| IMO | 9751509 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 168,028 GT |
| Length | 333.32 m |
| Beam | 41.4 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 4200 |
| Builder | Meyer Werft |
| Hull number | S.707 |
| Launched | 2018 |
| Maiden voyage | 2018 |
| Operator | Norwegian Cruise Line |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Norwegian Bliss is a Breakaway Plus-class cruise ship built by Meyer Werft for Norwegian Cruise Line and delivered in April 2018. She is the third of the four Breakaway Plus ships — after Norwegian Escape and Norwegian Joy and before Norwegian Encore — and at 168,028 GT she was, on delivery, among the largest ships in the Norwegian fleet. Her design brief set her apart from her sisters: she was tailored for Alaska, with energy-efficiency measures intended to meet that state's environmental regulations and with the largest observation lounge Norwegian had yet built, arranged for watching glaciers and coastline rather than ocean horizons.
The name itself has a small history. It was chosen in 2013, through a public naming contest, for the second Breakaway Plus hull — the ship that in the event was completed as Norwegian Joy for the Chinese market — and was then reassigned to this ship, the third of the class. She entered service in spring 2018, was christened in Seattle, and has been a Norwegian ship, under her original name, throughout her career.
Key specifications
The dataset records Norwegian Bliss at 168,028 GT, 333.32 m long and 41.4 m in beam, with a maximum passenger capacity of 4,200 and no speed or crew figure in the frozen row. Her ship article gives the same tonnage, a length of 333 m and beam of 41 m, twenty decks, a cruising speed of 22.5 knots, a double-occupancy capacity of 4,002 passengers and a crew of about 1,700. The dataset's 4,200 sits between the published double-occupancy and maximum figures and is reproduced in the spec box as the dataset's value. Installed power comes from five MAN B&W engines, two 14V48/60CR and three 12V48/60CR units, and her hull carries artwork by the marine-life artist Wyland, whose whale imagery became the ship's visual signature and an apt emblem for a ship designed around Alaskan wildlife coasts.
Design and construction
Norwegian Bliss was ordered in July 2014 and built at Meyer Werft's Papenburg yard in Germany as hull S.707. Construction began in October 2016. As a Papenburg ship she was built inside the yard's covered building dock and floated out on 17 February 2018, then conveyed down the River Ems to the sea for trials and fitting out, the river passage being the signature logistical operation of every large Meyer Werft delivery. She was completed on 15 March 2018 and delivered to Norwegian on 21 April 2018, entering service the same day with her positioning voyages.
The Breakaway Plus design enlarges the original Breakaway class by roughly 17,000 GT, and Bliss applies that enlarged platform to scenery. The Waterfront, the class's quarter-mile open promenade of bars and restaurants, is retained; but the ship's defining space is the Observation Lounge, a vast, glass-fronted lounge across the forward superstructure, designed so that the ship's best vantage point is a public room rather than a suite privilege. Norwegian promoted the ship on exactly that basis: a vessel whose architecture is organised around looking at the coast it sails past.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The ship was christened at Seattle on 30 May 2018 by her godfather, the radio presenter Elvis Duran — an unusual choice of a male godparent, and one Norwegian used to underline the ship's American-market identity. Her maiden voyage followed on 2 June 2018, at the opening of the Alaska season for which she had been designed; the dataset's maiden voyage field gives the year, 2018. She is registered at Nassau in the Bahamas, the standard registry for Norwegian's fleet.
The naming sequence of the class is worth recording, because it explains the ship's name. When Norwegian ordered its first two Breakaway Plus ships, it ran an online contest in September 2013 to name them; the winning names were Norwegian Escape and Norwegian Bliss. The second hull was subsequently reassigned to the Chinese market, renamed Norwegian Joy in 2015–16, and the Bliss name passed to the third ship — this one — which is why a name chosen in 2013 first went to sea in 2018.
Career by operator
Norwegian Bliss has operated for Norwegian Cruise Line, within Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, for her entire career, under one name and one operator.
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2018–present | Norwegian Bliss | Norwegian Cruise Line |
Her service pattern was set by her design: built for Alaska, delivered in time for the northern summer, and employed across Norwegian's wider North American programme outside that season. Fleet listings consulted for this guide record a refurbishment in 2025, consistent with the roughly seven-year hotel-refresh cycle of the Breakaway Plus class, each of whose ships is listed as refurbished between 2022 and 2025.
Onboard character
Two features define Norwegian Bliss as a design. The first is the Observation Lounge already described: a calm, forward-facing, window-walled room of a scale no earlier Norwegian ship had attempted, which recast the Alaskan scenic cruise — previously something watched from open decks or balcony cabins — as an indoor, all-weather experience. The second is at the opposite pole of temperament: the Bliss Speedway, a two-level go-kart racetrack on the top decks, which Norwegian had introduced on Norwegian Joy and repeated here, alongside laser tag and the multi-slide water park carried over from the class. The juxtaposition is the Breakaway Plus character in one ship — contemplative scenery at the bow, fairground machinery at the stern.
Around those signatures sits the mature form of Norwegian's Freestyle concept: a dozen and a half places to eat with no fixed dining sittings, The Haven suite enclave with its own restaurant and lounge, studio cabins for solo travellers, and the 678 Ocean Place entertainment core linking theatre, casino and dining decks. Hull art by Wyland — humpback whales across the bow — completes an identity deliberately unlike the abstract liveries of her earlier sisters.
Major refits and incidents
No structural refit has been applied to Norwegian Bliss: the Breakaway Plus ships were built at a size and specification that has required refurbishment rather than reconstruction, and secondary fleet listings record a hotel refurbishment in 2025. No major incident involving the ship was identified in the sources consulted for this guide; her record in those sources is one of continuous commercial service since April 2018. Where incident databases list routine operational events for ships of her size and age, none rose to the level documented in her ship article or in the class sources used here, and none is asserted.
Sister ships and class
The Breakaway Plus class comprises four Meyer Werft ships: Norwegian Escape (2015, 165,300 GT, retaining more features of the original Breakaway design), Norwegian Joy (2017, built for China and extensively refitted in 2019 for the American market), Norwegian Bliss (2018) and Norwegian Encore (2019, the largest of the four at 169,116 GT). The two original Breakaway-class ships, Norwegian Breakaway and Norwegian Getaway (2013–14, 145,655 GT), are their smaller predecessors. The four Plus ships are near-identical in hull and machinery, differentiated chiefly by market tailoring — China's casinos and shopping on Joy as built, Alaska's observation spaces on Bliss, the enlarged racetrack and gallery on Encore.
Fate and where she is now
Norwegian Bliss remains in active service with Norwegian Cruise Line, her dataset status active and fate operating, under her original name and Bahamian registry. No sale, transfer or withdrawal has been announced in the sources used for this guide. At well under a decade old, she is in the first phase of the long service life typical of ships of her class, three of whose four members remain, like her, core units of Norwegian's fleet.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Bliss, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakaway-class_cruise_ship