Originally Posted by
lkrt
Based on the few reports and photos today, it looks like AY has definitely upped their game!
Yes, I was hanging on the door when it finally opened at 12:30, so I was one of the very first guests in the lounge:
Still builders and cleaners at work with the fine tuning..
Definitely they upped their game, havn´t seen anything in Europe like it:
First a very nice and spacious bar area, with top shelf liquor like Hendrick´s, and rose champagne (same brand though...).
Also innovative offerings like champagne with water melon foam. but maybe that was for today only.
After that some quite private "shell chairs" at the right hand wall.
In the centre, round dining room tables offering a la carte meals, quite limited offerings tough, one meat, one fish and one vegetarian + two fruit desserts.
At the back, a buffé with quite some selection of hot and cold stuff, included hand peeled shrimps, soups, salmon pork, fish etc..
Unfortunately, AY seems to go over the top with the slow cooking. Today I first tried some slow cooked pork from the buffé, then ordered the beef cheek from the a la carte meny, only to be served a slow cooked beef neck onboard... :-(
I don´t eat fish, but it looked like the same issue there.
Then a round dessert table. It looked very nice at first, but at a closer inspection it only offered the similar small bites that´s been offered at the two other AY lounges for quite some time now.
However the cheese offerings looked much better than before.
To the left of the buffé there was a huge lounge area behind a long dark curtain, with some view over the piers. Looked nice and relaxed with cosy laidback chairs.
And to the left of the entrance where the bathrooms etc. A new thing here was that there were separate changing/shower areas for gents and ladies.
But the sauna was still shared. By some strange reason, the ladies hadn´t felt comfortable with showering in the open outside the old sauna I was told...
There should also be some relax rooms in this area, but I had no time to visit those. Hopefully, they will now offer flat beds instead of the extremely curved ones in the old premium lounge.
To sum it up, a very nice lounge that can compete with almost anything I´ve seen.
But they should really make sure the a la carte offerings vary more from the buffé + offer more sophisticated desserts.
(Sorry for no pics, I was a bit short of time, and I´m sure the net will be flooded with nice pics of the faciilities anyway...)