cruises has celebrated the floating out of MSC Virtuosa at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in France.
MSC Virtuosa Floats Out
Over the weekend the second Meraviglia Plus class cruise ship named MC Virtuosa was floated out at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Nazaire, France. The major construction milestone for the ship hitting the water for the very first time was celebrated by shipyard and cruise line personnel.
MSC Virtuosa will be the second Meraviglia-Plus ship after MSC Grandiosa. The ship will now move to a wet dock for further construction and fitting until she is delivered in October 2020.
The sixth MSC Cruises ship to enter service since 2017, MSC Virtuosa will be as highly equipped as MSC Grandiosa with cutting-edge technologies and the second ship in the Company’s fleet to have a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system and next-generation advanced wastewater treatment system (AWTS) to minimize her environmental footprint and ensure ever cleaner air emissions.
MSC Virtuosa’s SCR will help reduce nitrogen oxide by 80 percent with the technology converting it into harmless nitrogen and water.
She will also be equipped with a next-generation AWTS to treat wastewater to a very high quality and the end product is of a better standard than most land-based municipal waste standards around the world.
MSC Virtuosa will also be fitted with shore-to-ship power which connects a docked cruise ship to a port’s local power grid to further reduce air emissions. This feature is broadly available across MSC Cruises entire fleet and has been standard across all of the Company’s new ships since 2017.
MSC Virtuosa’s maiden voyage will be a 7-night six-port Western Mediterranean cruise in November 2020 from Genoa, Italy. After a winter season in the Mediterranean, MSC Virtuosa will be deployed in summer 2021 to Northern Europe with itineraries to the Norwegian fjords and Baltic capital cities.
MSC Cruises will soon reveal the exact details of the appealing guest features on board MSC Virtuosa but like MSC Grandiosa, the ship will have a two-story Mediterranean style promenade lined with restaurants and shopping underneath a 305 ft.-long LED Sky Screen, two original new shows from Cirque du Soleil at Sea and the world’s first virtual personal cruise assistant, ZOE, in every stateroom.
Also Read: MSC Cruises Takes Delivery of New Meraviglia-Plus Flagship
The third of three Meraviglia-Plus ships, yet to be named, will enter service in 2023 and be powered by LNG. MSC Cruises is investing €5 billion (≈$5.5 million USD) in the construction of five LNG-powered ships with the other four set to propel the line’s futuristic World Class prototype with the first – MSC Europa – entering service in May 2022.
The World-Class ships, like the Meraviglia-Plus prototype, will be built at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in Saint Nazaire, France as part of an industry-unprecedented €11.6 billion (≈$12.7 billion USD) plan that will see MSC Cruises’ contemporary fleet increase to 25 ships by 2027.
Once completed, MSC Virtuosa will be 181,000 gross tons and have a guest capacity of 4,842 along with 1,704 crew members.
