Sapphire Princess

Sapphire Princess is the odd one in the Grand class. Every other ship in the family came out of an Italian yard; she and her sister Diamond Princess were built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at Nagasaki. Japanese yards build almost no cruise ships, and the reason this pair exists at all is a contract Mitsubishi went on to regret.

The fire and the name swap

In October 2002 a fire broke out aboard the hull that was to be Diamond Princess, and it burned through a large part of the ship. Rather than lose the schedule, Mitsubishi and Princess swapped the two ships’ identities: the less damaged hull, further along and originally destined to be Sapphire, was completed as Diamond Princess, and the rebuilt one became Sapphire. She was delivered on 27 May 2004 and christened at Seattle on 10 June, the first cruise ship ever christened in that port.

Because of where she was built she is not quite dimensionally identical to the Fincantieri Grand-class ships. She is wider, she measures 115,875 tons against their 113,561, and she carries fewer people, 2,670 at double occupancy, where Crown and Emerald carry over three thousand on a shorter hull. That last figure is the one to pay attention to. Space per passenger on this ship is better than on any other Grand-class hull, and it is noticeable on a sea day.

Two refits, twenty years apart

The 2018 drydock at Singapore was the one that brought her up to the modern Princess template: the Piazza atrium with the International Café and the Vines wine bar, Club Class mini-suites, new bedding throughout, a rebuilt spa and fitness center, and a large LED wall in the Princess Theater.

October 2025 was the interesting one. Two weeks at the Vigor yard in Portland, Oregon, and she came out with two restaurants she had never had: Makoto Ocean, an Edomae sushi room built where the internet café used to be on Deck 7, and the Crown Grill steakhouse, dropped into the Savoy dining room on Deck 5. Putting a serious sushi counter aboard a ship about to spend most of the next two years in Japanese waters is not a coincidence.

The Savoy’s loss is worth naming. Diamond and Sapphire were built with five main dining rooms instead of the usual two large halls, smaller rooms, quieter, an old-fashioned arrangement that these two ships alone kept. There are four now.

Where she actually sails

She spends the second half of 2026 working her way west. A Baltic and British Isles summer out of Copenhagen ends with a transatlantic crossing to Boston in late August, a short Canada and New England season from there in the fall, and then the long haul to Asia.

From there it is Japan, heavily. In March 2027 she joins Diamond Princess at Tokyo for what Princess is running as its largest Japan program, the two Nagasaki sisters working the same coast for the first time in years, from March through December. Singapore and Southeast Asia fill the shoulder, and a Fremantle season puts her in Western Australia for a Southern Hemisphere summer. Roughly four in five of her sailings on this site are in Asia, and the typical one runs two weeks.

Who she suits

Travelers who want Japan properly: two-week itineraries, a ship small enough by current standards to work Japanese port infrastructure, and a Japanese-built hull with a Japanese-facing kitchen. She suits people who value elbow room over novelty.

She does not suit anyone who wants a new ship. She is from 2004, the cabins are 2004 cabins with newer beds in them, and no amount of drydock work changes the corridors. She is a poor fit for families looking for waterslides and ropes courses, because there are none, and for anyone unwilling to fly to Tokyo or Singapore to reach her, since that is where she now lives.