I Took a Cruise on a Ship Designed in The 1990s

When cruise lines advertise their cruises they’ll always show you the newest and the biggest ships but the average lifespan on a cruise ship is close to 30 years and almost all major cruise lines have cruise ships that are well over 20 years old. That means that ships that were originally launched with promotional videos like this, are still sailing and I’ve just disembarked a cruise on one.

I usually cruise on new big cruise ships but when I saw a cheap price for a cruise on an older ship cruising with Norwegian Cruise Line, I knew I had to give it a go. I cruised on a very similar ship when I was a child and at the time I thought the ship was incredible so I hoped this would be a walk down memory lane for me.

I knew that the ship wouldn’t have things like go karts or virtual reality which you do get on modern cruise ships but I also suspected that the entertainment, food and service would also be different on a ship like this.

I hoped that it wouldn’t be worse but as the cruise I took was half the price of a cruise on one of the newest ships I figured there must be some reason for that. I hoped that it wasn’t because the ship was more rocky as I do get seasick, we did have some bad weather on this cruise and the sick bags did come out, but more about that later.

I was hoping to book another cruise after this on an even older cruise ship designed in the 1980s, but that all rested on how much I enjoyed this one.

It was pouring with rain in Lisbon when we embarked the ship which was ironically called the Norwegian Sun. Embarkation was really fast and that was probably helped by the fact that the ship holds a maximum of 1900 people, the current biggest cruise ship in the world holds 7000 guests so under 2000 is a relatively small ship.

Usually when I get on a ship the first thing I do is explore but as I was drenched through from the rain I found a some public toilets onboard to get changed in and I did my best to dry my hair under the handryer. It actually worked surprisingly well and although I got lots of comments here about getting bacteria on my head, I’d do it again, it was better than going to lunch looking like I’d been swimming in my clothes.

On cruises your suitcases are taken from you at the port and they arrive later in your cabin so I made sure that I took a change of clothes out of my suitcase and put it into my bag before I handed it over.

Once I was changed and I had wiped all of the rain out of my eyes I was able to see the atrium in the middle of the ship. This is one area that has remained largely unchanged since the ship was launched. Because of the way that cruise ships are made they can’t really make any big structural changes later on, cruise ships are built in chunks, usually upside down and then they are joined together. The whole process takes a couple of years and they have to plan everything, right down to where things like TV screens will be so that the structure can support the weight.

I’m happy to report that Norwegian have changed the carpet from the original brightly coloured one that they had here though. This new design is much more subtle and I think it looks much better. Back in the 2000s, or what we in the UK call the naughties bright colours were everywhere on cruise ships and it felt like it wasn’t uncommon to have red chairs, yellow carpets and green walls. I like to think that the colourful carpets and chairs are still living their life out somewhere.

This atrium area really is the heart of the ship and it stretches right the way from deck 3 up to the pool deck on deck 12. Most cruise ships will have an atrium in the middle which is kind of like this. Some are much bigger and some are smaller. Here there was the entrance one of the main dining rooms, the reception, a little starbucks, a bar and lots of desks of people trying to sell cruise next certificates and specialty meals. We would often get a drink here when we came back from port and it was a great place to people watch.

I wasn’t planning on spending much, if anything onboard this cruise, when I bought the cruise I bought a cruise fare that included what Norwegian call ‘free at sea’ this meant that I had a drinks package and a couple of speciality restaurant meals included that usually cost extra in addition to all of the normal included food. I paid £149 which is $184 for the free at sea package for 8 days so all I had to do was drink and eat £19 worth a day, which I thought I could easily do.

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