Holland America’s Rotterdam Gets a Face-lift : Cruising: Trip of 47 days to South America will be the first of many longer sailings scheduled for flagship.

Holland America Line’s flagship Rotterdam steamed down the Columbia River on a shakedown voyage recently after a $15-million renovation.

Fans of the 30-year-old steamship, launched for two-class transatlantic service in 1959, had been concerned about the vessel’s future, especially since the takeover of Holland America by Carnival Cruises earlier this year.

But Carnival appears to have given a strong vote of confidence to its new associate.

“Holland America Line is not and should not be geared to the seven-day Caribbean market,” Micky Arison, Carnival’s president, said recently.

He said Holland America will be taken “out of the fray” of competition between Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line for the Caribbean short-cruise passengers and into “more upscale, specialty cruising.”

As evidence of the demand for longer Rotterdam cruises, a 47-day circumnavigation of South America in the fall of 1990, was 60% subscribed before any brochures were printed, a company spokesman said. This was the first long sailing announced for the ship since it ceased around-the-world cruises in 1987.

New carpeting, draperies and upholstery brighten the cabins and public areas without changing any of the Rotterdam’s rich wood interiors and elegant Art Deco lines.

Parquet, paneling and marquetry in Bangkok teak and mahogany once again gleam, and a black-background, two-deck-high mural in the Ritz-Carlton nightclub has been painstakingly restored to its original luster.

Among the most striking makeovers are the pool deck with its retiled swimming pool, the brighter Lido buffet restaurant and the top deck Sky Room, now a sophisticated nightclub.

The Rotterdam’s circumnavigation cruise departs Los Angeles Oct. 17, 1990, and calls at ports in Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, French Guiana, Barbados, Dominica, St. Thomas and Nassau before arriving in Ft. Lauderdale Dec. 3.

Prices range from $7,425 to $15,525 per person, double occupancy, including air fare from major gateways. No segments are offered.

Before the South America sailing the Rotterdam will spend the summer making seven-day glacier-route cruises in Alaska between Vancouver and Seward.

The ship is sailing the Caribbean out of Ft. Lauderdale this winter, with its longest itinerary a 17-day Christmas cruise departing Dec. 20.

Holland America’s Westerdam, too, is undergoing a transformation. The vessel sailed to Germany in October for a major renovation that will include “stretching” the ship--literally cutting it in half and inserting a 130-foot midsection with more cabin space and public area.

The Westerdam, which will be able to carry 1,476 passengers instead of the previous 1,000, is scheduled to make four 10-day round-trip sailings to Bermuda from New York City before being repositioned to Alaska for the summer of 1990.

Arison said Carnival is negotiating an order to build three more ships for Holland America--not the 70,000-ton vessels they had been planning before Carnival’s acquisition of the company, but ships “more in the type of size and capacity HAL presently has.”

Carnival has been facing some shipyard problems of its own with Wartsila Marine, the Finnish company contracted to build its three new megaships for 1990-91. The shipyard’s massive losses during the past year took the company to the verge of bankruptcy, according to a Carnival spokesman, when the first of the three ships--the Fantasy--was only weeks from completion.

Carnival’s solution was to join in the formation of a new company with other shipowners holding contracts at the yard--Finland’s Union Bank and a Finnish government agency--to carry on Wartsila’s shipbuilding operations in Helsinki. Carnival’s share of the still-unnamed company is about 11%.

The Fantasy, originally scheduled to make its inaugural sailings in Florida in early January, instead will set out on its first cruise from Miami on March 2.

Carnival’s second megaship, the Ecstasy, will also probably be built as scheduled by Wartsila, with an expected delivery early in 1991.