| IMO | 9221554 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 42,289 GT |
| Length | 202.85 m |
| Beam | 28.1 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 572 |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 1074 |
| Service speed | 20.0 knots |
| Builder | Meyer Wismar |
| Hull number | 003 |
| Launched | 2002 |
| Maiden voyage | 2002 |
| Operator | AIDA Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Blue Dream Melody; Avitak ; sold to an unknown owner |
Overview
Blue Dream Melody is the former AIDAvita, the second ship built for AIDA Cruises and for twenty years a fixture of the German market, which was sold out of the Carnival fleet after the pandemic and re-emerged in 2024 as a cruise ship for the Chinese operator Blue Dream International Cruise. Her story is one of the clearest illustrations of the great post-pandemic reshuffle of the world fleet, in which sound, mid-sized European ships of the early 2000s were bought — sometimes through intermediate owners and long lay-ups — for the growing Chinese domestic market.
The dataset row for this ship needs careful handling, and its problems are logged in the batch notes. It still lists her operator as AIDA Cruises, which ceased to operate her in 2022; her names list omits AIDAvita, the name she carried from 2002 to 2023, and contains a garbled fragment, "sold to an unknown owner," in place of a name history; and the builder is given as "Meyer Wismar," whereas her own article names the Wismar yard as Aker MTW — the yard that later passed through the MV Werften and Meyer orbit. The verified identity is the one her IMO number fixes: hull 003 from Wismar, launched in 2001 and completed in 2002 as AIDAvita, renamed Avitak in 2023 and Blue Dream Melody in 2024.
Key specifications
The dataset records 42,289 GT, a length of 202.85 metres, a beam of 28.1 metres, a maximum capacity of 1,266 and a speed of 20.0 knots. Her register data, summarised by Wikipedia from DNV, confirms the tonnage, length and capacity, gives a crew of 426, 10 decks, installed power of 18,800 kW with two diesel-electric motors, and a speed of 21 knots. The beam figure deserves a note: Wikipedia's infobox gives 35.5 metres, while the dataset's 28.1 metres matches the hull breadth given by detailed ship histories of the vessel — 35.5 metres is best understood as a maximum breadth over the bridge wings, and 28.1 metres as the moulded hull beam. Her build cost was reported at $350 million.
At a little over 42,000 GT she was, with her sister, the smallest tonnage in the modern AIDA fleet — a fact that shaped both her later AIDA employment on longer itineraries and Carnival's decision not to return her to service after 2020.
Design and construction
She was built at Wismar, Germany, by Aker MTW — the yard the dataset lists in its later Meyer Wismar form — as yard number 003. Her keel was laid on 21 November 2000 and she was launched on 15 November 2001 (one detailed history gives 15 September 2001 for the float-out ), with completion on 30 April 2002. The dataset's launched year of 2002 is thus her completion year rather than her launch year, a point logged in the batch notes.
She and her sister AIDAaura were enlarged developments of the original Aida "club ship" concept that had launched the AIDA brand in 1996: at just over 42,000 tons they were somewhat larger than the 38,500-ton original, kept her hull form and her famous face — the smiling mouth, eyes and eye-shadow painted on the bow of every AIDA ship — and were ordered through the P&O/Arkona ownership structure of the period, which is why the ship was first registered in London before passing, after the Carnival–P&O Princess merger of 2003, to Italian registry at Genoa.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was named AIDAvita at Warnemünde on 4 May 2002 by her godmother Doris Schröder-Köpf, wife of the then German Chancellor, at a ceremony accompanied by contemporary pop acts — a very public christening for the young brand's second club ship. "Vita" — life — followed the brand's short, Latin-flavoured naming pattern begun by AIDAcara and AIDAvita's own sister AIDAaura. She entered service in May 2002 with short Baltic cruises.
The name AIDAvita survived until 2023. Renamed Avitak by her intermediate owners after the sale out of AIDA — the old name folded almost anagrammatically into the new — she took her present name, Blue Dream Melody, on her sale for Chinese service in January 2024, joining Blue Dream's first ship, Blue Dream Star, in a fleet named for the brand rather than for any feature of the ships themselves.
Career by operator
| Name | Operator | Period |
|---|---|---|
| AIDAvita | AIDA Cruises | 2002–2022 (out of service from 2020) |
| Avitak | Beta Marine Ltd. (owner; laid up, no cruise operator) | 2023–2024 |
| Blue Dream Melody | Blue Dream Cruises (Blue Dream International Cruise) | 2024–present |
Her AIDA career lasted two decades, increasingly spent, as larger tonnage arrived, on the longer programmes suited to her size. She never returned to service after the pandemic shutdown: she was laid up at Tallinn, Estonia, from November 2021, and in June 2022 AIDA announced that she would not return and had been sold to an undisclosed buyer. The buyer proved to be Turkish interests — Beta Marine Ltd., with Istanbul-based management — and as Avitak she remained laid up at Tallinn through 2023. In January 2024 she was sold to China Development Bank Financial Leasing for lease to Shanghai-based Blue Dream International Cruise, renamed Blue Dream Melody, and sailed for China, arriving in March 2024 for refurbishment before entering Chinese service.
Onboard character
AIDAvita's character was defined by the club ship idea: a ship run like a holiday club — informal, activity-led, with open-seating dining and buffets rather than formal restaurants — built into Vita and Aura more fully than into any later, larger AIDA ship. Her public spaces were those of the early-2000s AIDA template: a central theatre, bars and restaurants, spa and fitness areas, a cinema and a library, across a ship small enough that all 1,266 guests used the same rooms.
Her exterior was her other signature. The AIDA face — red lips at the bow, eyes and sweeping eye-shadow along the hull — was created for the original Aida and applied to Vita and Aura as her direct heirs; photographs of Blue Dream Melody at Tallinn in January 2024 show her still wearing the AIDA hull art under her new name, a reminder that a ship's livery can outlast the brand that painted it.
Major refits and incidents
No major casualty is recorded in her career in the sources consulted. Her significant work periods were conversions between lives rather than repairs: her AIDA-era refurbishments, of which a 2017 refit is reported in fleet summaries, and the refurbishment in China in early 2024 that prepared her for Blue Dream service after nearly four years out of operation — first in pandemic lay-up, then at Tallinn as Avitak.
One later event belongs in the incident record, hedged as the sources require. Wikipedia, citing Ships Monthly (May 2026), reports that in December 2025 the ship was impounded at Beihai over unpaid fuel bills. CruiseMapper's fleet summary further reports that Blue Dream Cruises suspended operations in January 2026 and that a rename to Astoria Nova for a Russian Far East operator was announced. This guide retains her dataset status of active and her name Blue Dream Melody, and flags both reports rather than adopting them.
Sister ships and class
Her only sister is AIDAaura, built at the same Wismar yard as hull 004 and completed in 2003, identical in tonnage and dimensions. The pair were the second generation of the AIDA club ship, developed from the smaller AIDAcara. AIDAaura followed a parallel path — retired by AIDA in 2023 as the fleet's oldest ship — and now sails as Celestyal Discovery, so both Wismar sisters found second careers with smaller operators after AIDA, a pattern common to the early-2000s mid-sized fleet.
Fate and where she is now
Her dataset fate line — "Originally, the AIDAvita, formerly: Avitak; sold to an unknown owner" — is the frozen record of a ship in transit between owners, and it is out of date in the way the batch notes describe. The verified position is that she left AIDA in 2022, lay at Tallinn as Avitak under Beta Marine ownership, and in 2024 became Blue Dream Melody for Blue Dream International Cruise in China, entering service there after refurbishment. Reports of a December 2025 impoundment at Beihai and of a possible further sale and renaming are flagged above as unverified; on the evidence of her own article she remains, formally, Blue Dream Melody, in service — a 2002 Wismar club ship on her third career, in her third market.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dream_Melody, https://www.cruisemapper.com/ships/Blue-Dream-Melody-656?tab=wiki, https://www.doverferryphotosforums.co.uk/mv-aidavita-past-present/, http://www.castlesoftheseas.nl/aidavita.html, https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/ship-operations/aidavita-will-not-be-returning-to-service-for-aida-cruises