Bar Harbor anticipates busy ’06

BAR HARBOR – The town will once again host royalty as not one but two queens are preparing to visit in 2006.

Queen Mary 2, the world’s largest ocean liner, is slated to drop anchor three times in the harbor, on July 5, Oct. 9 and Oct. 21.

The Queen Elizabeth 2 will visit on Sept. 22.

Both ships belong to the famed luxury liner company the Cunard Line.

The July visit of the Queen Mary 2 – which can carry as many as 2,620 passengers and 1,253 crewmen – may be even more feted than her maiden-voyage trip here last fall, according to town harbor master Charlie Phippen. That visit drew hundreds of onlookers who came to town to gawk at the 1,132-foot-long ship.

“There will be a lot of people around,” he said Monday. “I figure it would definitely probably attract a lot of people to see it in person.”

The harbor master did caution that Mother Nature does not always cooperate with cruise ships, even the royal ones.

“It’s possible that nobody would see it,” he said jokingly. “We get a lot of fog in July.”

The two ships’ visits are part of a long and robust-looking season for cruise ship visitation that will start in May and continue through the beginning of November. Almost 70 ships have already scheduled and Phippen said that he expects to see a few more reservations to come through. While the precise count of tourists who are dropped off to file through the resort town and Acadia National Park can’t be known until after the final ship comes in, the harbor master anticipated that numbers will be on a par with the 2005 season.

“We’re looking at just under 100,000 [passengers] for ’05,” Phippen said. “I would say that we’re right on that same figure for next year.”

After Sept. 11, 2001, the town limited the number of ships that drop anchor simultaneously to two. With cruise ships having ever-growing numbers of passengers, this might not always keep the amounts of people on the streets at a manageable level, Phippen said.

“Any more than two high-capacity ships just creates so much chaos downtown on the waterfront,” he said.

While municipal officials have been handling the long, busy cruise ship seasons well, he said, growth of the industry in Bar Harbor shouldn’t be seen as limitless.

“Things seem to be going better and better each year as we all get experienced,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea to set limits and always look for a better way to do business.”