Celebrity Cruises Orders Second Ship

[JoeyandDavid]

Celebrity Cruises has exercised its option to order a second 118,000 gross-registered-ton ship today, reaffirming its commitment to innovative products and high guest satisfaction. German shipbuilder Meyer Werft will build the new tonnage, with delivery of the first ship planned for Fall 2008 and the second ship in Summer 2009. Celebrity also announced names of both new ships.

The first new ship will be called Celebrity Solstice, and the second ship will be named Celebrity Equinox. The new series of ships will be known as the Solstice class. Terms for the second Solstice-class vessel are substantially the same as those of the first ship.

Both new ships will be 2,850-guest vessels measuring 1,033 feet in length and 121 feet in width. Their added size will allow Celebrity to offer larger standard staterooms, a higher percentage of balconies and an exceptional range of guest-inspired services and amenities.

"The Solstice-class ships accelerate the tremendous growth and excitement that continues to build with this brand," said Richard D. Fain, chairman and CEO of parent company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. "We owe a lot of our inspiration to guests and travel partners, and we think they will be enormously pleased with this collaboration. We also thank our shipbuilding partner, Meyer Werft, for working with us to produce so many of our beautiful ships."

"Meyer Werft is proud to be a part of Celebrity Cruises' continued growth," said Meyer Werft Managing Partner Bernard Meyer. "These new ships demonstrate Celebrity's tradition of breakthrough design and leading innovations."

For more information, visit the Celebrity web site at http://www.celebrity.com.<]

[eagleforest]

Very nice I think RCI will keep building smaller ships for Celebrity. And then use the cattle ships for RC.

[JoeyandDavid]

Interesting observation

[Mebert]

I know there are bigger ships now, but isn't 118,000 gross registered tons pretty big.

[eagleforest]

Very nice I think RCI will keep building smaller ships for Celebrity.  And then use the cattle ships for RC.

I know there are bigger ships now, but isn't 118,000 gross registered tons pretty big.

Its nearly Voyager class but its just bigger than Radiance class.

Yet its not Genesis class.

I think RC will continue to go with the monster ships and let Celebrity work on the 1/2 size ships. More elite service.

[Shari2]

Since Celebrity is my favorite line, I would love to see some new ships. I was hoping they wouldn't be any larger than the Millennium class ships, but for bigger staterooms, I just might check out the new ships. :grin:

Hope they have the pod problem resolved with the new ships. :grin:

[Dan]

I would describe these as closer to Voyager class, not Radiance class. These are still 30k tons bigger than the Radiance/Millenium classes, and only 20k less than Voyager. In perspective, Celebrity's smallest ship, Zenith, is 47k tons. When it debuts, the Solstice will be longer than any other cruise ship out there, except for the Queen Mary 2. I would suspect the main difference in tonnage is from being narrower than Voyager, and possibly one less deck of cabins. Width is not something people generally pay attention to. This will still be a large ship.

I was amused last week on another board when discussing the Genesis ship somebody said they'd prefer to stick to the smaller ships like Valor (110k tons) LOL

[Joanandjoe]

This isn't surprisong, but it's certainly a bad trend. Once RCCL ordered one 2,885 PAX monster, with an option for a second, those of us who enjoy Celebrity knew that the days of the medium size ship were fading. A pity, in our opinion, and not good news.