It's no secret that an effort to transform the famed Queen Elizabeth 2 into a floating hotel in Dubai appears to have been derailed -- at least for now. And maybe that's not such a bad thing, say ocean liner experts

"What they planned (for the Queen Elizabeth 2) was horrific," ocean liner historian Peter Knego tells the news outlet, pointing to the ideas put forward by an investment arm of the Dubai government to gut the ship and install a glass penthouse in place of its funnel. "Nothing of QE2 would have been left, just the name."

Another noted ship historian quoted in the story, John Maxtone-Graham, agrees, noting Dubai's plan for the QE2 entailed raising its decks, removing much of its interior and "rendering the vessel's form and character into something completely alien and unrecognizable to even old Cunard hands."

Maxtone-Graham tells Travel Weekly Dubai's recent financial crunch, which precipitated the delay in the ship's transformation, came just in time. "Without those excessive millions of dollars ... they will not be able to implement their original scheme of expanding cabins into Dubai-style hotel suites," he says. "Surely the point of preserving an ocean liner is to have it remain as a fond retrospective of what it once was, not a brutalized and anonymous relic."