Trust Dubai to come up with unique tourist attractions – the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) is getting ready to be transformed into a floating hotel and museum at Port Rashid. The soft-opening is on April 18. There’s not a lot of official information at hand except that the ship now finally has a website, QE2.com, which promises a royal experience is ‘coming soon’ and plenty of job opportunities. Recently, signposts directing visitors to the hotel’s main entrance and visitor parking have popped up around the ship hinting that refurbishment is in full swing and cleaning and construction crew has been spotted getting the vessel into ship shape.
The QE2’s Cinderella moment has been a long time coming – 10 years, to be precise: It has been gathering dust at Port Rashid since 2008, where it was docked after its final sail from Southampton. A Telegraph article reported plans to turn it into a floating hotel the same year. Before it was retired, the QE2 was a thriving transatlantic ocean liner ship with the Cunard Line Company and sailed the high seas between Southampton and New York; the 70,000-tonne vessel celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and has been touted the ‘world’s greatest ship’ by a TV documentary because of how influential it has been to maritime design.
Cruise enthusiasts have been giddy with excitement about the ship’s new reincarnation as a hotel and maritime museum exhibiting memorabilia from the ship’s working years because of the liner’s legacy as a treasure-trove of wild and fabulous history – from having been under a bomb threat in 1972, to sailing into Lisbon with a 19-metre long finback whale speared on her bow in 2001.
Can’t wait to get aboard? Make sure you’ve bookmarked fridaymagazine.ae because we’ll keep you posted with the latest updates from the Port, Customs and Free Zone Corporation, who are now responsible for the QE2.
