Majesty of the Seas Is Still for Sale. One Listing Says Its Toilet Count ‘May Not Be Accurate’

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Somewhere on a website built for selling yachts, between the sport-fishers and the superyachts with jet-ski garages, sits a listing for something slightly bigger.

It’s 880 feet long. It weighs in at about 74,000 gross tons. It has a casino, a rock-climbing wall, a show theater and room for 2,767 guests. The asking price is $40 million.

It’s the former Royal Caribbean ship Majesty of the Seas, and Cruise Fever reported on October 15 that she’s for sale on YachtWorld.

Here’s the twist: this isn’t new. She has been on the market, at one price or another, for more than three years. One broker’s listing even warned buyers that its count of the ship’s toilets “may not be accurate”.

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The Ship With a Price Tag

Majesty of the Seas sailed for Royal Caribbean for 28 years. She was built by Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire, France, christened by Queen Sonja of Norway, and entered service in 1992 as the third and last of Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign class, according to her Wikipedia entry and Cruise Industry News. For years she ran four- and five-night Caribbean cruises from Florida, Wikipedia says.

The listing Cruise Fever found reads like a brochure from those years: two swimming pools, four hot tubs, a basketball court, a casino, a theater, a spa, a disco and a kids’ center, across 13 decks. It says the ship was “last refurbished in 2016”. Wikipedia also records a $40 million YachtWorld listing, citing a version of the page it retrieved on August 1, 2024. So that price has been on the board for more than two years.

We tried to open the YachtWorld page ourselves. The site blocked our requests, so the $40 million figure rests on Cruise Fever and Wikipedia. We did manage to read an older listing for what appears to be the same ship, and it’s the funniest document in this whole saga.

“The Number of Heads May Not Be Accurate”

In May 2023, an archived copy of a YachtWorld listing from Fort Lauderdale broker QPS Marine Ships showed a “1992 Cruise Ship – 2354 / 2744 Passenger – Stock No. S2149” in Piraeus, Greece. It doesn’t give the ship’s name. But it gives a build year of 1992, a length of 268.30 metres, 73,941 gross tons and 1,177 passenger cabins. Those match Majesty’s figures in Wikipedia and CruiseMapper, and no other ship we could find.

The listing is a small masterpiece of hedging. Things it says, word for word:

• The price: US$35,000,000 at the top of the page. Lower down: “Estimated Price: PRICE ON APPLICATION.”
• The pitch: “Although you might see this vessel advertised at a lower price, we believe our ‘Estimate’ is the most accurate based on our direct discussions with the vessel owner.”
• The location: “The last known location of this ship was in the vicinity of Greece. Please understand, ships are constantly moving.”
• The paperwork: “Certificates Current: No.”
• The bathrooms: 127 heads, the nautical word for toilets, for a ship with 1,177 cabins. Then, under additional comments: “The number of heads, may not be accurate.”

With 1,177 cabins on board, 127 looks low to us. The broker seems to have had the same thought.

As for “ships are constantly moving”: CruiseMapper says this ship stopped sending AIS position signals on February 8, 2021, while she was docked at Piraeus. She hasn’t carried a passenger since March 2020. She is not, by any reasonable measure, constantly moving.

The two listings don’t even agree with each other:

	QPS Marine Ships listing (archived May 2023)	YachtWorld listing (as reported by Cruise Fever, October 2026)
Asking price	US$35,000,000, also “price on application”	$40,000,000
Last refurbishment	2007	2016
Passengers	2,354 lower berths, 2,744 all berths	2,767 maximum
Location	Piraeus, “in the vicinity of Greece”	Not given in Cruise Fever’s report
Certificates current	No	Not given in Cruise Fever’s report
Toilets	127, “may not be accurate”	Not given in Cruise Fever’s report

There’s a third price, too. A Cruise Mummy round-up of cruise ships for sale, dated 2024, listed Majesty at an asking price of $45 million. That’s three prices in three years for one ship that hasn’t moved.

How a Royal Caribbean Favourite Ended Up Parked in Greece

On December 16, 2020, nine months into the pandemic shutdown, Royal Caribbean announced that Majesty and Empress of the Seas, its two oldest ships, were leaving the fleet. The buyer was described as an “undisclosed party, based in Asia-Pacific, that will release details for future sailings at a later time,” as Cruise Industry News and Cruzely both quoted from the announcement. Michael Bayley, then president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, called saying goodbye “difficult but necessary”.

The details of those future sailings never arrived. Instead, the ship turned up in Greece. She anchored off Souda in Crete, docked at Piraeus on January 30, 2021, and went dark on AIS nine days later, according to CruiseMapper. Her owner turned out to be Seajets, a Greek ferry company. It renamed her Majesty, then Majesty of the Oceans in April 2021, and she has been laid up ever since.

She wasn’t the only one. During the pandemic, Seajets quietly built up one of the strangest collections in shipping: second-hand cruise ships that, by Cruise Industry News’ count, mostly ended up laid up or scrapped. Cruise Industry News counted eight in February 2023:

Seajets name	Former name (line)	Built	Bought	What happened next
Queen of the Oceans	Oceana (P&O Cruises)	1999	Mid-2020	Laid up in Greece
Aegean Majesty	Veendam (Holland America)	1996	Mid-2020	Laid up in Greece
Aegean Myth	Maasdam (Holland America)	1993	Mid-2020	Sold on, to be renamed Renaissance for a new line
Aegean Goddess	Pacific Aria (P&O Australia)	1993	Late 2020	Laid up in Greece
Magellan	Holiday (Cruise & Maritime Voyages)	1985	Late 2020, at auction, for “just $3.4 million”	Scrapped at Alang, India, 2021
Columbus	(Cruise & Maritime Voyages)	1988	Late 2020, at auction	Scrapped in India, 2021
Majesty	Majesty of the Seas (Royal Caribbean)	1992	Early 2021	Laid up in Greece; for sale
Mykonos Magic	Costa Magica (Costa Cruises)	2004	February 2023	Laid up in Italy at the time

So Majesty isn’t really a ship for sale. She’s one exhibit in a floating museum of 1990s cruising that a ferry company has been trying to sell, piece by piece, for years.

Why Nobody Snaps Up a $40 Million Cruise Ship

Forty million dollars sounds like a bargain for a ship that carries more than 2,000 people. (Our explainer on what cruise ships cost to build shows new ones now run into the billions.) So why has she sat unsold for this long? The listings themselves point to the main reasons.

1. She can’t legally sail with passengers as she is. “Certificates Current: No,” the 2023 listing admits. A ship that has been laid up since 2020 needs surveys, repairs and fresh certificates before any paying guest steps aboard. The asking price is just the start of the bill.

2. The carbon rules got stricter. Since January 1, 2023, the International Maritime Organization’s EEXI and CII rules have covered ships of 5,000 gross tons and above, and the IMO lists cruise passenger ships among them. Every year each ship gets a carbon-intensity rating from A to E. “A ship rated D for three consecutive years, or E for one year, has to submit a corrective action plan.” That’s a real cost for a 34-year-old ship designed decades before these rules existed.

3. She was built for a different kind of cruise. The 2023 listing says only 5% of her cabins have balconies.

4. Her sisters already show the usual ending. Monarch of the Seas, by then sailing for Pullmantur as Monarch, was run onto the beach at the ship-breaking yards of Aliağa, Turkey, on July 22, 2020, The Maritime Executive reported. Cruise Industry News called her the first cruise ship sold for scrap during the pandemic, and said Sovereign, the class leader, began scrapping there a day later. That leaves Majesty, as Cruise Fever puts it, the only Sovereign-class ship “that has yet to be scrapped”.

Nothing we’ve read says what Seajets plans for her, and Cruise Mummy’s 2024 round-up said the same. We won’t guess. A buyer could still bring her back as a cruise ship, a hotel or something stranger. But every year she sits, the reactivation bill grows and the list of buyers shrinks.

The Timeline: From Queen Sonja to “Price on Application”

When	What happened
Sept 21, 1991	Launched at Saint-Nazaire, France
1992	Enters service with Royal Caribbean, the third Sovereign-class ship
2007	Multimillion-dollar refit (about $36 million, according to CruiseMapper)
Nov 2014 to July 2015	Royal Caribbean plans to move her to Pullmantur, then changes its mind
2016	Refit adds a kids’ water play area and a poolside movie screen
March 14, 2020	Royal Caribbean suspends cruising. She never carries passengers again
July 22–23, 2020	Sisters Monarch and Sovereign beached for scrap at Aliağa, Turkey
Dec 16, 2020	Royal Caribbean announces her sale to an “undisclosed party, based in Asia-Pacific”
Jan 30, 2021	Docks at Piraeus, Greece
Feb 8, 2021	Her AIS position signal goes silent
April 2021	Seajets renames her Majesty of the Oceans
May 2023	Listed by QPS Marine Ships at US$35 million, “price on application”
2024	Cruise Mummy lists her asking price as $45 million. A $40 million YachtWorld listing is on record by August 1
Oct 15, 2026	Cruise Fever reports her on YachtWorld at $40 million

What This Means If Your Ship Gets Sold

You probably aren’t in the market for a cruise ship. But if you book one of a line’s oldest ships, a sale like this can land on your booking. When Majesty left, CruiseMapper says roughly 60 sailings scheduled from March 2021 to April 2022 were cancelled. Cruzely noted that her departure left Royal Caribbean with no New Orleans cruises on its website.

Royal Caribbean’s current Cruise/CruiseTour Ticket Contract (version R(US)OCT2026, which we checked on October 16, 2026) spells out what you get. Section 7.a covers the line cancelling your cruise:

“In such case, Guest’s sole and exclusive remedy shall be for the issuance of a refund or future cruise credit for all or the proportionate value of the cancelled Cruise or CruiseTour. Unless otherwise provided herein, Guest agrees that a refund or future cruise credit shall be Guest’s sole and exclusive remedy and Carrier shall have no further liability for damages or compensation of any kind.”

Section 7.e covers swapping your ship for another one:

“Carrier has the right to substitute the Vessel for any other vessel or means of transportation, regardless of whether owned or operated by the Carrier, and to re-berth Guest thereon, without liability or compensation to Guest of any kind.”

In plain English: your cruise fare comes back as cash or credit, and the clause doesn’t say you get to choose which. Your flights, hotels and time off aren’t covered. If the line moves you to a different ship instead, the contract promises nothing extra. That’s our reading, not legal advice. Here’s what to do about it:

1. Know when you’re booking an old ship. Check the ship’s build year before you pay a deposit. In 2020, Royal Caribbean sold its two oldest ships, Majesty and Empress.
2. Keep flights and hotels flexible. The contract rules out compensation beyond your cruise fare, so refundable or changeable bookings are your protection.
3. Ask for the refund if you want cash. Section 7.a allows either a refund or a credit. If you’re offered a credit and would rather have the money, ask the line, or your travel agent, before you accept anything.
4. Read your travel insurance before you need it. Check what your policy says about a supplier cancelling, and about non-refundable flights and hotels booked around the cruise.
5. Love a classic ship? Sail her soon. Every Sovereign-class sister is now either scrapped or sitting in Greece. Majesty’s exit was announced with sailings already booked into 2022.

The Bottom Line

Majesty of the Seas spent 28 years carrying Royal Caribbean guests around the Caribbean. She has now spent more than five years going nowhere, under a new name, while listings disagree about her price, her last refit and how many toilets she has.

If you do have $40 million spare and fancy a 1992 cruise ship, the paperwork suggests three questions to ask first: are the certificates current, where exactly is she, and could somebody please count the heads?

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Cruise Chaos earns nothing from cruise lines and doesn’t run booking affiliate links. The $40 million listing comes from Cruise Fever and Wikipedia, because YachtWorld blocked our attempts to open it. The 2023 listing quotes come from the Internet Archive’s copy of the QPS Marine Ships page, which doesn’t name the ship; we matched it to Majesty by build year, tonnage, length and cabin count. Ship history comes from Wikipedia, CruiseMapper, Cruise Industry News, Cruzely and The Maritime Executive. The IMO rules are quoted from the IMO’s own FAQ, and the contract wording from Royal Caribbean’s live ticket contract. Seajets’ plans for the ship aren’t public. If we’ve got something wrong, tell us and we’ll correct it in the open.

Coming up on Cruise Chaos: more chaos from the high seas, with every fact checked.

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Sources

• Cruise Fever: Old Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship for Sale for $40 Million (October 15, 2026)
• YachtWorld / QPS Marine Ships: 1992 Cruise Ship – Stock No. S2149 (Internet Archive copy, May 28, 2023)
• Cruise Mummy: Cruise Ships Listed for Sale (2024)
• Wikipedia: Majesty of the Seas and Sovereign-class cruise ship (ship specifications and history)
• CruiseMapper: Majesty of the Oceans (ship history and AIS record)
• Cruise Industry News: Royal Caribbean’s Majesty and Empress Sold (December 16, 2020)
• Cruzely: Two Royal Caribbean Ships Sold (December 16, 2020)
• Royal Caribbean Press Center: Empress and Majesty of the Seas Set to Depart Fleet
• Cruise Industry News: Here Are All the Cruise Ships Acquired by Seajets (February 20, 2023)
• Wikipedia: MV Queen of the Oceans
• The Maritime Executive: Famed Cruise Ship Monarch Beached for Scrapping (July 22, 2020)
• Cruise Industry News: These Cruise Ships Are Being Scrapped in Aliaga (January 30, 2021)
• International Maritime Organization: EEXI and CII FAQ
• Royal Caribbean: Cruise/CruiseTour Ticket Contract, Sections 7.a and 7.e (version R(US)OCT2026, checked October 16, 2026)