Photo Tour of the Refurbished Celebrity Summit

When a cruise line builds a new class of ships, particularly one that is innovative and has all sorts of new features, one of the consequences is that its existing fleet pales by comparison.  The existing ships may still be seaworthy and capable of providing a good cruise experience but the public perceives them as less attractive than their new fleetmates.

            Thus, when Celebrity Cruises brought out the Celebrity Solstice, the first ship in a new innovative five ship class, and that ship was acclaimed by both critics and passengers alike, it quickly announced that it would be spending $140 million to upgrade its four existing Millennium class ships.  Those ships were the workhorses of the Celebrity fleet and still had plenty of life left in them.  The idea was to transplant some of the popular features of the Solstice into the four Millenniums and thus keep them representative of the Celebrity brand.

            It would have been disruptive and difficult to find the shipyard space to refurbish all of the ships at once.  Therefore, the Solstization process, as Celebrity calls it, was to be spread out over several years.  The process began with Celebrity Constellation in 2010.  However, each time Celebrity has done one of these refurbishments, it has come up with new ideas for enhancing the Millenniums.  As a result, when all of her sister ships have been Solsticized, Constellation will have to return to the shipyard for another round of enhancements.

            Celebrity Summit was the third ship to be Solsticized.  Originally, she was planned to be the second but Celebrity decided to have Celebrity Infinity go ahead of her.   The work was done on Summit in Freeport in the Bahamas in January 2012.

            What did Summit get?  Part of one of the balconies overlooking the Normandie main dining room was enclosed and turned into a Blu restaurant.  This is the dining room for guests staying in the Aqua class cabins that were also added during the refit.  The area that had been the flower conservatory became a specialty restaurant.  Not the Tuscan Grill as on Constellation but Qsine, the non-traditional venue that premiered on Celebrity Eclipse.  Yet another new dining venue is Bistro on Five, a creperie

There were also new bars and lounges added including the sophisticated Martini Bar from the Solstice class ships and the Cellar Masters wine bar.

Several of the existing public areas were spruced up.  The magnificent grand staircase was given a lighter look.  Revelations, the ship’s forward observation lounge also received a new look.

While the changes gave Summit many of the features of the Solstice class ships, they did not take away her identity.   The Millennium class ships have a considerable following and realizing this Celebrity has not tried to make them into a somewhat smaller version of the Solstice.  The Solsticized Summit is still the Summit, only better.

Beyondships photo tour of the refurbished Summit begins at http://beyondships.com/Celebrity-Summit-Tour-1.html