The Ship

The Celebrity Beyond is a very new ship, first put into service just April of this year (2022), so it was only about 6 months old when we took our cruise. It is capable of accommodating about 3500 passengers but we were told that there were “only” 2400 on board for this trip. If this was only 2400, I am certainly glad that we did not have the full 3500 passenger load.

The main pool and sundeck on a cloudy, cool day

While the ship did not generally feel crowded, there were certainly plenty of people. Susan occasionally started Mooing like a cow in a herd. The ship was so large and the Mediterranean Sea so relatively calm, that we never felt any motion: it always felt like we were on dry land.

There were two main pools, the outdoor pool and a smaller indoor pool in the always warm Solarium. There were multiple hot-tubs or spas around the open deck, but the “infinity hot tubs” apparently had a problem: several of them were always closed and lacking any water. A nice walking/jogging path formed a figure-8 on two of the upper decks and you could walk/jog/run three laps for a kilometer or five laps for a mile.

Of course, there were the usual shops with both everyday and luxury items, as well as the casino, a spa, photography service, and areas where you could sign up for excursions or a future cruise.

Our Cabin

Our cabin was on deck 9 and was classed as a “Sky Suite”. Don’t let the “Suite” part fool you, it was not what most people would think of as a “suite”. It was just a bit larger than the standard cabins at about 277 square feet. It did have a small private veranda just outside the glass exterior wall and sliding door.

A view of our cabin and its veranda/balcony

The controls for the lights and even the drapes were rather baffling: we were almost able to figure them all out by the end of the cruise. It had the normal hotel room amenities like the small refrigerator, safe, and both 110V and 220V electrical outlets. The closet and storage shelves were reasonable and the head..er… bathroom was nicely sized with a kind of dual sink. Our cabin attendant, Valentina, was excellent and frequently checked to see if we needed anything. The second day we asked if we could get foam bed pillows rather than the rather thin feather pillows and they appeared at that evening’s turn-down service. This class of cabin also came with a butler, Nabil in our case. I’m not sure what all he was supposed to do for us, but after learning that we had an interest in wine, he did get us a couple of bottles of decent wine (a Cab. Sav. and a Sav Blanc) to enjoy in the room.

The Retreat

As I alluded to earlier, guests staying in qualifying “suites” have access to the “Retreat”. There are actually several areas to the Retreat, including a comfortable (and quiet) lounge with a small bar, a small pool and patio/bar area on an upper deck, and a dedicated restaurant, the Luminae. Of all the Retreat’s facilities, we certainly enjoyed the Luminae the most. We ate 6 dinners there and 3 or 4 breakfasts. In that time, we got to know our servers (we were generally always seated in the same area, with the same servers) and some of the other guests seated in that area. The Luminae was on an upper deck (16) and at the very front of the ship with large windows looking out.

On several nights we had beautiful sunsets while dining at Luminae.

The food was good, probably on a par with any of the other restaurants on the ship, but the service is what made it special, after the servers got to know us a little. Pauline was sort of the “whatever needs to be done” server and she quickly figured out what kind of coffee we liked and always provided the perfect cup of after-dinner coffee. Lidu was our regular server and he always managed to get us (and other guests) just what we wanted, whether it was on the menu or not. Raf was the Wine Steward and through the week I think we educated each other a bit about wine and he sometimes broke out some wine that was not supposed to be included in our beverage package. Our beverage package included any drink up to $15 per drink/glass, but not bottles of wine.

Having access to the Luminae and the servers there at any time, without reservations, as well as the other facilities of the Retreat, certainly made our cruise more enjoyable.

Food/Restaurants

I’m not sure just how many restaurants there are on the Beyond, but a lot. Besides the Luminae, we had dinner in three specialty restaurants: The Normandy (French influence), The Fine Cut (Steakhouse – my favorite of the three), and The Rooftop Garden Grill. While the Normandy and Fine Cut both provided excellent food and good service, the Garden Grill fell a bit short on both counts. Of course, there is also the large buffet style main restaurant, the Oceanview Café.

Part of the serving area of the Oceanview Café.

We used the Oceanview whenever we needed something quickly, like a breakfast before an excursion, or when Luminae was not serving, such as a late lunch after an excursion. The food there was not real special, but the sheer variety and many different kinds of food made it fun to see what we could come up with.

Entertainment

There are several entertainment venues on the Beyond, but we only got to three of them.

The Martini Bar: Although this is really a bar, it also includes a small stage and dance floor, so I’ll consider it as entertainment. It is in the middle of the ship and occupies three and four decks, with multiple levels of seating with a huge “chandelier” in the middle, hanging over a good-sized bar where the bartenders sometimes put on a show flipping liquor bottles around. This short video should give you an idea of the size of the venue, although it only shows a small part of the seating area.

Another view of the Martini Bar

Eden: Eden is at the very stern of the ship and is decorated with trees and plants to make it resemble the Garden of Eden. It is a relatively low-key entertainment facility that generally featured small “groups” of two to five performers, usually playing “soft rock” type music. We generally went here after dinner and before the show in the main theater. It was a good place to enjoy a glass of cognac.

A couple of the “regular” Eden entertainers

Eden was a rather large space and was lightly attended/used by the guests, so I suspect there will be some changes coming to this area.

The Theater: The theater was impressive in several ways. It was a large space with two tiers of seating for probably 1000 people at a time and the stage facilities were beyond anything I have seen before. The circular stage with sections that rotated and went up and down, bringing performers from the lower levels, was impressive but the “backdrop” was something else. There were five large video screens (think very large flat-panel TVs) about 15 feet high and 20 feet wide, providing a very dynamic background about 15 feet high by 100 feet wide, wrapping around the stage. On this backdrop would be displayed various recorded videos, enlarged images of the performers, or very dynamic background imagery. You can see some of this in the photo below: notice the size of the background images compared to the performers on the stage.

You could call this a form of “mixed media”.

But I was most impressed by the show on the last night (each night there were two shows, one at 7:30 and one at 9:30) when the digital backdrop was effectively integrated into a key part of the show. I put together a video of parts three different songs from that show to give you a feel for how it worked. I especially liked the realism of the car “driving” through the streets.

Besides the “song and dance” shows like in the above video, there was a comedian (least successful as we thought he borderline insulted several people in the audience), a couple of very good singers who performed both separately and also together.

Miscellaneous

There are several other features of interest on the Beyond that I wasn’t sure how to classify, so here they are.

Mystery room: On the way to Eden, we would pass through a room that was, well, strange. It was dark in the room and there were shapes/forms/sculptures sprinkled around the room. Mirrors on all the walls enhanced the effect and made the room seem larger. It would almost give me a form of vertigo, just walking through it. Here is a quick look at what it was like to walk through the mystery room.

Exercise facilities: (gym, track, pool area) There was a nice gym with a view over the bow of the ship. It had a decent selection of weight lifting machines, but very sparse on the true free-weights. There were quite a few aerobic machines (treadmills, stationary bikes, ellipticals, etc.) but some of the controls on them were a bit confusing. I only visited the gym once. As mentioned previously, there is a outside walking/jogging track that wound around the pool area and formed a figure-8, so both the walking side and the jogging side covered the same distance.

Magic Carpet: The Magic Carpet is a extra “deck” hung off the starboard (right) side of the ship. It was probably about 20 feet wide (extending beyond the side of the ship by that amount) and 100 feet long. The interesting thing is that it moved up and down, from deck 2 up to deck 14. It was most often used as a bar/lounge on the upper decks but on days when we were not at a dock, it was placed at deck 2 and used as a boarding platform to move between the ship and the tenders. When going on an excursion, you would always depart from and return to deck 2. If the tenders were in use, you would just exit the ship, walk across the Magic Carpet, and easily step into the tender.

Tenders: Speaking of tenders, they were relatively large (some listed emergency capacity at over 400 people) and comfortable… at least for a tender/lifeboat. They were used at two ports:

End of Chapter 1

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