On March 28, 2025, I was on board for the very first revenue sailing of the Norwegian Aqua — a transatlantic crossing out of Southampton, UK. It was supposed to be a straightforward 7-day sailing ending in Boston.
It didn’t go as planned. Weather across the Atlantic pushed the itinerary around, and by the time we actually docked, a 7-day cruise had turned into 10 — and Boston had become New York instead. Nobody on board seemed too upset about it. An extra three days at sea on a brand-new ship isn’t exactly a hardship.
One of my favorite things from that crossing: late one night, I caught the ship’s main theater being converted into a full nightclub — sound system, lighting, the whole setup, right in the same room where a production show had played hours earlier. I filmed the whole transformation.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a cruise ship’s theater after the evening show wraps, this is exactly it.
(This crossing also taught me a separate lesson about travel insurance — I’d only insured the cruise fare itself, not what a same-day flight home would have actually cost if I’d needed one. That’s a different trip from the one where I had my heart attack, but I wrote about both in my post on travel insurance lessons across three cruises.)