Best retirement was probably Liberte which had the distinction of bowing out with dignity while still close to the top and meeting a mercifully quick scrapping death. Worst fate, cumulatively, are the vessels (naming no names for legal reasons) which refuse to die, and go from First Class Liner, to Tolerably Well Maintained But Older Mass Market Cruise Vessel, and then from there fall into the tarry black abyss of Budget Cruise Liner. Fortunately, SOLAS has made those a dying breed, at least in US waters, but there is NOTHING more depressing than being aboard a liner one had been on in 1973 (when she was a flagship) 23 years later and discovering that she was showing her age, badly.