Grand Princess Webcam – Once the Largest Passenger Ship

The Grand Princess Webcam shows the view from the bridge of Grand Princess, the 1998 ship that began the Grand Class and, when she was built, the largest and most expensive passenger ship in the world. Princess Cruises sends a satellite image from the bridge every five minutes, so the page shows a still that refreshes itself rather than a live stream. The foremast rises from the bottom center of the frame, a box in the top left corner gives the ship’s name and the time in UTC and in local time, the temperature appears in the top right, and a caption along the bottom notes whether she is in port or which port she is bound for. Out at sea, the rest of the picture is a level horizon over open water.

About Grand Princess

Grand Princess was ordered from Fincantieri on February 8, 1994 and built at Monfalcone, Italy, as yard number 5956, at a cost of about 450 million US dollars. She entered service in May 1998 and was christened on September 29, 1998 by the actress Olivia de Havilland. The first ship of what became the Grand Class, she was at first presented in Princess brochures as a Sun Class ship; the Grand Class name appeared only after her sister Golden Princess followed. Her interiors use darker woods than her sisters, closer to the smaller Sun Class ships.

She was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, until 2000 and has been registered in Hamilton, Bermuda, since then. Over the years her work has included cruises between California, Mexico and Hawaii and seasons in Alaska, and she was the setting for a task in the second series of the British version of The Apprentice. She carries 2,590 passengers in lower berths, up to 3,100 in all, with a crew of 1,100.

Grand Princess Details

What Can You See on the Grand Princess Webcam?

With the foremast fixed in the foreground, the Grand Princess Webcam gives a steady forward view in which only the world around the ship changes. A sea day shows little but water and sky, and the interest lies in the light, the swell and the cloud building or clearing. Near the coast the horizon fills with cliffs, beaches or forested hills, and in port the camera can look across a harbor to the waterfront and the town behind. After dark the image turns almost black around the lit mast. Princess notes that image availability depends on visibility, weather and the satellite connection, so a frame can lag or the camera can go quiet for a while.

The 2011 Refit and the Missing Wing

Grand Princess originally carried a nightclub in a structure perched high over the stern, the so-called wing that became a signature of the early Grand Class ships. In May 2011 she completed what was then the most extensive dry dock in Princess Cruises history, and the refit removed that stern nightclub. The change cured her tendency to sail bow high, a quirk specific to Grand Princess because her sisters were designed with aluminum upper decks, and it improved her fuel economy by about 3 to 4 percent.

An earlier 14-day dry dock in July 2009 focused on energy and environmental efficiency. Even after both refits, the ship keeps the basic Grand Class shape that every later Princess design from the Gem Class to the Crown Class built on, at 107,517 GT, with a height of 61.3 meters (201 feet) and a draught of 7.9 meters (26 feet).

Related Live Webcams

• Sapphire Princess Webcam
• Star Princess Webcam
• Norwegian Star Webcam

Source: Princess Cruises