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Royal Caribbean's Celebrity Cruises is amping up its fleet with its largest ship to date, which the cruise line will unveil in Europe next April before the ship makes its way to the Florida Everglades.
The Celebrity Beyond will offer trips throughout southern Europe starting in April of 2022 before it reaches Florida, where guests will depart for cruises throughout the Caribbean, in November of 2022.
"Celebrity Cruises has always been an innovator at sea, and now we have challenged the status quo with a vessel that goes beyond expectations, beyond imagination," Celebrity Cruises President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said in a Wednesday statement.
She continued: "Celebrity Beyond shatters any and every preconceived notion of the cruising experience. This exquisite ship offers a journey at the intersection of elegance and approachability filled with what’s important to our guests today: forward-thinking design, culinary excellence, unparalleled well-being and incomparable service."
The massive ship comes in at 1,037 feet long, weighing 140,600 gross tons. The Celebrity Beyond will offer 1,646 staterooms, accomodating 3,260 guests, compared to the other Edge Series ships' 1,467 staterooms.
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The new ship will include an exclusive resort for suite guests; two-story villas with "plunge pools"; staterooms with "infinite verandas"; an expanded rooftop garden and resort deck; a multi-terraced bar and the cruise line's famous "Magic Carpet" feature, a floating lounge platform stationed on the side of the ship that can scale and down the ship, reaching heights of 13 stories above sea level, according to a press release.
The main open deck will be 40 times larger than previous Edge Series ships. The deck will feature two floating pools that hang six-and-a-half feet over the edge of the ship.
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"With Celebrity Beyond, we saw an opportunity to take the extraordinary features of Celebrity Edge - like the focus on the connection with the ocean and the grand spaces - and really amplify them," Richard Fain, chairman of Royal Caribbean Group, said in a Wednesday statement. "We focused on providing more openness, height and spaciousness throughout the ship’s most popular spaces. The end result is a next-generation ship that embodies the intersection of architecture and design."
Caribbean trips start around $2,300 per person plus a $100 security deposit; European trips start at about $4,500 plus a security deposit of $450.
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This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a letter to cruise companies that it will let ships resume travel by mid-July without going through practice excursions if 98% of the crew and 95% of passengers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The agency also promised a quick review of plans for practice voyages – five days instead of 60 – and changes in testing for fully vaccinated people.
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The CDC had previously set conditions that the cruise industry said effectively prevented it from sailing to U.S. ports while the Caribbean and parts of Europe were opened to cruising. U.S. cruises have been shut down by the pandemic since March 2020.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.