An early look at Norwegian Aqua, the cruise line's newest ship
Aqua is an expanded take on the cruise line's Prima Class.
When you sail on a media sailing, or really any sailing before a cruise ship has its inaugural revenue-producing sailing, you can expect things to go wrong.
On Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, for example, I left my key in my room and went to get a new one. That did not open the door, and neither did the two other keys they brought me.
The original, however, which I reclaimed after my room steward let me in, still worked just fine.
Part of the point of these sailings is to identify pain points so they can be fixed by the time paying passengers are onboard.
This was recorded after about 24 hours onboard Norwegian Aqua. Since recording this, I will say that I found a new area of the ship to love. The Starbucks coffee shop area where I am working right now has stunning floor-to-ceiling windows.
That's rare on a larger ship (Icon has a similar setup), but it creates a wonderful space for those of us who work while cruising.
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Norwegian Aqua has a lot to like
Transcript:
Daniel Kline: Good afternoon, cruisers. I am Dan Kline, Executive Editor of Come Cruise With Me. That's comecruisewith.com, but you already knew that.
I am in the buffet area on the beautiful Norwegian Aqua. We are on the maiden sailing. They did the naming yesterday; got to meet Eric Stonestreet.
More about that later, but here are some early thoughts on the ship. First of all, it's an absolutely beautiful ship. The rooms are full-on modern.
They're very large. The bathrooms are an incredible use of space. There's storage everywhere.
There's USB ports everywhere, sort of everything you would need. I think there's three outlets on the main desk, so really, really useful.
There's also some wonderful bars in the ship.
The Whiskey Bar is a very distinctive bar. It has its own drinks, really in its own kind of quiet space. The Pour House has really lively concerts, like a seven-piece rock band last night, doing all sorts of different stuff.
A few complaints about Aqua
A couple of little complaints. The local, which replaced the old sort of Irish-British pub, has no particular feel. That used to be like the center of the ship, felt like sort of a town hall place everyone could come together.
Now it's just a very, very generic bar with a similar menu. I also don't love that there's pools sort of everywhere. It's kind of neat, but it's also kind of tricky.
So there's multiple pools on the eighth floor. There's multiple pools on the pool deck. There does not appear to be an adult pool, although there is an added fee Vibe Beach Club.
So jury's out a little bit about that. Hard to tell on a short sailing, whether that's enough space.
The food has been good, but again, media sailing, we are limited as to where we can go.
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Aqua has some awesome features as well
So last night, I actually ate at the Indulge Food Hall, which is sort of a new concept. You sit down, there's an iPad in front of you, or some sort of tablet, and you can order from eight or nine different restaurants.
Different menu at breakfast, different menu at lunch.
I thought the dinner menu was really, really good. Lots of different choices. I actually got some Indian and some Italian.
There were lots of things you could mix. They will bring you drinks.
The technology is not perfect yet.
They haven't quite figured it out. But again, this is an inaugural sailing. The idea is to sort of get it right to work it out.
So early impressions, very nice ship, an improvement for Norwegian, sort of taking them into like the luxury area where Celebrity is, mixing in some of the fun features that Royal Caribbean has.
So again, very early impressions, but I've liked it so far.
I am Dan Kline, Come Cruise With Me soon.
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