NCL Aqua Review

Who We Are

It was a multigenerational cruise with eight of us total, two of us in our late 30s and our two children under the age of 4, two grandparents in their late 60s, and another couple in their late 20s.

Stateroom

We booked the Haven H2 stateroom, which is 1272 sq ft with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, as well as a wraparound 800 sq ft balcony with a jacuzzi.

We thought the stateroom was a good amount of space to really spread out and lounge (though this is less the case if you’re in the smallest bedroom, which is really just big enough for the bed). It’s nice that every single room has a door to the balcony. 

The master bedroom is quite large. At first, I thought it was kind of dark (dark floor, dark ceiling, dark walls), but given that most of the time you have the blinds open, there is plenty of light:

The master bath is huge:

The private jacuzzi was really nice. It’s also running constantly, so really at any point you can step in and enjoy (which we did plenty). There are three loungers (that you can see in this next pic) and two more seats behind me, and behind that, a full six person dining table. Having this much outside space meant that we effectively never went out onto the ship proper to lounge outside.

We really liked having a huge common space to just hang out in - it makes it so that the kids can nap in their spaces and the adults can still hang and not have to be really quiet.

Food

On the Aqua, there is a buffet (Surfside) that serves all three meals, a food hall concept (Indulge) that serves small plates from different cuisines, a bunch of specialty restaurants available for dinner, and then the Haven has its own restaurant that serves all three meals as well. There are also the standard ‘main dining rooms’, but we didn’t go to them as we were informed that the Haven food was strictly better.

Overall, the food generally was mediocre, in our opinion. The buffet was a buffet, and the food quality reflected that. The Indulge food hall had good Indian food and surprisingly good. The specialty restaurants were generally not worth it, especially because we were staying in the Haven. The Thai food at Sukhothai (a $50 upcharge) isn’t better than our local Thai food. Hasuki ($60 upcharge) was a teppanyaki restaurant that served huge portions; the entertainment value was better than Benihana, though it was mostly a hit with an older audience (slightly racist jokes? Renditions of old hits (Country Roads, Sweet Caroline). Cagney’s Steakhouse ($60 upcharge) had decent food, but look at this sad French onion soup:

Part of the reason that Cagney’s isn’t worth it is that the Haven restaurant serves the same prime rib, lamb, and new york strip that Cagney's does, and has drastically better service. The downside is that the Haven restaurant menu doesn't change, and in a week you can pretty much order everything on the menu. Oddly, the Haven restaurant’s breakfast was good, but the lunch was much less good than dinner. We ended up mostly eating at the Haven restaurant, and also ended up reordering a dish or two over the course of seven days.

When we came home, we immediately ordered noodles, because we were pretty starved of good asian food.

On Board Amenities/Entertainment

The NCL Aqua boasts a bunch of things: shows every night, a casino that’s open whenever we’re not in port, an aqua ‘slidecoaster’, a drop slide, an arcade, a minigolf course, spa, fitness center, a kids club, and some other stuff. The variety is good, though ultimately we didn’t feel like it was that interesting, especially for kids.

• Kids club: We’ve been spoiled by Disney, but the kids club was two rooms, and they said that they didn’t split up the children by age, and so ostensibly three year olds would be playing with… twelve year olds.
• Minigolf: This was a highlight - twelve holes, each themed after a different country. The technology tracks your shots and gives you points for specific skill shots. Our kiddo loved the course and we went multiple times, and it was reasonably priced! ($5/game).
• Slides: The younger adults in the group went once and then we pretty much forgot about it.
• Glow Court: This was an enclosed AR field where you could play party games and/or various ball games - unfortunately, the crew member running it when we went was more interested in his phone and was really brusque and not very interested in explaining anything, which turned us off to it.
• Spa: Day passes were only sold while the ship was at port; otherwise, to get access to the spa you had to buy the complete package. Massages didn’t even come with spa access, surprisingly, so we did not partake.
• Shows: You can tell what the default demographic for the cruise is by the shows they had - the Aqua played a show around Prince and a show around Fleetwood Mac, neither of which was our thing. On the last day, we went to Elements, which was a combination magic, aerialist, and dance show, and that was quite decent. There were other more interactive shows like ‘Deal or No Deal’ or ‘Wheel of Fortune’ where you could, er, live out your dreams of being on those shows, I guess? As you can imagine, we did not.
• Arcade: The game zone had a lot of VR experiences and a few classics, and was cool (albeit priced extravagantly).

Ports of Call

The first day was at sea, and mostly was just wandering around and exploring the ship.

Puerto Plata

We got off the ship here but didn’t book any excursions. We really enjoyed the free lazy river and 'beach' at Taino Bay - it’s an area that was built by a couple of the cruise ship companies and has a few pools, a bunch of chairs, a lazy river, a surfing simulator, and of course bars and shopping galore. It was pretty packed when we went around noon, but we did manage to find a few chairs and floated on the lazy river and generally enjoyed a day off the ship. The drinks were surprisingly reasonable!

St Thomas, USVI

Three of us went scuba diving at USVI. Online, it was described it as a ‘cattle call’, and that’s absolutely what it felt like. One ship, scuba tanks all around, 17 certified divers that were jammed shoulder to shoulder, no amenities to speak of. It was a somewhat short 35 min first dive where we didn’t see a lot, but a more reasonable 45 min second dive around a wreck that had been broken into three parts. The water overall was a bit hazy; definitely not as clear as Hawaii.

Overall, it was a good dive - and the USVI is the only port that offered it on the ship - but it felt like it was more of a dirtbag diver experience than what you would expect to find on a cruise ship, especially given the prices they were charging.

Tortola, BVI

On the flip side, we had a really enjoyable snorkeling trip at Tortola - we took a ship out to Norman’s Island, and snorkeled off the coast by some sea caves and then more at Pirate's Bight. We saw a chill sea turtle, six sea bass, an eel…and there were beach chairs and a bar if we wanted to just lounge after the first experience. Would absolutely go on this trip again.

Great Stirrup Cay (or not)

So we got to the Great Stirrup Cay, and were ready to spend a day relaxing on the beach. The weather was beautiful… and then the captain got on the com and told us that due to the weather, it wouldn’t be safe to go, unfortunately. Instead, we spent another day sailing at sea, which was fine… but definitely a letdown, especially since the day before was a day at sea anyway.

Moreover, the disappointment of not getting to go ashore at the GSC is compounded by the fact that the Royal Caribbean island (Coco Cay) is right there and they built a pier and there were two RCL ships docked there, so it feels like it’s just cheapness on NCL’s part in not building a pier. My understanding is that NCL is building one that might open in a few months… but that obviously didn’t help us much.

To Haven or not to Haven?

For any Haven room, you have a butler (for things like food and room service requests), a room steward, and you also have access to the Haven concierges who can book just about anything (shore excursions, restaurant reservations, etc). You have access to the Haven restaurant, which I mentioned above, and then you also have priority anytime you’re getting on or off the ship (boarding, ports of calls, disembarkation). Oh, and there’s a specific Haven sundeck with loungers and an infinity pool.

Our attendant/steward, Shaikh, was unfailingly polite and worked around our pretty varied timings for when we would leave to clean the room, and made cute towel animals for the kids. Our butler, Pemmy, was generally responsive to requests - most of which were just to place a lunch or breakfast room service order or two, and once to restock the diet coke. He wasn’t perfect - he missed an order for a shaving kit that we had to re-make. Overall, the butler service was adequate but not exceptional - the fact that we had to ask him to restock certain things that we ran out of and clearly preferred, for example, is something that attentive butlers in the past have seen and automatically done without asking.

The concierge service was quite helpful; I made a restaurant reservation for the next day (when there clearly weren’t any openings in the app left), as well as for a next-day snorkeling trip, both of which they quickly accommodated. The priority access on and off the ship was nice - effectively, we never waited in any line getting on or off the ship until disembarkation, and that was all of maybe ten minutes. And we did take advantage of the Haven sundeck on the last sea day, and it was nice - we would’ve used it more if we didn’t have our own private deck with loungers and a jacuzzi.

Overall, we found the Haven experience to be worthwhile… but, perhaps as a bit of a double-edged sword, one of the major selling points is the restaurant because the quality of the food is so lackluster otherwise.

Conclusion

Overall, we enjoyed the trip. It was a lovely time to spend the time with the family, and not have to worry about cooking or cleaning, and to have different things to do each day (or more less). But ultimately, we didn't enjoy it so much that we aren’t looking at other cruise lines to see what their equivalent experience would be like; it felt that we could find a line that's better suited for what we're into (maybe younger crowd, better shore excursions, better food).