The QE2, short for Cunard Line’s Queen Elizabeth 2, has arrived in her final destination where she will be permanently moored and repurposed as a floating hotel. The grand ocean liner, built in 1969 and which crossed the Atlantic over 800 times and sailed around the world 25 times, was purchased by the Emirate for the grand price of $100,000,000. Her permamnently moor will be inside the famous “Dubai World” land reclamation real estate development.

The ship was greeted with great fanfare, including a flyover by one of the world’s largest jets, the Airjet A380. There were fireworks, the police band and of course, bagpipes. The ship actually pulled into the citiy’s main cruise terminal, Port Rashid, as she had a full compliment of passengers onboard.

When the ship sailed past her new home, The World islands, she was greeted by a flotilla of local yachts, boats and leisure-craft led by a Royal Navy Frigate. The flotilla was also joined by My Dubai, the yacht owned by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Onshore, some 70,000 bottles of champagne were on hand, quite a hefty number for an Islamic nation whose main populace chooses not to drink alcohol. Those cases were there for the guests and tourists Dubai is courting so relentlessly.

The final refit into her permanent moor will take two to three years. Undoubtedly there will much more to her facility than a docking place and a gangway. One can’t help recalling the Queen Mary facility in Long Beach, CA, which, although it is alive and well, was never owned by a company that sought to make her the spectacular destination that Dubai has planned for QE2.

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