Can a 2001 Cruise Ship Compete in 2025?

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I’ve recently been onboard a 12-night cruise on one of the oldest and smallest cruise ships in the Norwegian Cruise Line fleet.

The ship I was sailing on was Norwegian Star. She was built in 2001, and she doesn’t have any of the features that you’ll find on the newest, biggest ships.

She doesn’t have high-tech dining, there are no drop slides or Go-Karts, but what she does have has changed the way that I think about older cruise ships.

Cruising has changed a lot in the last 24 years, and on this cruise I’ve seen first-hand how things have changed, for better and for worse…

A couple of months ago, I cruised on Norwegian’s brand-new cruise ship, Norwegian Aqua. I had an incredible time onboard, doing many fun things.

I wasn’t sure if the Norwegian Star would be comparable, but the itinerary was what sold me on this cruise.

I hoped that I wouldn’t find the ship boring or worn out, but for the chance to visit Svalbard and Iceland, I figured it was worth the risk.

I often find that older ships have itineraries that are more interesting to me, so if I did like this ship, it would open up a lot more options. I did want to enjoy the cruising part too though – it couldn’t be all about the itinerary. 

I flew to Copenhagen in Denmark to embark the ship, and it was one of the easiest embarkations I’ve ever had anywhere.

Seeing the hull art on the ship was definitely reassuring because there’s no doubt that she’s the Norwegian Star with all those stars on her.

The Norwegian ships have some of the best-looking hulls, and they’re always recognisable from a distance. 

In total, from walking into the terminal to getting onto the ship, it took 15 minutes. I dropped off my bags, headed through security and then walked pretty much right to the front of the check-in queue because there just wasn’t anybody there.

I do have priority boarding because I’ve cruised with Norwegian so many times before and have a loyalty status. I didn’t even need to use it.

I wondered if this might be one of the benefits of being on a smaller, older ship with fewer people. I knew that on the bigger, newer ships, you do have to book things like shows on the app, but you don’t have to on the smaller ships like Star. 

Norwegian Star holds a little over 2,300 people, which may sound like a lot, but the largest Norwegian ship, Norwegian Encore, can hold closer to 4,000.

These numbers are without crew too, so the number of people on the ships is even higher. 

Walking on board was the most amazing, exciting feeling. It was such an interesting mix of old and new stylings. The orange wood, for example, looks very 2000s to me, but it was paired with some more neutral colours, which really made it look more modern.

We came out to this atrium, and I love this space so much, it’s called the Grand Atrium – and that’s absolutely right.

It’s split over multiple levels with a restaurant in the middle, seating on the top level and a cafe at the bottom.

To think that this is inside a cruise ship really blows my mind. It’d be easy to forget when you are just wandering around here, if it wasn’t for the views out the windows, of course.

The ceiling on the middle level is beautiful, and the whole space felt so bright and spacious. 

My boarding time was 12:30, so I was onboard at the perfect time for lunch. I love it when that happens.

The crew had told us when we boarded that the main dining room, the buffet and O’Sheehan’s were open for lunch. We decided to head straight to the main dining room. 

It’s always such a treat when you can fit in a main dining room embarkation day lunch. I was hoping it would be a relaxing way to start the cruise, and it definitely was.

We still had our bags with us because the cabins weren’t ready yet, so it was much nicer to sit here rather than carrying them around the buffet. We would visit the buffet a lot during this cruise too though. 

We were seated off to the side, and the restaurant itself was so elegant and dramatic.

It has the most amazing windows at the far end and hundreds and hundreds of seats. The little touches, like all the mirrors and the lights, certainly made it feel special. It was such a relief, and so exciting to have made it on board the cruise. At this lunch, it really sunk in. 

The cruise I took was 12 nights long and had 4 sea days. That’s a much longer cruise than I normally take, but I’m glad it was that long. There’s been a lot to fit into one cruise. 

We logged into the Norwegian app and from this point we were able to see things like the daily schedule and our onboard account.

On a cruise, you don’t use money in the same way that you would on land. When you pay for things with your cruise card, the balance goes onto your onboard account, and then you usually pay for it all at the end. I’d set up a credit card when I boarded, so that would all be handled automatically. 

In the main dining room, I noticed that there were these feedback cards on the tables, and we would find these all over the ship.

I’m sure, like with most reviews, happy people don’t bother to fill them out, so I made an effort to fill these out with compliments. I loved that Norwegian were actively looking for feedback, that’s always the best way to improve something.

It was such an easy way to give instant feedback too, so I’m sure it makes the whole experience better.

The hardest part was sneakily trying to see the waiter’s name without just staring at their name tag. I did just ask a few times, but I thought I could be sneaky. 

The service was fast, and we enjoyed all of our food. We’d come back here for lunch again and dinner during the cruise. I knew that there was a second main dining room onboard too, so I made a note to try that.

We also had speciality meal credits to use and I wanted to try as many venues as possible. I knew that there wouldn’t be as many options as on the big new cruise ships, but it seemed like there was still plenty. 

Going out and up the stairs, we found a bar at the back called Spice H20, after picking up a drink, we decided to head outside.

This area at the back is for adults only, and it was lovely that it was undercover, as the weather was not great at this point. 

I hoped that it would get better as the cruise went on, but Norway, Svalbard and Iceland aren’t places you cruise to if you do want guaranteed sunshine.

I say sunshine, the places we were going to would have a lot of daylight at least, in some, the sun doesn’t set for multiple months at a time, but sunshine is something different entirely. 

Up on the top deck we found the helicopter landing pad. This was called the sun deck, which did make me laugh when I recorded it later in the cruise in the thickest fog ever.

The ship actually had to use its fog horn on a couple of days. Some people do find the noise it makes creepy, but I love it.

I think it’s because I took my first cruise when I was 11, so I’ve always been used to looking out and seeing the sea in every direction.

I feel much safer on cruise ships than on any other form of transport and trust the crew to do what they need to do to keep us safe. If that’s using the fog on, go for it, I say. We wouldn’t want anything to bump into us. 

We did see our fair share of sun on this cruise too though, when the sun came out we spent time playing chess, I even went in the basketball court.

It wasn’t quite the mini golf I was used to on Norwegian Aqua, but it was still good fun. 

Watch me playing Mini Golf with Tony from the La Lido Loca YouTube channel on the amazing Norwegian Aqua here;

I think for me, it really does depend on the itinerary how much I want to do on the ship.

I’d find it very hard to ever be bored when there’s amazing views, but I’d also be happy to be here on a newer, bigger ship if that was an option, I could look at these views from my Go-Kart. 

Wandering along a little bit, we came to the main pool deck, this is a proper deep swimming pool with hot tubs on the edges.

Even when it was so cold on our cruise people would always be enjoying these, and I get it. It’s like a big warm bubbly bath, many people would argue it’s even nicer when it’s cold outside. 

The main thing that struck me about the outside spaces was that there was just so much space.

I loved this tiered area with seats by the main pool, and there were so many other places where seats could go. I do find that older ships tend to do the basics like space per person right, and it certainly felt like that. 

I loved watching them loading on the food too, it’s mind-blowing to think about the logistics of cruise ships, how they make sure that they don’t run out of things is truly magic. 

We spent hours and hours on this cruise wandering around the top decks looking at some incredible sights.

There were a couple of bars out here too, and a grill which we would visit later. We really got to know the crew on this cruise in a way that we wouldn’t on the bigger ships. That’s definitely a benefit of smaller ships.

The bars would become part of our routine, and we’d end up doing the same things at the same time, so we’d see the same crew. 

For dinner, we decided to head to a Japanese restaurant called Ginza. This is a speciality restaurant, meaning that it does have an extra charge, but most people either buy a dining package or have some included as part of their booking promotion.

The food was fantastic, and I had a great view along the promenade deck. This might be my new favourite speciality restaurant, and even though I have cruised with Norwegian a lot, I’ve never found this one before. It was great to have a new option. 

The promenade deck itself was so lovely, we’d often walk around here, and it went all the way around the ship. I love seeing the sea in every direction, and it was from here that we saw whales later on during the cruise.

It was nicely protected from the worst of the wind, and one lap is around a third of a mile.

If you are tracking a walk on something like an Apple Watch, make sure that you track it as an indoor walk instead of an outdoor walk. If you do an outside walk, it’ll use your location to work out how fast you’re going, and it’ll assume you’ve walked the distance that the ship has travelled!

It makes for some funny results when it congratulates me for walking 10km in 2 minutes. According to the outside walk setting on my watch, I’ve broken all known speed walking records. 

One of my favourite things about Norwegian is that there are almost no dress codes and there are no formal nights at all.

Shorts are welcome in all the restaurants for dinner, apart from one that’s called Le Bistro, where you do have to wear trousers or a dress.

If you haven’t cruised before, you might be wondering why I’m mentioning that, but it’s pretty common on cruises to have to wear trousers or a dress to the main dining rooms for dinner.

The first 5 cruises I ever took were with Norwegian, so I always assumed that this was how the whole industry was. I was very wrong about that. I did not enjoy finding out that other cruise lines wanted me to wear certain things.

No dress codes and no formal nights suits me perfectly. There were lots of themed nights and parties onboard, but there weren’t ever any enforced dress codes.

A lot of the time, I was wearing a coat and a scarf anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t have to go and get changed for dinner.

The Ginza restaurant is used as a quiet zone during the day for people to play cards. It was used a lot during the sea days, in particular.

Ginza is located above a bar called Gatsby’s, and here they would have live music most days.

I liked how the different bars all had very different themes, but they were distinct and everything fitted together very well. I’ve been on some ships before where it’s been hard to work out the theme, but that wasn’t an issue here.

There would also be live music in the atrium every single day, usually multiple times a day. It set such a nice atmosphere on the ship, and I loved it. The sound really travelled, and I’d always find myself humming or singing along to the songs as I walked around the ship. Sometimes it would be violins, sometimes a singer, sometimes something else, but it was always good. 

After dinner, we decided to go to the theatre for the welcome onboard show. The show was basically a little performance by the performers that we could expect to see during the cruise.

The production show cast shows are always my favourite, so I was looking forward to those.

I knew that they wouldn’t have shows quite like the ones I saw onboard the brand new Norwegian Aqua, which were so impressive, but I was still hopeful. I don’t need a lot to be entertained, I just like colours and costumes, maybe moving set pieces and songs I know.

In the show, they also introduced us to a few crew members, which was nice. We got to know our Cruise Director too, and she was fantastic, she was such a big part of the cruise experience every day. She’s given us daily updates on what was going on on the ship and navigational updates too. 

All of the crew were so friendly, and I was amazed by how many crew members there seemed to be everywhere. We had bar service in the theatre and when we went to the Bliss lounge next we’d just about sat down before a waiter came to take our order. 

We never had to wait anywhere to be served, and I chatted to other guests who commented on that too. 

The Bliss Lounge is the main lounge on the ship where most of the entertainment happens. If I ever had any spare time, I’d wander here to see what was going on.

We watched a game show in here most evenings, and there were at least one, sometimes many more game shows in here every day. There were plenty of people who wanted to take part, so I could watch from a distance, which was perfect.

I’d often set up my make-shift office at the back or just enjoy the music from the house band.

They did dance classes in here too, which were very popular, and in the evenings, there would usually be live music and some sort of theme.

This might be the 80s or the Glow Party, it was always good fun. It was such an interesting mix of different guests on this cruise, and I’d find out later a little bit more about where everybody was from. 

The lounge was comfortable, and for me, the only downside was the lack of windows. This is the main lounge onboard, but you can’t really sit here and look out, because of the location.

They do have a few that look out onto the promenade deck, but if they could move the lounge up a bit, I’d give it a 10/10.

It was really surreal actually because we’d go into the lounge and if we came out at 8 pm or 10 pm or 12 pm or 2 am it didn’t make a difference, it was always daylight outside because we were sailing so far north in summer, it looked as though it was mid day even if it was midnight. That certainly takes some getting used to. 

For me, filming a video, though, was a dream. I could film shots of the pool deck when nobody was there, and it looked like daytime, but it wasn’t. I have the opposite problem if I’m cruising out of the UK in winter, and it’s dark at 4pm. 

Luckily for me, the curtains in my cabin were pretty good, and I can sleep even with all the lights on, so I never struggled to sleep.

My bed was comfortable and I was so happy and excited to be on board. I just felt content and snuggly in this bed. We were heading up the coast of Norway, and Norway is one of my favourite countries. 

Little did I know at that point that I would have a change of cabin mid-cruise! That has never happened to me before, and probably never will again. Find out more here:

On this cruise, we first visited the ports of Kristiansand, Maloy, and Ålesund. In Kristansand, we had the most incredible sunshine. It was such a surprise, I even took off my jumper at one point. 

When we came back onto the ship, we sat by the pool and enjoyed a slice of cake from the poolside grill. This would very quickly become my favourite cake onboard, and I think I had a slice every single day, plenty of cookies too.

The grill here was brilliant, the food was hot and fresh, and we really tried to make the most out of the sunshine.

We weren’t so lucky in Maloy, but when we were there, we took an excursion to a llama farm. We all got pretty wet, but that’s the risk you take in Norway. I’m from England anyway, so I’m pretty used to it, we’re waterproof.

The sailaway from Maloy was something special, as was our sail away from Alesund. Together with Alaska, Norway has some of the most beautiful sail-ins and outs.

For me, this is really what cruising is all about, and I spent a lot of time just looking at the scenery in disbelief, it was like another world.

I had been to Alesund before, but when I came in the past, it was covered under a lot of snow, and I had to have snow spikes on my shoes!

This time I managed to walk up to the top of Mount Aksla, and from there we had a brilliant view of the ship.

If I had looked down at this exact same ship in 2001, the ship would have looked different, and I’d find clues about her past as the cruise went on.

I am such a cruise ship nerd, and I don’t even want to pretend otherwise, I love uncovering things about the cruise ships past and looking at old photos to try and work out what things were like.

One thing that has always been the same though, on Norwegian cruises, since my very first cruise when I was 11.

There’s always a dining venue onboard that’s open 24/7. It used to be called the Blue Lagoon on many ships, but it’s now called O’Sheehan’s on this ship, and The Local on some of the newer ships.

I’m not sure if I’d describe it as a pub or a bar, but this one definitely felt like a pub. The way the seats were on different levels is such a pub-like thing, and I definitely felt at home here. The carpet too, such a pub vibe. 

Sheehan’s goes around both sides of the second level of the atrium, so we could sit here and people-watch.

On the sides were comfortable booths, too, and we were always able to get a table here whenever we wanted to.

You went to this little desk, and they scanned your cruise card before seating you. It is all included in the cruise fare, but they still always scan your cards so they know who is where. 

Around the ship, there were screens which showed how full different venues were. I thought that was cool. 

When I was sat at this booth I had a look at the weather for the upcoming port on the app. It did make me laugh when it said that the sun wouldn’t rise or set. It’s true, but seeing it written down like that was bizarre. 

In O’Sheehan’s, they serve things like burgers, hot dogs, nachos and chicken wings. The service was always fast, and we’d be able to get bar service in here too.

I did have an alcoholic drinks package on this cruise, which isn’t something that I ever normally buy, so I did my best to sample a few things. I still went back to the Coke Zero most of the time, but it was nice to try something different. 

Sometimes, we went to Karaoke in the whiskey bar. This bar was right in the middle of one of the main decks, so we’d often just sit here to have a drink as we were passing through.

Norwegian have some cocktails on tap and my favourite is Red Bubbles. I didn’t have enough to sing at karaoke, though. I’m not sure there is any number of drinks that would make me do that, but I enjoyed watching it.

I’m always amazed by people who can sing. They did the finals of Karaoke towards the end of the cruise, and everybody was amazing. 

After a few days in port, I was looking forward to a sea day. We had 4 of these during our cruise, which, given how far we were travelling, I don’t think is too bad at all. I was definitely expecting us to have more when I originally saw the itinerary. 

I started my sea day doing some shopping. There was a shop that sold things like perfume, snacks and watches and another that sold logo merchandise.

It was here that I noticed a clue to the ship’s past. These souvenirs show waterslides on the top of the ship that aren’t there anymore. I felt like a detective when I found this.

The lack of slides on this ship did make sense, because older ships tend to be on longer itineraries, they tend to attract fewer kids, as a result, the majority of onboard spaces are designed for adults.

They do still have kids’ clubs onboard, of course, but I only saw a handful of kids on this cruise.

As well as the shops, there was a photography studio, and here we bought some binoculars using our onboard credit. I was really hoping to see a whale during this cruise and thought that these might help me with that mission. I’d heard that near Iceland was my best bet.

For lunch, we decided to head to the buffet, which was up on deck 12. There were plenty of seats, and what I really loved about it was how they had a crew at the doorway spraying sanitiser as guests walked in. On their hands, of course, not just generally into the air. 

It makes me so happy to see this happening, and this ship was spotless in every way. I never saw any rubbish anywhere, and constantly saw the crew cleaning.

It’d never be long at all from me putting down an empty cup to a crew member swooping it away and asking me if I’d like another one. 

I never saw food in corridors or anything that looked dirty. That was the same on the newer Norwegian ships, of course, but I really noticed it here.

Perhaps because you kind of expect older ships to feel more run down, but it didn’t. I didn’t notice any damage. I never saw anything leaking, broken or anything like that.

Norwegian must have spent a lot of money on this ship to keep her at this standard. All the carpets and chairs and everything are new and have been changed many times in the last 24 years.

It’s crazy to think that 2001 was 24 years ago, but it was, unless you’re watching this in the future, then it’s even longer. 

We ate in the buffet every day during the cruise at some point and were always able to find food that we liked.

The layout was a little bit strange because there wasn’t a lot of space actually by the food, but the fruit carvings made up for it, they are so cute.

The buffet did get busy at peak times, the same way that it does on every cruise, but we were always able to find a seat in here. Sometimes the food would just be on one side, and so there would be lots of seats left on the other side. 

Something very strange happened next. I actually won $61 in the casino. I normally lose. That is very rare for me.

I usually gamble $10 every cruise I take, and I’m usually pretty content to just lose that and move on. This time though I took my winnings and left. I never went to the casino again after that. I was happy and done. 

On cruises, the casino and the shops are only open when the ship is at sea, so I like to make the most out of these things on a sea day.

Other popular sea day activities are things like going to the spa or perhaps the gym. I didn’t go anywhere near the gym on this cruise, so I’m afraid I can’t show you that. I can show you the stairs that I walked up and down every day, though.

There are lifts, of course, but I prefer to leave those for people who need them, and it does become a bit of a challenge for me. One day I walked over 100 flights of stairs. 

We were never too far from anything, and 12 days onboard was great because I did actually learn my way around before the cruise was over. Usually, if I’m on a 7-day cruise, I’m just about figuring it out when it’s time to go home. 

All cruise ships do have deck plans on the cruise line’s website, and they are very helpful for looking at before a cruise to get a head start on learning your way around. 

Sea days are really all about recharging, ready for the next port day, and to do that, you need to eat. We had great speciality meals in La Cucina and Cagney’s Steak House.

In Cagneys, the thing you’ve got to get is the 7-layer chocolate cake. It is absolutely huge, so we did share it, but you could always take it back to your cabin if you couldn’t finish it.

I’ve done that in speciality restaurants before with things like pizza, the crew don’t mind, they’ll have room service coverings for the food ready to go.

In the UK, I’ve never been offered or asked for a doggy bag like that, but Norwegian are an American company and as far as I can tell, that’s a normal thing there and it’s totally normal on cruises. Reducing food waste is good. 

When we visited the northernmost port on the cruise, Honningsvåg, we went to North Cape, which is the northernmost point in the northernmost city in all of Europe.

I’ve been cruising with Norwegian since I was 11, and because of that, I have a pretty good loyalty status with Norwegian. I just turned Sapphire, and my favourite perk by far is a free bag of laundry. I also get a couple of speciality meals and discounts on various things. 

I filled my free bag and squashed my socks down into all of the corners because I really wanted to get the maximum benefit. Having the bag show back up was amazing. Everything was nicely folded and ready to go. 

Having been in the more traditional grand main dining room, we decided to try out the second main dining room for dinner next.

The bread was so good, and I had this dish, which is basically cheese on cheese on cheesy pasta, that’s not the real name of course, but that’s what I’d call it.

There are absolutely no fixed dining times on Norwegian at all, you just show up in the main dining room when you like, and there is no table sharing or anything scary like that.

If you do have to wait, they’ll give you a buzzer and you can go and sit in a bar somewhere and have a drink until it vibrates.

I usually eat early, so I never had to wait for dinner at all and only had to wait for lunch once on a sea day, which is when it’s at its most popular. 

“Aqua” is a much more modern restaurant in terms of design. It was busier and noisier in here than the other main restaurant, but the food was good, and the service was perfect.

The piles of menus were absolutely massive. I’m not sure how many this restaurant seats, but it’s seriously impressive. The menus were available in different languages, too. 

I was happy to see that a few allergens were marked on the menu, like gluten-free. I noticed this in the buffet too and thought that was great. 

During our 12-day cruise, we had 2 showcast performances in the theatre. I definitely would have liked more, but that’s totally personal preference.

Towards the end of the cruise, they did have one show where they brought out staff members to represent different parts of the crew. A few people from housekeeping, a few bartenders, for example.

This is something I remember from my past Norwegian cruises, and I love it. It makes you realise just how many people work on the ships, and finding out what countries they are all from is always interesting to me. 

I did love how they even had the” washy washy” hand sanitising crew dancing on the stage, which shows to me how much they value cleanliness, that they’d make a point of that. 

Up until this point, we had been really lucky with the weather. I was fully prepared to have rough seas on this cruise, given our location. At one point, things did get very slightly rocky, and the sick bags did appear on the stairs.

This always makes me think, oh no, here we go again, but I’m very happy to report that things never got rough at all. In fact, we had some of the calmest seas I’ve ever seen. It was like a pond. 

As the cruise went on, I started to notice the odd sign around in Chinese, which I thought was interesting, some in Spanish too.

It turns out that we had a lot of Chinese tour groups on our cruise, followed in passenger numbers by guests from the USA, Canada, Germany and the UK.

I loved the mix of guests, and I think that’s my ideal situation on a cruise. I always find that it just makes things more interesting, and everybody seems a bit more spread out because the interests of the guests are more varied.

We had a mix of ages on the cruise, too, although there weren’t many children or young families.

That’s probably because we were cruising during term time and it was a bit of a quirky itinerary that started in one place and ended in another, those are a bit trickier logistically.

Great for me, though, we covered a lot of ground and I went to places that I’ve never been before.

Svalbard might just be the most amazing place I’ve ever been on a cruise. It’s so remote that it is forbidden to die or give birth on the island.

This video will show you what we got up to in the ports. These ports are the reason I booked this cruise in the first place.

Before You Go

I resisted the temptation to buy a model of the Norwegian Star whilst onboard. Find out about things you might end up buying in the cruise ship shops here:

Cruise Ship Shops – Here Are Things You Didn’t Plan to Buy, But Probably Will

A third of all cruisers are under the age of forty! Find out what the average age to cruise is here:

1/3rd of Cruisers Are Under 40! Here’s The Average Age