When China's first large domestically built cruise ship prepared for her 2024 debut, the merchandise programme had a hard deadline set by the shipyard, not by us. The client — coming off our cruise-model work for another leading operator — chose Micro Shipping as the sole appointed team for the Adora Magic City model programme.
The brief
Two finishes in parallel: a full-colour alloy version and an electroplated version with a brushed metal finish. 1,000 units of each in the first run, delivered by the end of October 2023 — about three months from project start to delivery, ahead of the January 2024 maiden season.
What made it hard
Cruise ships are the hardest vessels to model. Where a container ship reads through hull lines and stacked boxes, a cruise ship lives in details: the water slide complex, the climbing wall, the terraces, hundreds of windows, the hull art. On the Adora programme, the hull livery was hand-painted, unit by unit, to match the ship's artwork exactly.
The electroplated version traded colour for a metal skin: full anodic treatment, an industrial-luxe finish where the water slides and deck attractions still had to read clearly through the plating.
Delivered — and re-ordered
The first 1,000 units delivered before the end of October. Feedback from onboard and from the client's departments was strong enough that the programme grew to 2,850 units — the kind of re-order that says more than any testimonial.
Cruise and passenger-vessel model programmes are a specialty of ours — from 6 cm onboard-retail miniatures to 227 cm lobby centrepieces. Tell us your ship.