I Spent 8 Days on a BRAND NEW Cruise Ship (Before Her Launch)

ad – This content was created on a press trip (similar to those travel agents and journalists take). All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I’ve recently been on a brand new cruise ship where I was one of the first people in the entire world to test out a rollercoaster on the top deck that launches you at speed into a waterslide.

I’ve seen incredible venues change before my eyes, I’ve enjoyed high tech dining, took a trip down a 10 storey drop slide – and all of this before the ship officially launched. 

I’ve been cruising with Norwegian since I was 11 but this trip has been so different to anything I’ve ever done before. It definitely didn’t go all to plan, in fact we weren’t sure at one point if it would happen at all.

But because absolutely nothing has been off limits on this trip I can show you the behind the scenes of everything. 

She has 16 bars and 14 restaurants onboard, she’s 20 decks high and as long as 14 tennis courts or 64 full sized cars. She’s a big cruise ship. 

I usually avoid sailing on new cruise ships when they launch because maiden voyages are notorious for things going wrong. Like everything, cruise ships do take a while to settle in.

As I was going on the sailing before even the maiden voyage, I hoped that everything would be ready for our trip.

I wasn’t sure who else would be on this cruise, I didn’t know if I’d be able to try everything in just a few days, but the chance to be the very first onboard was too exciting so I decided to take the risk and come onboard. 

A lot was riding on this ship and her launch. Norwegian said that it would be the most innovative cruise ship ever. I figured it’d all go well – or it would be a great story to tell you.

The cruise didn’t get off to a great start, I woke up on embarkation day morning and had a text that said that the port was closed completely due to bad weather.

The ship was out there waiting, but just couldn’t get in to dock because of really high winds.

From the initial planning stage to having the ship ready had taken around four years and over 850 million dollars.

We all were desperate to get onboard, and I’m sure everybody who worked at Norwegian was very nervous. 

The ship did make it in eventually and from land I could see the Aqua rollercoaster on the top deck and the drop slide, she looked like a seriously exciting cruise ship and I personally love all the colours.

I knew that I really wanted to try these things on the cruise but couldn’t imagine them opening them if the weather stayed like it was, I was hopeful though.

When we boarded the ship we walked into this incredible main atrium, it’s split over multiple levels and I really love the look of the stairs and the art work, it’s light and bright and very modern.

I think the ceiling looks like it has jellyfish on it – let me know if you see that too.

This area really is the heart of the ship with things like the reception desk and a Starbucks. During our cruise they’d often have live music in here which you could hear across the levels in the different bars, which was nice. 

This same design continued down the corridors and onto the stairs, the whole ship felt so new and it did have a new ship smell too, like new carpets and very clean, we were the very first guests though so that does make sense. 

Our sailing was before even the naming ceremony which is meant to give the ship good luck. I hoped that we wouldn’t have bad luck because of that, but only time would tell. 

I knew exactly where I wanted to go for my dinner and I didn’t waste any time getting there.

I headed along deck 8 to Indulge food hall, this is one of my favourite areas on the ship and I have visited it every single day of the cruise.

What you do is you take a seat at any table and order your food on the iPad, it’s made at food stations and bought over to you. It’s kind of of a cross between a buffet and a traditional restaurant. 

The menu changes for lunch and dinner and all the food here is included in the cruise fare.

There’s water, tea, coffee and juices included too. The juice machine was very fancy, and this was just one way that I’d see technology popping up around the ship. 

I recently cruised on Norwegians oldest cruise ship the Norwegian Spirit who I love. To go from that to the newest ship was really interesting.

Norwegian Aqua is more than double the size of Spirit – and compared to the first ever Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Norwegian Aqua is 15 times bigger.

We ordered a selection of foods and they were all very good, they come as soon as they are ready so the food is always fresh and there’s no limit to how much you can order, if you’re not full you can just order some more. 

You can see pictures of every dish too and I love that, I wish every menu everywhere had photos. 

There is a really lovely outside seating area around Indulge food hall on the promenade deck which wraps around the back of the ship but at this point that was just a distant dream, I hoped I’d be able to wander around there soon, because it did look nice from what I could see. 

I’d cruised a little while ago on Aquas sister ship Prima and when I was on there I watched a show called “Rumours” in a venue called Syd Normans.

It was very popular and the venue was small so I was really excited to see that the show had been moved to the theatre on this ship.

The Syd Norman’s venue does still exist and there are shows there every night, its just this one that has been moved. We decided to head there next and sat up on the second level. 

I was a bit unsure if the show would translate to a bigger room. It was very much about enjoying the story and music of Fleetwood Mac in a intimate live music kind of setting, but I’m happy to say that it was great on the big stage too.

The Theatre itself is very impressive, the seats are spread over three levels, every seat is comfortable and there are cup holders on every seat.

If this was just the theatre and that was it I would have been quite happy – but this was just the start.

As the show ended the people on the lower levels were asked to go up a level so that the seats could be put away for the 90s party.

When you hear “seats being put away” you might think that its just picking up chairs and stacking them at the side like a school disco – but that isn’t the case at all…

The seats fold down flat and then slide completely away.

The area transforms into the most amazing club and we had so much fun in here. The lights I think are amazing, and it’s such a great use of space and so much better than having a stand alone nightclub that just sits empty for most of the day.

As people are already here too it means that the party can start straight away. Norwegian did a great job of having crew members in the crowd and on the stage who could encourage everybody to join in. 

After a dance with my friend Sheri from CruiseTipsTV I decided to call it a night.

I went to bed in my cabin Club Balcony Cabin – this is basically a balcony cabin but extra long because of the shape of the aft of the ship.

I’ve always said that the sister ship Prima has my favourite balcony cabins, and I’m happy to say this one is almost identical so I loved it too.

I slept very soundly, and when I woke up I realised that we were still in Lisbon, we hadn’t moved.

Because of the bad weather, we weren’t able to sail away. It was announced that we would be staying in Lisbon for a few days and missing our planned port of Rotterdam.

I was quite relieved to hear that to be honest, I hoped that would mean that we would miss the worst of the bad weather. It didn’t work out like, that but still Lisbon is a beautiful back drop and I was happy to stay put.

Some people were meant to disembark in Rotterdam and so some had to leave the ship in Lisbon, which was a shame but safety always is the main priority of a cruise ship. 

I headed to “The Local” for brunch with a couple of my friends next. I had an omelette and some fruit, which was exactly what I needed.

I’m not a morning person and don’t like breakfast foods much, so the fact that this open was always there was great.

The buffet, indulge and the main dining room were all open for breakfast too and usually until around 10am. 

Norwegian have always had venues like “The local” on their ships. The names have changed throughout the years, on my first cruise it was called the Blue Lagoon and on many ships it’s called O’Sheehan’s.

The idea is the same though, it’s a bar and restaurant that is open 24 hours a day. It’s a great place to grab a burger or a sandwich, the chicken wings are very popular and I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal here on any of my 15 Norwegian cruises.

The service was always good and they have things like ketchup just on the tables, I wish every table I sat down at had a ketchup on it to be honest, that would save me always having to ask. 

All the food here is included in the cruise fare too. I would try some speciality restaurants later that weren’t included in the cruise fare too, but I was more than happy with this.

The speciality restaurants were something extra but I’d be happy with just the included food too. 

As the weather was pretty terrible we decided to head to the Spa which is inside the ship.

The Spa isn’t somewhere that I usually spend a lot of time when I cruise, so it was lovely to get to see what it has to offer.

It’s normally really hard for me to film the spa for obvious reasons so it was great to get to on this cruise. The two storey waterfall was amazing, and I did go for a dip in the pool. 

There are thermal passes available to buy for this area and lots of treatments too. We spent a little bit of time in lots of different saunas and steam rooms.

My favourite part was probably the heated loungers, I’m not sure what it was about them but I just found them so relaxing. I think the lovely spa smell had something to do with it too. 

After lunch we headed up to the top deck to have a quick look at the pool deck and to grab a bite to eat in the buffet.

Norwegian have made this pool deck a little bigger than on the earlier versions of this ship, which was nice and I love the small touches like the head rests and the tables for every sun lounger.

Exploring the top decks a little more we found a few more areas with lots of sunlounges and a splash zone for kids.

There weren’t many kids on our cruise given that it was just journalists and press. There were some kids though so I’m not sure where they came from. I’m guessing they were related to some employees or something, not that they were here working in their own right.

A lot of the top deck is taken up with the slide coaster, vibe beach club and The Haven, but the ship has the benefit of all this promenade deck space.

It’s more like the outside space is just split up, rather than everybody being around one pool like on the older ships. 

There’s a pool bar here and the buffet too. I love the design of the buffet and really like how it has windows all down the side.

The buffet definitely could be a lot bigger but we were always able to find somewhere to sit, during breakfast and lunch they’d open up the speciality restaurants opposite as extra seating which was good, and we sometimes sit outside in this area.

There were heaters here and it was nicely protected from the weather. Norwegian have the cutlery on every table so you don’t have to faff around trying to carry it yourself.

The pizza in the buffet was really good, I mean really good, it was so doughy and yummy.

We came back here for a couple of meals during the cruise and always found lots of things that we liked to eat.

We all decided that we wouldn’t let the bad weather put us off so we headed up and out to go to play a few games. They have ping pong, shuffleboard and games like table football in an area called the stadium.

Up higher there is a Pickleball court too and it was here that I sheltered from the rain one day when trying to go on the aqua rollercoaster. One area that’s totally new on this ship is the Glow Court, which is a place for interactive games.

Every time I was exploring these places I’d be reminded of the drop slide which I had promised myself I would go on. Luckily for me, it was closed at this point because of the weather but I knew I’d have to come back. 

I could see the Aqua coaster up here too but it was closed because of the winds. I really hoped that I would get to have a go, because it looked like so much fun.

I’d seen them practising using test dummies which were basically big jugs full of water, the jugs had all come back around successfully – so that was a good sign. 

At one point we saw them let a few people on, and then we saw the jugs come back out the other side so we joked that the slide turned people into jugs. I didn’t want to get turned into a jug!

Also up on the top decks was the mini golf. There is an extra charge for this, but it’s not a lot and I think there has to be honestly, given that the ship holds 3,500 people.

At least with a charge that means you only get people who actually want to play, rather than some people just hanging around getting in the way not really playing. 

It wasn’t normal mini golf either. The ball has a chip in it and it is assigned to you, it automatically keeps score of how many times you’ve hit it and gives you extra points if you complete the bonuses.

We were pretty freezing but we had a great time, each hole is themed to a different country, so I did my bit of gondola-ling on the Italian hole. My friend Tony who you may recognise from the La Lido Loca channel won at the golf – which wasn’t any surprise to me. 

It was around now that I started to notice a few differences between Norwegian Aqua and her older, smaller sister, Norwegian Prima.

Cruise ships are called sisters when they are the same design. The location of some venues was different especially on the lower decks and they have extended some areas like the casino.

I loved the Metropolitan Lounge here which has been changed a little bit, it really felt very luxurious and relaxing to me. They’d have live music in here too and there was no shortage of music around the ship.

The slide fits on top of the ship, there are actually two tracks and you basically race each other as you’re launched at the same time.

I think this model really shows just how big the ship is and you can see here clearly one of my favourite parts about Norwegian ships and that is the promenade deck.

On a lot of cruise ships there aren’t promenade decks anymore at all, or if there are you can’t sea out to see because there are lifeboats in the way.

I love how Norwegian always prioritise the view of the ocean, we saw that in the main dining room, the observation lounge and here with the big promenade deck. 

Find out everything you need to know about ships promenade decks here:

Cruise Ship Promenade Decks – Photos, Uses, and History

There were lots of comfortable seats out here, and infinity pools were on either side.

There’s also this cool sculpture which stood strong as the winds blew around it. Even though the weather wasn’t great it was good to have the option of wandering around out here. 

We got word that the Aqua Coaster was ready and we headed up to the top deck as fast as we could.

I wasn’t too sure what to wear as it was a mix between a waterslide and a rollercoaster – but I went with my swimming costume and a swim dress over the top which was perfect.

Some people went in swimwear some more sporty clothes. 

A swimming costume of course being your Britishism of the week, it usually refers to the one piece that women wear, often shortened to a cossie or I’d say my swimmers.

I’m going to go and get my swimmers on. 

We stood in line and watched as other people headed off, it looked so fast at the start and I was nervous given that it does get up to something crazy like 30 miles an hour and you aren’t strapped in at all.

The perk of being on this press cruise was that we were able to bring our cameras with us.

If this was a regular cruise I’d never have been able to show you inside the tube and I think that would be a shame, the colours are just so beautiful and you can see on my face here how much I was enjoying it.

After the fast start it does slow down and you can see me here like “la la la – this is fun”. The tube is pretty big actually and there are only a few dark spots inside. There’s a couple of areas where people can look in and that was funny, I felt like a fish in a bowl. 

I filmed this on my Insta360 and you can see the camera in my hand here. It is magic, honestly. 

You do get wet on the slide and it’s not heated at all so it was freezing, well worth it though and I’m glad I got to go onboard before the weather got really bad. 

We had our dinner in a brand new restaurant onboard called Sukhothai and this is probably my favourite speciality restaurant onboard now. It used to be Los Lobos but I think this has taken that spot. 

Everything we ate was so tasty and it was just such a lovely meal.

I really enjoyed not having to think about dress codes too, Norwegian are a very casual cruise line, and they don’t have any formal nights at all.

As long as you are dressed you are good. I did see some people being told to wear shoes when walking through the buffet, but that was about it, and I think that’s common sense. 

Sukhothai does have an extra charge but most people who book a Norwegian cruise do end up booking with a promotion that includes at least one speciality meal.

I have the highest loyalty status with Norwegian, so I get a couple included too. We ate at Onda and Palomar during this cruise and both were great. Onda always makes me feel like I’m inside a whale. 

For people who don’t haves speciality meals included as part of a promotion they can buy a dining package or they can just pay the cover charge for the restaurants.

The ones on here range between $40 and $60 per person, plus a 20% gratuity. On some other cruise lines a specialty meal can cost into the hundreds of dollars so I don’t think that’s too bad at all. 

Afterwards, we went to bar called the Observation Lounge. It has windows right the way around and it was always such a quiet relaxing place to sit.

They would have food in here sometimes too, and it was a nice alternative to going to the buffet or a sit down restaurant if we just wanted to quickly grab a sandwich. 

I love the design of this lounge and all the ornaments were stuck down. That would become very important when we set sail from Lisbon.

At first it was ok, but it didn’t take long for the rough seas and high winds to find us. As soon as we went out into the open ocean it was immediately obvious why we were trying to avoid it. 

I saw the sea sickness bags coming out on the staircases and my American friends gave me some Bonine to try.

I usually take Kwells but do still suffer a bit in rough seas, with these though, oh my goodness me, it made rough seas fun, I felt totally fine.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be somebody who though that rough seas were actually a good thing.

I enjoyed watching my bottle roll around and the hangers clanking in the wardrobe, I could eat as much as normal too.

We had our dinner in the main dining room one day, Hudson’s. It is again a venue that really focuses on the view of the ocean and there are windows all the way around.

I don’t think the restaurant was named after our channel mascot Captain Hudson, but I’ve told him that it was. He deserves it after raising almost $150,000 for charity. 

Usually seeing the horizon going up and down would make me feel quite ill but I didn’t have any problems at all.

I think Sheri and her Bonine have changed my life. You can’t buy this in the UK, so I bought 6 boxes onboard in the gift shop. 

Hudson’s is the most beautiful restaurant, and the service in here was always good. I do eat very early so I was so happy to see that the main dining room opened for dinner at 5pm, that’s my dream.

We were almost the only people there at that time of course, but it didn’t matter. I went back another day for lunch too and in here everything is included in the cruise fare. 

There is another main dining room lower down too which is also included and there are loads more bars and lounges onboard where we spent our time. 

There are a few areas onboard that I wouldn’t normally experience on a cruise but that I could because of the nature of this trip.

The first is an area called the Vibe Beach Club. This is an adult-only deck, and you buy a pass to get access to it.

I spent some time here onboard Norwegian Prima when we were in Bermuda, and it was lovely, they even brought around cookies on a tray at one point.

I’m not sure if that is normal, but I loved it. When the sun came out this was a great place to spend some time. 

The second place which is usually off limits to me but that I got to see is The Haven. It is the luxurious ship within a ship area and I’ll let you know more about that one later because I really did get to experience it in a way that I never expected. 

We also got to have a look at lots of different cabin types. I’m very nosey and always want to look in everybody else’s cabins, so this was a bit of a dream come true for me.

They listed out which cabin types were available to view, and we could just wander around, there was a little explainer outside and the doors were open. 

The carpet on the floor does have a useful feature, the arrows always point forwards. On some of the older Norwegian ships they had fish that used to swim forwards, this is the same idea but just modernised. 

On most regular cruises all the cabins are filled and you can’t just show up to somebodies room for a tour.

I particularly liked getting to have a look at an accessible cabin, it had a button to open the door and the floor to get into the cabin and bathroom were completely flat, the room was bigger too and the bathroom had a big shower.

Cabins like these do always sell out very fast, so I always encourage people who need them to book as far in advance as possible. 

I got to see the inside cabin and I think I’d be more than happy in here. It was very similar to my cabin in design but of course without the balcony.

I’ve stayed in lots of inside cabins in the past and they are totally fine, it’s a great way to get onboard the ship as cheaply as possible.

The bathroom is pretty much the same in all of the cabins and it is probably my favourite bathroom at sea, there is even a drawer for your things which is unheard of.

There’s plenty of space, everything you need and it just looks cool too, the lighting is great.

The shower was powerful, there was no water spillage into the main room.

My only complaint was that the bathroom door would always default to closing itself, so if I wanted to fill up a couple glasses of water I had to use my foot to keep the door open. I always managed it, but it just put me into weird positions I wouldn’t normally have to try. 

We did also get a chance to play on lots of games in the game zone. I have tried a few before, but I’ve never had free rein, I felt like a kid in an arcade.

We tried our hand at bowling and went on the VR rollercoaster. I decided to pick a game which was something about exploring a fridge – I have no idea – I just thought that it would be funny.

It was, we were flying round the cheese and jumping on the tomatoes, very odd but a great laugh.

In this area you tap your cruise card to play and I suppose its the new version of when I used to play Pacman in the arcade on my first cruise. 

The cruise card is what you charge things to when you’re on the ship, it’s your way on and off and your way into your cabin.

It’s important and we were given branded lanyards, I’m not much of a lanyard person they remind me too much of my old office job but still, I appreciated it. 

I did find free to play games around the ship too like a random virtual reality game which was by the photo centre, the cool thing about that is you can download the video to your phone by scanning a QR code.

The photo centre is where you can buy photos that the onboard photographers took, they also sell things like cameras or souvenirs.

I bought myself a Norwegian Aqua jumper from the gift shop and I’ve pretty much been wearing it ever since, I love it. 

We didn’t need to pay for the Wi-Fi to download the video or to use the cruise lines app, but I did have a Wi-Fi package on this cruise.

I was able to do a live stream from my cabin which was so much fun, my friends Sheri and Tony joined me unexpectedly on the stream.

When they knocked I thought it was house keeping or somebody coming to tell me off for being too loud, so I was nervous, but it was so much fun to have them be part of it.

Tony turned the stream into a dance party and it was lovely. 

You can see that here:

Being together in the same place as so many people in the industry has been such a treat.

We all love cruising so much and so does my friend Doug from Cruise Radio, he didn’t crash my live stream but that’s probably because he was busy creating his daily cruise news show, which carried on doing from the ship.

I was really impressed that the Wi-Fi could handle us all working as much as we were, every person onboard was constantly uploading content. 

I had the stream package and even managed to catch up with a show I’m watching, it didn’t buffer once it was great. 

The main headline show onboard Norwegian Aqua is a show called Revolution: A celebration of Prince.

I have to be honest I’m not a massive Prince fan so I didn’t know if I’d like it. I imagined that it might just be like a simple Prince concert, but I couldn’t have been more wrong, I’ve never seen anything like it.

The bottom level of seats were removed so there was space for people to stand just like in a real concert, there were so many people singing and dancing and at one point I counted 20 people on the stage in the most amazing sparkly outfits.

The show was an hour long and they’d move around the pieces of the stage to reveal the prince symbol.

It really was very impressive and so interesting, even as somebody who isn’t a big Prince fan.

I imagine if you were it would have been even better, I did have friends who went back multiple times because they loved it so much.

Sadly we weren’t able to film the shows so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Up until this point I hadn’t seen the 10 storey drop slide open, mostly I think because of the bad weather.

I knew that I would have to give the dropslide a go if I saw it open, but honestly, I was a little happy every time I saw it closed. I was nervous and that was a great excuse not to go.

I was down on the promenade deck when I saw somebody sliding down, I knew then I’d have to give it a go then.

I even said to the crew member working at the bottom ‘I’m going on the slide so I’ll see you in a minute’ just so that I couldn’t change my mind.

I headed up the stairs to deck 17 and took my space inside the tube. 

The floor drops out beneath you completely and you fall down into the slide, I was nervous because I could hear it counting down, 5 4 3 2 1…

I honestly closed my eyes for a lot of this so I can’t tell you what it’s like inside, it was fast though. I’m glad I did it but I definitely preferred the aqua rollercoaster. 

The next day was the weirdest cruise day I’ve possibly ever had, it was disembarkation day and I had to be out of my cabin early. Not because I was getting off though – but because I was moving – I was moving to The Haven.

For those of you who don’t know The Haven is the area where all of the best suites are, I’ve cruised with Norwegian 15 times over the last 20 years but I’ve never stayed there before.

Have a look at some of photos of my amazing suite, that sleep six people here:

Watch my full video review of my Haven suite on Norwegian Aqua here:

Before You Go

Find out about the cruise I took on Aqua’s sister ship, Norwegian Prima, here:

I Spent 7 Days on a LUXURY Megaship – Inside Norwegian Prima

We ran into thick fog on this cruise on Norwegian Aqua. Watch the video and find out whether it disrupted our plans here:

Video Shows Cruise Ship Caught in Thick Fog – Using Foghorn Every 2 Minutes