TRAVELING IN STYLE : SHIP SHAPES : With a fleet of spectacular ships being launched this season, cruise lines are betting top dollars to entice up-to-now landlubbers onto the high seas. Question: Will passengers realize they’re afloat and not in Las Vegas?

Imagine yourself in a deluxe hotel, being awakened to breakfast in bed, lazily soaking in your private spa, screening a new film on your VCR or--best of all--stepping outside to a different view each day. You can put yourself in this picture easily aboard today’s newer, more glamorous cruise ships that accommodate as few as 100 or as many as 2,600 passengers. Forty such ships will have made their debut between 1980 and 1989, a quarter of them scheduled to enter service this year. Since 1980, passenger embarkations have been growing at an average rate of 14% a year, and ships that belong to the Cruise Lines International Assn., vessels that represent 97% of all the cruise berths marketed in North America, will carry at least 3.5 million passengers in 1988, up from an estimated 3 million in 1987. This despite the fact that 95% of Americans have yet to take a cruise. With the fleet of ships being launched this season, cruise lines are betting top dollars to entice many of these up-to-now landlubbers onto the high seas for their next holiday.

Glamour at sea got a measureable lift four years ago when Princess Di broke a bottle of bubbly across the bow of the Royal Princess (1,200 passengers) in Southhampton. The flagship of Princess Cruises wowed the crowds with its innovations--a soaring lobby court open to two decks; an unprecedented number of private, sea-view balconies, and two 700-square-foot suites with spas and with verandas large enough for a small cocktail party. The Royal Princess also was the first major cruise ship built with all outside cabins, each of which has a picture window, bathtub, refrigerator and color TV.

Later, when Monaco’s Princess Caroline christened the second of the yacht-sized (suites only) Sea Goddess ships (118 passengers) in Monte Carlo, glamour was back in the cruise business to stay.

Now the cruise world is making waves over a couple of ships from the same French yard that turned out the Ile de France, the Normandie and the France. Last month, the Sovereign of the Seas (2,690 passengers) was christened. The largest cruise ship ever built (about 74,000 gross rated tons), the vessel is now sailing the Caribbean. And next January Sitmar’s FairMajesty (1,400 passengers) will glide into view in a manner as graceful as the white swan painted on its royal-blue stack. To get an idea of how passengers will be pampered, on both ships they’ll be able to peruse the dinner menu on a television set in their cabin and place their orders before stepping out the door.

On Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas, eight elegant shops display porcelain, crystal, furs, hand-knit Scandinavian sweaters, French perfumes and Japanese cameras at duty-free prices. Passengers take tables at a chic sidewalk (deckwalk) cafe--and glass elevators deposit them in a stylish casino.

Cruise buffs can stretch out in roomy suites with private balconies on the FairMajesty . Even standard cabins are of generous size, with sitting area, picture window, refrigerator and walk-in dressing and wardrobe area. Monaco will be home port for the new Wind Spirit (150 passengers), debuting next month, the third of Windstar Sail Cruises’ motor/sailing ships. French architect Marc Held designed the chic, sleek 185-square-foot cabins with Space Age bathrooms, built-in hair dryers, videocassette players, mini-bars and direct-dial ship-to-shore telephones. The Wind Spirit will sail the Mediterranean (its sister ships cruise French Polynesia and the Grenadines). Although neckties are not required aboard the Windstar ships, guests are expected to appear “casually elegant” of an evening.

When Norwegian Caribbean Lines’ Seaward arrives in Miami in June, nightly dinner options will feature various dress codes for cafe-style buffets and elegant dinners.

A la carte dining at a single sitting will be provided on the Sea Venture, which is scheduled to sail to Alaska in June and later to Tahiti for the winter months. The 360-passenger ship is described as “somewhere between the Sea Goddess and the Sagafjord,” with “suites-only” accommodations, including one munificent owners’ suite that will fetch an impressive $2,000 a day.

Royal Cruise Line’s new Crown Odyssey (990 passengers) will offer two inaugural cruises to Scandinavia and the Soviet Union in June; however, true sybarites might consider booking one of the ship’s penthouse apartments for a gala transatlantic “High Society” cruise, starting Sept. 4, that will feature big bands and such singers as Frankie Laine and Helen O’Connell during the eight-day party.

In July the long-awaited sailing of the renovated Monterey (600 passengers and once the pride of the Matson Line) will begin the long voyage home to Hawaii from Copenhagen. Operated by Aloha Pacific Cruises, the U.S.-flagged Monterey will cruise the Hawaiian Islands with an all-American crew beginning in September.

Other passengers will travel in style in the Caribbean on Signet’s 200-passenger Signet Pride beginning in December. The 36,000-ton Royal Viking Sun, with 740 passengers, will be one of cruising’s most spacious vessels when it comes into service in December with its walk-in closets, bars, refrigerators and color television with VCRs.

The bottom line is that this season the cruise industry is taking on high style on the high seas.