Love Boat - The real-life cruise ships Pacific Princess and Island Princess (a.k.a. "The Love Boats") were the backdrop for the sea-going comedy THE LOVE BOAT/ABC/1977-86. The Love Boat (registered in London with the British P & O Lines) cruised the oceans of the world inspiring numerous onboard romances while visiting such exotic and distant ports as Mexico, Alaska, Europe, the Orient and Australia. Other nicknames given to this sea-going singles club were the "Lust Bucket," the "Leer Boat" and "Floating Foreplay." The crew of the Pacific Princess were Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod); ship's physician Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell); Yeoman-Purser Burl "Gopher" Smith (Fred Grandy); bartender Isaac Washington (Ted Lange) who roomed in cabin C-130; Cruise Director Julie McCoy who roomed in Cabin C-125 (Lauren Tewes); and later cruise photographer Ashley "Ace" Covington Evans (Ted McGinley). In May, 1985 the series began using the Royal Princess of the English Princess Cruise Lines as the regular ship on the series. The 45,000 ton ship (said to be the same class as the QE II) had a crew numbering 500 (including The Love Boat Mermaids, a group of eight beautiful singer/dancers) and featured 2 acres of open deck, four pools, fully equipped gymnasiums, a library, a casino, theaters, a bridge lounge, and spacious nightclubs. The ship also had twin rudders capable of independent control, two controllable pitch propellers, two bow  thrusters and two fin stabilizers. At the head of the ship was circular gallery with 19 gray-green bronze seagulls called "Spindrift" (each 11 feet high) created by David Norris. On May of 1985 the series celebrated its 200th episode with Lana Turner as the 1000th actor to appear on the program since its premiere on September 24, 1977. The series was based on the book "The Love Boats" written by former cruise hostess, Jeraldine Saunders and debuted on the made-for-TV movies The Love Boat (1976), The Love Boat II (1977). The ship set sail once again on the made-for-TV-movie reunion  The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage which aired on the CBS network on Saturday, July 20, 1991. The original crew of THE LOVE BOAT reunited on cable channel VH1 on August 19, 1997 to christen a new ship and host videos. A new and updated version of the series resurfaced on THE LOVE BOAT: THE NEW WAVE/UPN/1998+ starring Robert Urich as the Captain of the 77,000-ton Sun Princess holding 1,950 passengers in 1,050 cabins - more than double the number of rooms in the UK's largest hotel, The Grosvenor. The Sun Princess featured more private balconies than any other ship afloat, with 70 per cent of all outside cabins offering that feature. Materials used in the construction of Sun Princess include: 2.8 million meters of cabling enough to reach from London to Moscow; 26 miles of carpet - enough to carpet the London Marathon; 720,000 liters of paint - enough to paint the outside of 13,000 average sized terraced houses; and 320 tons of Italian marble in the four-story atrium alone. TRIVIA NOTE: In the fall of 1998, the original Love Boat was impounded in Greece when authorities found illegal drugs onboard (reportedly 56 pounds of heroin).