Celebrity Solstice

Celebrity Solstice entered service in November 2008 as the lead ship of the class that fixed what Celebrity is. Four sisters followed (Equinox, Eclipse, Silhouette and Reflection), and the layout the five of them share is still the one the line’s newer Edge-class hulls are measured against. She is now eighteen years old, which is the honest starting point for anything said about her: a mature, thoroughly proven ship, not a new one.

The lawn

Her one genuine innovation was putting a half-acre of living grass on deck fifteen. Not carpet and not turf, real lawn, irrigated and mown at sea, with croquet on it. Nobody had done it before, and for seventeen years it was the reason people could pick Solstice out of a fleet.

It is gone. The 2026 drydock replaced the grass with artificial turf and renamed the space Sunset Park, adding cabanas, shaded seating, lawn games, a casual cafe and an expanded Sunset Bar. The glassblowing studio that sat on the same deck went with it, run with the Corning Museum of Glass from 2008 until that partnership ended in 2018, and by Hollywood Hot Glass after. Both were expensive oddities and both were what made her interesting; a booking made for the grass should be made knowing the grass is now plastic.

What the 2026 refit did and did not change

She was at Seatrium’s yard in Singapore from January 16 to March 2, 2026, a 45-day drydock, the first of a $250 million program that will work through all five Solstice-class ships. It added Fine Cut Steakhouse in place of Tuscan Grille, an Italian room called Trattoria Rossa, a cabaret lounge called the Boulevard Lounge, a barcade called The Parlor, 54 new cabins, and new soft furnishings in all the existing ones.

The 54 cabins came out of somewhere. The netted sports court and the open-air walking track on deck fifteen are gone, and so is the dedicated teen room. Nor did the refit rebuild the ship: the layout below deck fourteen is unchanged, and the hull’s bones are eighteen years old. It is a substantial refresh of the surfaces, and the difference is visible if you go looking for it.

What was always good, and still is

The solarium (adults-only, glass-roofed, with a lap pool) is the reason she works in Alaska, where the open decks are unusable half the time. The atrium, Murano, Sushi on Five, Blu for AquaClass guests and Luminae for suites all survive. So does the thing the class is quietly best at: a 121,000-ton ship that carries 2,850 people without the corridors feeling like a shopping center.

Who she suits

Adults and couples doing Alaska, which is most of what she does; she runs the one-way Gulf sailings between Vancouver and Seward through the summer, many of them sold with a Denali land tour attached. Either side of the season she crosses the Pacific and works Asia and Australia, turning at Tokyo and Singapore, with the occasional Hawaii crossing in between.

Less suited to families wanting waterslides and go-karts, which she has never had and now never will; and to anyone whose picture of her is the lawn.