At Sea with Doug Newman

Here is a nice gallery of photos by Frank Schönstedt of the interiors of AIDA’s brand new AIDAdiva, just delivered from Meyer Werft.

They’re the best photos I’ve seen so far of the new flagship of Germany’s largest cruise line. For AIDA, AIDAdiva represents the first of a new generation of ships; next year her sister AIDAbella will be delivered, followed by two more ships in 2009 and 2010. By then, this new class of ships (codenamed “Sphinx”) will represent four out of seven ships in the AIDA fleet, and a substantial majority of the company’s berths.

My personal impression is that AIDAdiva looks exactly as one would expect a new, larger AIDA ship to look. The decor is clearly an evolution of that on the company’s previous two ships, AIDAaura and AIDAvita, itself an evolution of that on the original Aida of 1996 (now AIDAcara). As with the previous AIDA ships, AIDAdiva’s interiors are bright, colorful, casual and totally in keeping with the company’s youthful, ultra-casual “club ship” concept.

For a rare English-language account of an AIDA cruise, see Bart de Boer’s AIDAcara cruise review. For more background on AIDA, see my corporate profile of the company for Cruise Critic.