With ships Pacific Princess and Island Princess the original floating stars of the show, “The Love Boat” was filmed aboard many Princess ships in exotic destinations around the globe.

Because of the old-fashioned size and structure of the Pacific Princess, Princess Cruises retired the ship way back in 2002, and it was finally sold for scrap in Turkey in 2012.

Regal Princess The series takes place on Princess Cruises luxury passenger cruise ship Regal Princess in the Mediterranean. The series is produced by Eureka Productions in association with Buster Productions.

Of course, the scripted 1970s-era “Love Boat” was mostly shot on a soundstage that re-created a Princess Cruise. In this case, Eureka wanted to shoot “The Real Love Boat” on a real ship - and that took a logistical feat. “It took place over the summer in the Mediterranean,” Culvenor says.

The series was set on the luxury passenger cruise ship MS Pacific Princess, and revolved around the ship's captain Merrill Stubing (played by Gavin MacLeod) and a handful of his crew, with passengers played by guest actors for each episode, having romantic, dramatic and humorous adventures.

At 554 feet long and roughly 20,000 tons, it carried 646 passengers, mostly on short sailings along Mexico's Pacific Coast.

However, the show fell out of the Top 30 during the 1984–85 season, and after falling out of the Top 50 during the 1985–86 season, The Love Boat was canceled after nine years on ABC, although four three-hour specials aired during the 1986–87 season.

On 25 October 1918, Princess Sophia sank with the loss of all aboard after grounding on Vanderbilt Reef in Lynn Canal near Juneau, Territory of Alaska. All 364 persons on the ship died, making the wreck of Sophia the worst maritime accident in the history of British Columbia and Alaska.

561-foot The 561-foot ship was built for an estimated $25 million in 1970 and put into service in 1971.

Most cruisers in those days were pretty well off. The cost of a seven-day holiday on Princess ranged from about $1,400 to $2,000 per person. That was in 1983 dollars. With inflation, in today's dollars, that one-week cruise cost $3,200 to $4,600 per person, far beyond the budget of most middle-income Americans.

In its ninth season, so-called ''boring storylines'' caused The Love Boat's ratings to decline.

September 17, 1976 (USA)The Love Boat / First episode date