Majesty of the Seas Hits the Market for $40 Million
A former Royal Caribbean favorite, the 1992-built Majesty of the Seas, is listed for sale at $40 million. Here's the ship's story and what could come next.
A 34-year-old ship that spent most of its career wearing the Royal Caribbean crown-and-anchor logo is now for sale, and the asking price is $40 million. As Cruise Hive reported on October 18, 2026, the former Majesty of the Seas has turned up as a listing on Yachtworld, a Miami-based brokerage platform, under the plain-wrapper title “1992 Custom 880’ Cruise Ship.” No broker is named, no buyer is in sight, and the listing cheerfully calls the vessel “well priced making it an excellent value and unique opportunity.”
For a ship this size, $40 million is a genuinely small number, and that is the whole story here. This is a 73,941-gross-ton cruise ship with room for up to 2,767 passengers and a listed crew of 912, listed for less than the cost of a single luxury home in some markets. Whether that makes her a bargain or a gamble depends entirely on who picks up the phone.
A ship a lot of cruisers remember
If you sailed Royal Caribbean out of Florida in the 1990s or 2000s, there is a decent chance you were aboard this hull. She was built in 1992 by Chantiers de l’Atlantique in St. Nazaire, France, as a Sovereign-class ship, at a cost Cruise Hive puts at around $300 million. The Yachtworld listing doesn’t name her, but the giveaways are all there: the crown-and-anchor logo tiled into the pool deck, the aft-facing rock-climbing wall, and the circular Viking Crown Lounge wrapped around the funnel that was Royal Caribbean’s signature for decades.
The Sovereign class mattered. These were among the largest cruise ships in the world when they debuted, and they helped define the modern mega-ship template that lines are still building on today. We mention that because it reframes what is actually on the market: not just an aging hull, but one of the ships that taught the industry how to do big.
Her Royal Caribbean days ended in December 2020, when she was sold to Greek ferry operator Seajets. Seajets renamed her Majesty and later, in April 2021, Majesty of the Oceans. Since then she has effectively been in limbo. The listing points to a 2016 refurbishment as the most recent major work, which means the interior a buyer would inherit is roughly a decade old.
What $40 million actually buys
The spec sheet reads like a full-size resort, because it is one:
| Specification | Figure |
|---|---|
| Year built | 1992 |
| Length | 880 feet |
| Gross tonnage | 73,941 GT |
| Passenger capacity | Up to 2,767 |
| Crew (per listing) | 912 |
| Dining venues | 6 |
| Pools / hot tubs | 2 pools, 4 hot tubs |
| Elevators | 11 |
| Asking price | $40 million |
On top of that, the listing notes a casino, a show theater, an outdoor theater, a fitness center, and retail space. In other words, almost everything a working cruise line would need is already aboard.
The eye-opening part is the math. At $40 million, the ship works out to roughly $541 per gross ton. For comparison, Cruise Hive points out that Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas — 248,663 GT and a reported price of around $2 billion — pencils out to about $8,043 per gross ton. That is nearly 15 times the per-ton cost of the ship now sitting on the brokerage market.
We would add the obvious caveat, and so does the source: per-ton price is a blunt instrument. A 1992 hull carries fuel bills, emissions-compliance questions, and refit costs that a brand-new ship simply doesn’t. You cannot cleanly calculate resale depreciation on a one-off vessel like this, so the comparison tells you something about scale, not about whether $40 million is a smart buy.
Two very different endings
There are really only two roads from here, and they could hardly be further apart.
In the optimistic version, a smaller or startup cruise line buys her, invests in a refit, and puts a recognizable classic back to sea — something the industry has done before with older tonnage that still has good bones. The casino, theaters, and dining spaces are already in place, which lowers the barrier for an operator that wants capacity without a shipyard wait.
In the sobering version, she follows her sisters. Both Sovereign of the Seas and Monarch of the Seas were scrapped at Aliaga, Turkey, in 2020. For a ship that has been idle and is trading at scrap-adjacent economics, the breaker’s beach is always the quiet alternative on the table.
Why this one is worth watching
Ship sales rarely make headlines the way itinerary changes or new-build float-outs do, but they are one of the clearest windows into how the cruise business actually works. The secondhand market is where beloved ships either get a second life or quietly disappear, and a $40 million listing for a vessel this size is a reminder of how brutally values collapse once a hull ages out of a major line’s fleet.
For now, the listing is simply live, with no confirmed buyer. We will be keeping an eye on where this one lands — a return to service and a trip to the scrapyard are both still very much in play. If you want more on how Royal Caribbean manages its current fleet, see our coverage of the line’s recent cancellation-penalty changes and the Harmony of the Seas drydock.
Source: Cruise Hive, “Royal Caribbean’s Former Majesty of the Seas Listed for $40 Million,” October 18, 2026.
