Celebrity Equinox

Celebrity Equinox is the second Solstice-class ship, delivered by Meyer Werft in July 2009 and in service by the end of that month. The class itself is described on Celebrity Solstice’s page, and the short version is that these five ships are what fixed Celebrity’s reputation. What separates Equinox from her lead sister is a pair of drydocks: she went through the Revolution program early, in 2019, and she has not yet been through the program that followed it. The practical consequence is that she is the one with the lawn.

What the 2019 refit changed

She spent May and June 2019 in the yard at Freeport in the Bahamas on a refit reported at around seventy million dollars, her share of the Celebrity Revolution, a five-hundred-million-dollar program that worked through nine ships between 2019 and 2023.

The centerpiece was The Retreat. Celebrity took the suite accommodation, which until then had been scattered, and gave it a private sundeck, its own restaurant in Luminae, and a lounge, the old Michael’s Club, redesigned and renamed the Retreat Lounge. Every stateroom was refinished, RFID locks and new wi-fi went in fleet-wide, the spa and the shops were rebuilt, the dining rooms were reworked toward Edge-class standards, and an outdoor LED screen went up over the Lawn Club. She came out of it wearing the fleet’s new hull color.

It is a substantial refresh and it is now seven years old, which is the fair way to describe her: a well-equipped 2009 ship carrying a 2019 interior.

The lawn she still has

Half an acre of real, irrigated, mown grass sits on deck fifteen between the funnels, with croquet on it. It was the Solstice class’s one genuine architectural oddity and nobody else has ever bothered to copy it.

Celebrity Solstice lost hers in a January 2026 drydock, the first of the Celebrity Renewed program, more than two hundred and fifty million dollars across the class, which replaced the grass with artificial turf and renamed the space Sunset Park. The other four ships are scheduled to follow in later years. Equinox has not had her turn yet. If the lawn is the reason you want this class, she is currently the ship to book, and that is a fact with an expiry date on it.

Where she actually sails

She is one of the few ships in the fleet that genuinely works two hemispheres. The larger share of her program is Europe out of Barcelona, with a further block turning at Civitavecchia for Rome, on runs of seven to seventeen nights through the western Mediterranean. In the austral summer she crosses to Buenos Aires for long South America loops, and Celebrity’s own listing puts those sailings as far south as Antarctic waters. Three transatlantic repositioning crossings link the two seasons, and the schedule runs to early 2028.

That shape is worth understanding before booking. The Buenos Aires sailings are the long ones, up to seventeen nights, and they are sold to a different audience than a Mediterranean week.

Who she suits

Adults and couples, mostly. The Solstice class carries 2,850 guests in a hull big enough that the corridors never feel like a mall, and the adults-only glass-roofed solarium is the best room aboard on any sailing where the weather is uncertain, which describes a South Atlantic crossing precisely. The seventeen-night South America itineraries reward people who like sea days.

She is a poor fit for families looking for the slides, go-karts and rope courses that Royal Caribbean’s ships carry, none of which she has ever had. She is also not a new ship: the bones are from 2009 and the last serious interior work was 2019, so anyone stepping across from an Edge-class hull will notice smaller bathrooms, older cabin technology and a more conventional layout. Book her for the itinerary, the solarium and, while it lasts, the grass.