‘Love Boat’ Sails to Cruise Ship Battle on San Diego Bay

Remember gas wars, when stations faced with a glut of fuel on the market engaged in furious competition to undercut their competitors by drastically reducing prices at the pump?

Then there were air fare wars, when budget carriers offered cut-rate cross-country and international flights, forcing the more established carriers to do the same.

The 1985 version apparently is ship wars, with a myriad of new passenger vessels and established cruise lines offering hefty discounts on voyages that several years ago only the very rich could have afforded.

That is great news for seagoing travel buffs. But the timing could not be worse for San Diego, which today holds its first Homeport Festival with a day full of activities to celebrate the inaugural cruise from the city of the Pacific Princess, made famous by the “Love Boat” television series.

Beginning today, the “Love Boat,” will be based in San Diego for 16 weeks each year. It has a capacity of 600 travelers.

Mindful that gas prices eventually skyrocketed, and budget airlines like the one run by Freddie Laker eventually fell by the wayside, restoring higher air fares, members of the San Diego Cruise Ship Consortium continue to speak in glowing phrases about the economic benefits of providing port facilities for passenger liners that will call in San Diego or use the city as their home base.

Large Capacity Increase

But because the passenger capacity of cruise ships to Mexico has increased fourfold in the last two years, they admit that, for a time, there will be empty staterooms on the Pacific Princess and other passenger ships that will pass through the city.

The Pacific Princess is the third cruise ship to make San Diego its home, although it is the first major carrier. And the passengers who do take its trips soon will be offered discounts of more than 50% off the regular fare.

Other cruise ships plying San Diego waters are:

- Crown Cruise Lines, operating one-day trips from San Diego to Ensenada and back, and four-day cruises beginning in San Diego and stopping at Catalina and Ensenada. (The one-day trips have a capacity of 700 passengers; the four-day excursions can carry 350.)

- Exploration Cruise Line, with smaller ships carrying 80 to 160 passengers. It makes 10 trips a year from San Diego down the coast of Baja California.

- Western Cruise Line’s 734-passenger Azure Seas, which for two years has made weekly Tuesday calls in San Diego and offers four-day cruises to Ensenada, is now undergoing maintenance at the Southwest Marine Inc. dry dock.

But the financial seas for some of these cruise ships are a little rocky. Today’s maiden San Diego voyage of the “Love Boat” did not come close to selling out. So scores of travel agents were recruited to fill the empty rooms on the ship for the one-week trip to the “Mexican Riviera.” They will travel at bargain-basement rates, but Princess line officials hope that the agents will convince clients to take trips at later dates, perhaps when the demand for cruise vacations catches up with the supply and prices escalate.

“The day it was announced that the Love Boat would be based here, the inaugural cruise sold out,” said Don Harrison, a spokesman for the San Diego Cruise Ship Consortium.

“A lot of people wanted to share the honor of being on that first sailing. But then the Princess line started offering large discounts on its subsequent trips out of San Diego (passengers other than travel agents sailing today are paying full fare), a lot of people canceled and signed up to take cheaper trips at a later date,” Harrison said.

Harrison said the cruise ship consortium expects the “Love Boat,” whose passengers spend about $100 a day when they call at a port, to generate $12 million to $15 million in new revenue for the San Diego economy annually. “But that’s only an estimate, and it presupposed that the ships would be full. With the cruise ship wars we’re having now, that might not be the case right off,” he said.

Additional economic riches should come to the city when the passenger liners based in or visiting the city use local dry-dock facilities. And many of the cruise ship passengers likely will spend additional time in San Diego, boosting local tourism revenue.

“In the long run, that’s why we’re so gung-ho about having passenger ships here as a home port,” Harrison said. “Our estimates are that only 20% of the passengers will actually come from the San Diego area--the remaining 80% will fly here and spend time and money in the city before or after their trip.”

The temporary hardships in the cruise ship industry should not take any of the blush from the daylong festival planned today at the B Street Pier. Harrison said anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 people are expected to take part in the festivities. Harbor Drive between Ash Street and Broadway will be closed throughout the day, and ample parking will be available at the County Administration Center nearby.

A nautical parade to escort the ship into San Diego Bay, beginning at 6:45 a.m. off the coast at Point Loma, will kick off the day’s events. Also planned are visits to a Navy ship, musical shows, a pageant presented by the Old Globe Theatre and a seafood festival featuring delectables from local restaurants. Fireworks will light the sky after the 7 p.m. departure of the “Love Boat.”