Celebrity Flora

Celebrity Flora is the opposite of every other ship in this catalog, and deliberately so. She carries one hundred guests. She sails one destination. She was designed for it from a blank sheet rather than adapted to it, which is rare enough in this business to be the whole story.

How she was built

Shipyard De Hoop built her at Lobith in the Netherlands; she launched in January 2019, was christened that June and began work at the end of the same month. Celebrity’s claim for her is that she is the first ship designed and built specifically for the Galápagos, and the design decisions follow from it rather than from the rest of the fleet. The bow shape is reckoned to cut fuel consumption by about fifteen percent against the expedition ships that preceded her, solar panels supplement the electrical load, and the ship is sized to what the National Park will license rather than to what a yard could deliver.

What makes her unusual

She does not anchor. Flora holds her position over the sea floor using dynamic positioning, GPS and thrusters, rather than dropping an anchor onto it. In an archipelago where the sea bed is the thing being protected, that is the reason the design exists.

The hull is turned outward. All fifty accommodations are suites, facing the sea through floor-to-ceiling glass, and the public spaces are arranged so you are looking at the Galápagos rather than at the ship. There is no casino, no theater and no promenade, because none of those are what anybody is here for. The two dining rooms are the Seaside Restaurant, which seats the whole ship, and the Ocean Grill, which handles breakfast and lunch and the occasional barbecue on deck.

You can sleep on the roof. Cabanas on the top deck take up to four guests a night, with dinner around a fire pit, a naturalist to point out what is overhead, and breakfast where you wake up.

Nearly everything is included. Zodiac landings, snorkeling gear, wetsuits, the naturalist team, drinks, gratuities and the shore program. The fare is not comparable to a Caribbean week and should not be read as one.

Where she actually sails

Baltra, and only Baltra. She runs year-round round trips from the island’s airstrip on a seven-night cycle, alternating an inner and an outer loop so that two consecutive weeks do not repeat a landing; on this site she also appears at ten to sixteen nights, which is the same sailing with Quito or a mainland extension bolted to either end. The route within each week is not Celebrity’s to choose, the National Park licenses it.

Who she suits

Anyone for whom the wildlife is the point. The days are structured (two guided excursions, a briefing each evening), and the pace is set by that licensed itinerary rather than by you.

Not the ship for a passenger who wants to be entertained. There is a lounge, a small pool, an excellent kitchen, eighty crew and ninety-nine other guests. That is the ship.