New to cruise? Piero Lissoni cushions the culture shock onboard the Norwegian Luna

At some point during the night, the Norwegian Luna glides away from the NCL terminal on Dodge Island, the Port of Miami, out through Government cut and South Pointe Passage and into the Atlantic. This is the inaugural cruise of NCL’s newest ship and the latest in the American cruise company’s Prima Class of luxury liners.

Founded in Norway in 1966, Norwegian Cruise Line was a pioneer. In the late 70s, NCL bought SS France, the last of the great Trans-Atlantic liners, and converted her into the Norway, often cited as the progenitor of the modern supersized cruise ship.

These days, even bigger is better. Royal Caribbean's Icon Class (Icon of the Seas and Star of the Seas), both weigh in at 248,663 gross tonnes, with a typical passenger capacity of 5,610 across their 2,800 staterooms. A crew of 2,350 is on hand. Like its sister ship, Norwegian Aqua, Norwegian Luna is 1,056 feet long, has a crew of 1,500 and a guest capacity of 3,565. Topping the scales at 156,000 gross tonnes, it is, like many modern liners, a floating temple of leisure beloved by initiates but ill-perceived and wilfully misunderstood by the unfaithful.

So what, if anything, is unique about this ocean-going behemoth, the joint 44th largest liner on the planet? For a few decades now, taking a cruise is the journalistic equivalent of a big game hunt, the type where a tethered goat lures a tiger into point blank range.

The cruise industry makes for an easy trophy, a target that can safely be peppered with snark, covering everything from design, décor, food, fashion, aspiration, engagement, and environment; the more viscerally engaged the critic, the more heartily they will dine.

As with so many consumption-based experiences, maximisation is the name of the game, not restraint. On the face of it, cruise culture is aspiration stripped back to its purest form, the self-contained proximity ensuring that everyone on board is clear-eyed about the hierarchies of class and price.

Like many cruise lines, NCL offers a dizzying array of packages, cabins, upgrades and add-ons. There are varying levels of accommodation, from window-less cabins to generous multi-room suites, all priced accordingly.

For these three days, the only hierarchies are professional; the media classes versus the company’s global ‘travel partners’, the agencies and bookers responsible for selling the cabins out voyage after voyage. That also means Luna is at about one-third capacity, adding a rare spaciousness to the mass-market cruise experience.

There’s still a packed schedule for those eager to experience the liner’s many facilities – especially helpful if you’ll be upselling future customers on the dining or entertainment offerings. Many of the media guests focus almost exclusively on the cruise market, creating in-depth content exploring every nook and cranny of the cabins, buffets, cafés, decks and dining experiences. This serves as both vital promotional material for the cruise line and essential ammunition for the bargain-hunting punter.

For our purposes, the most important part of the ship is its most exclusive area; The Haven. This innovative ‘ship within a ship’, to use NCL’s coinage, is akin to a boutique hotel at sea, several decks of cabins, lounges, decks and a restaurant accessed by key card and deliberately separate from the rest of the ship. Overseen by Italian design luminary Piero Lissoni, The Haven can also be found aboard the Aqua, providing NCL with a clear luxury offering that goes above and beyond the already high standards of the industry.

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The Haven aboard Norwegian Luna

The Haven aboard Norwegian Luna

The Haven aboard Norwegian Luna

The Haven aboard Norwegian Luna

Lissoni brings a welcome touch of Art Deco-infused glamour to the ship, deliberately evoking the grand liners of the 20s and 30s, with a touch of superyacht style thrown in. On this spanking new ship, the smell of newly oiled teak on the upper decks is certainly more reminiscent of Monaco than Miami, and this lightly populated short cruise makes the open lounges, with its bar, library, and discrete seating areas, all the more special.

It is an undeniably pleasant place to be but inadvertently shines a light on the rest of the ship, which adheres to the traditional multi-themed, mix-and-match aesthetic of resort architecture.

It’s a haven in more ways than one. Up on these aft decks, with their Jacuzzis, infinity pool and beach club-style cabanas, the PA-powered merriment of the rest of the ship rarely intervenes. There is a lot of it to avoid.

NCL hasn’t shied from the floating theme park trend that dominates 21st century cruise design, from the ‘Aqua Slidecoaster’ that winds around the upper decks, to water slides that slither down the sides like the tentacles of a great sea monster striving to pull this polychromatic machine down into the depths, or the on-board arcade, digital sports complex, deck games, theatre, spa, gym, and multiple dining outlets. In NCL’s words, this plethora of options helps guests ‘curate their vacations exactly how they want.’

The economics of cruise culture

Cruises are a fascinating economic indicator. After the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic, many commentators predicted the industry was heading for the doldrums, but the past few years have seen unprecedented profits and investment. Luna is one of six Prima class ships ordered by NCL, each costing around $850 million.

Built at Italy’s Fincantieri shipyard, this enormous outlay will typically be paid back over a couple of decades, usually at relatively favourable rates. Each ship therefore has a very clear earnings target, with a captive audience who must be carefully cajoled into spending a little more than they intended. Get it right, and a ship like this can be fully paid off in just six years.

That’s why the Luna, in common with all vessels of this scale, has a generous-sized casino. It’s why NCL, in common with many other key players, has its own ‘private islands’ for exclusive use of its guests, ensuring that not a single dollar gets spent outside of the company’s auspices.

Outside of family-friendly and themed cruises – which include everything from musical genres to theatrical shows, Star Trek, competitive bridge, knitting and crafting, and even naturism, there is also the ‘lifestyle cruise’, another adult-focused sub-genre, for which I encourage you to do your own research.

What’s clear is that the days of a cruise ship being a unified aesthetic experience have long disappeared, certainly at this scale. When not disorientated by the Luna’s baffling array of patterned carpets, you can ping-pong between 17 restaurants, a number of different shows (including showy tributes to the Eagles and Elton John) and any number of activities above and below decks. All soundtracked by the incessant 132bpm pish pish pish of soothing poolside beats.

On the main deck, two muscly middle-aged guys are having a poolside burpee showdown, encouraged over the PA system by an onboard fitness instructor and accompanied by the ubiquitous soundtrack at sea. It's not The White Lotus. The beige Lotus, maybe, a world of riotous patterns, necessarily heavy furniture, production-line abstract art and relentless selfie-taking.

Apart from the undeniable wellness benefits of staring at the sea, it appears that no-one goes on a cruise for a quiet life. Instead, you are at the heart of the Entertainment-Industrial Complex and no amount of spas or private lounges can disguise this fact. When the sober surroundings of The Haven feel like a genuine escape, perhaps the cruise life is not for you.

Land ahoy!

That uncertain feeling is only exacerbated when Luna docks at Great Stirrup Cay, once the home of pirates and oil men, but now the exclusive preserve of NCL's guests. This tropical wonderland is billed as an extension of the ship itself.

Private islands get a justifiably bad rap these days. What's especially irksome about the cruise industry land grab is the way in which nature can be teased, primped and reshaped in a particular image, from dredging out docks to building massive piers, beach clubs and water parks.

NCL was one of the pioneers of this new phase of cruising, acquiring Great Stirrup Cay in 1977. It was slow to develop the island, however, allowing rivals to get ahead in this weaponised culture of attraction building. Today, the low-lying atoll is busy with construction, with a new pier and waterpark being readied for the summer season. The island sits slap bang next to CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's island. On the next cay over you can swim with pigs.

Cruising is not and could never be considered a sustainable option. If you've ever had a pang of guilt for only using a fluffy white hotel towel only once before it's whisked away and laundered, imagine how it feels at sea, where the concept of finite resources is blindingly obvious. And yet there are no visible privations, thanks to the ship's big diesel engines that literally never stop, the immaculately turned out and extremely friendly crew, and the copious amounts of everything - especially alcohol - available at every turn.

Back on the island, the flora is still in its infancy, often paired aggressively with AstroTurf, whilst the fauna is keeping itself scarce (apart from the occasional bemused big lizard). The whole cay smells faintly of grilled meat, while the canned music is punctuated every thirty seconds by a screaming, bellowing punter whizzing overhead on a zipline.

Norwegian Luna will start its life in the Caribbean, shuttling between Miami, Great Stirrup Cay and NCL’s other island, Harvest Caye in Belize. Like the ship itself, the island has an adults-only Vibe Club alongside more child-friendly beaches, while a more exclusive and spacious Silver Cove club offers a quieter (no zip lines), more refined experience courtesy of its light sprinkling of (pricey) boxy grey air-conditioned cabanas and ubiquitous blue loungers. The vibes are inescapably Truman Show.

Size isn't everything

As someone who is 'new to cruise', it was faintly disconcerting to realise that almost all the other attendees present their cruise tally like a proud totem. Someone was rumoured to have done 200. Is this an addictive activity? Perhaps the relentless focus on novelty drives repeated visits. Unlike a brick-and-mortar hotel, where longevity can impart class and heritage, a cruise liner exists in a harsh environment and has a correspondingly finite lifespan.

Hierarchy is therefore defined by newness and, to a certain extent, scale. The latter is slowly shifting as traditional hotel operators – the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton among them – look to break into the industry with a smaller footprint and more tailored, restrained approach.

The growth of ‘cruise yachts’ and explorer cruises are also offering more curated, unusual alternatives to the pile ‘em high approach of Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Disney, Virgin, NCL, etc. At the same time, this emerging nostalgia for smaller, more intimate cruises is being offset by growth in China and the Middle East (although the latter is obviously suffering new geopolitical setbacks).

The Haven is a rare slice of aesthetic harmony in a realm of deliberate disorder - these ships are simply too big for design consistency. Yet although it offers a convincing retreat from the visual and cultural chaos of cruise culture – thanks to the effortless Lissoni touch – The Haven is also unavoidably yoked to it.

Standing on an empty deck at sunset, looking out across the empty Atlantic with the stars just starting to emerge, is a spellbinding experience. That it requires over 150,000 tonnes of machinery and Herculean human effort to achieve feels like the antithesis of magic.

Norwegian Luna, more information on sailings at NCL.com, @NorwegianCruiseLine, Lissoniandpartners.com, @PieroLissoni