Celebrity Silhouette Ship Review

Built in Papenburg, Germany, Celebrity Silhouette traveled 42 kilometers backward along the river Ems navigating several narrow gaps for its official naming in Hamburg on July 21, 2011.

Sister to Celebrity Solstice, Equinox and Eclipse, Celebrity Silhouette joined the Celebrity Cruises fleet in July 2011. Like her sisters, Celebrity Silhouette features Qsine, Martini Bar & Crush, the iLounge Internet center, the Lawn Club and veranda views in 85 percent of staterooms — plus a lot more.

Celebrity Silhouette Overview

Celebrity’s Solstice-class ships are some of the most beautiful and distinctive megaships ever built, offering super-modern styling, sophisticated spas and relaxation areas, a wealth of fantastic dining options, beautifully designed staterooms and suites, and a vibe that feels much more upscale than you’d expect, especially given Celebrity’s competitive pricing.

Launched in 2011, Celebrity Silhouette is the fourth of the Solstice-class ships and, so far, the best of the bunch. Measuring 122,400 gross tons and carrying 2,886 guests at double occupancy, she’s a huge but exceptionally well laid out vessel with an interior design that really flows from room to room, creating a unified feel.

In fact, Celebrity’s Solstice Class vessels rank among our favorites. In 2008, we gushed over Silhouette’s sister in an article titled Celebrity Solstice: Celebrity’s Newest Ship Breaks The Mold. Simply put: Celebrity’s Solstice class ships are attractive and variety-filled vessels that are certain to please almost any palate.

Solstice isn’t quite in the league of the luxury vessels we write about here on Avid Cruiser, but it’s pretty darn close. Some have called Solstice, Crystal Lite, and indeed Solstice could be a contender to such luxury players as Crystal Cruises.

With Silhouette, Celebrity began pushing the envelope of the original Solstice-class design, re-imagining some of the Solstice-class’s signature spaces and adding new venues to make the experience even more rich, modern, and beyond the ordinary.

Lots of changes at The Lawn Club on Celebrity Silhouette

Lawn Club & Pool Deck On Celebrity Silhouette

The Lawn Club, for instance, the half-acre real grass lawn that’s long been the iconic Solstice-class venue, has been rethought and re-engineered to be both more relaxing and more social.

At one end of the space, The Lawn Club Grill has been designed to offer a casual and interactive backyard barbecue experience. Flanking the Lawn Club Grill, there’s The Porch, a casual breakfast and lunch spot, and on the other side an art studio. Read more about the two dining venues further down on this page.

Port and starboard, the lawn is rimmed by The Alcoves, eight semi-private, shaded cabanas that can accommodate two to four guests, and offer plush seating, themed picnic baskets, WiFi, and an a la carte beverage menu.

“The Alcoves” feature private wifi-equipped cabanas situated on Silhouette's lush green, real grass, lawn. Cost for rental: $99 per day on port days, and $149 per day on sea days. Worth it? Time will tell.

Nearby, there’s a row of hammocks for the ultimate shuck-off-your-cares experience. On the lawn itself, guests can play croquet, putt around some golf balls, play a game of bocce, or take a little picnic.

A couple decks down, Silhouette’s pool deck is one of the most serene and resort-like in the cruise industry, its two pools surrounded by 25-foot A-frame canopies that have luxurious day beds at their bases and large cantilevered awnings up top, providing shade for chaise lounges spread out along two decks.

The adults-only Solarium on Celebrity Silhouette.

Forward of the pools is a glass-ceilinged, adults-only Solarium offering a lap pool, cushioned teak lounge chairs, and a super-relaxing atmosphere. We like this area a lot. There’s also a small Aqua Spa Cafe for breakfast and lunch (no charge), which we enjoy quite a lot.

Public Rooms On Celebrity Silhouette

Inside, Silhouette feels like a spread in an upscale lifestyles magazine. Her Grand Foyer is designed as an homage to grand ocean liner cruising, while 50 feet up a full-size, 20-foot tall tree sits suspended in a planter, adding a hint of surrealism.

We like the 20-foot tall tree suspended in a planter on Celebrity Silhouette. In the background, a new venue, The Hideaway

Opposite the tree, The Hideaway was designed to be like a treehouse for adults, a place to go where you really want to get away from it all. There’s super-comfortable seating for just 30 people, plus two raised “nests” for the lucky guests who get there first.

Your private retreat: The Hideaway

Other rooms onboard run the upscale gamut, from the Napa-inspired Cellar Masters wine bar to the fashion-world Martini Bar and Crush — the former with a perpetually frosted bar, the latter with an ice-filled table from which bartenders dispense sample pairings of vodka and caviar.

Michael’s Club, a staple aboard Celebrity’s ships from the beginning, has been re-imagined here as a gourmet beer and whiskey bar, serving a menu of more than 60 international beers, plus fine whiskeys, scotches, and cognacs.

The ship’s AquaSpa is done in beautiful minimalist style, all clean lines and soothing colors. Besides massages, facials, and other traditional treatments, the spa menu includes acupuncture, teeth whitening, Botox wrinkle treatments, and other trendy options. For a different kind of trendy option, guests can surf the web, buy the latest iPods and laptops, or take a class from an Apple-certified professional at the iLounge, a sleek, modern technology space developed in association with Apple.

Silhouette features a large children's area and separate teen center.

For kids, Silhouette offers a large, light-filled children’s center and separate teen center near the very top of the ship.

Dining On Celebrity Silhouette

In all, Silhouette offers six restaurants plus a buffet and several snack and light-meal options. The main restaurant is the Grand Cuvee Dining Room, designed as a dreamy crystal fantasy by celebrity designer Adam Tihany. Another Tihany design, the Tuscan Grille, is an upscale steak-and-pasta venue.

Qsine is a playful, imaginatively designed space serving food from an eclectic international menu, with an emphasis on creative presentation. Murano serves continental cuisine in an elegant, romantic setting, while Blu serves light and healthy menu items to a clientele that’s drawn almost exclusively from guests booked into the ship’s spa-oriented AquaClass staterooms (plus suite guests when there’s availability).

Cook or Look, Grill or Chill at Celebrity Silhouette's new Lawn Club Grill

Up at the top of the ship, at the forward edge of the Lawn Club, the Lawn Club Grill is an interactive, highly social, indoor-outdoor restaurant that’s centered around grilling. Guests can grill their own meats and seafood and make their own pizza along with Celebrity’s professional chefs, or sit back and have the chefs do all the work, washing it all down with bottles of beer or a pitcher of sangria.

We like the thought of being able to develop our grill skills while enjoying a good meal. At this new open-air eatery on the top deck, guests team up with Celebrity Cruises’ chefs to master the grill.

Of course, you can always sit back and let the chefs — or someone else at your table — do the cooking. Worth the $30 per person fee? For dinner, yes. It’s a fun and memorable experience. The Lawn Club Grill will also open for lunch on port days, also $30 per person.

New on Silhouette is The Porch, with a charge of $5 per person for breakfast and lunch.

The Porch is touted as a breezy, casual dining spot offering sandwiches, coffees and captivating views of the sea and the lawn. Worth $5 per person for breakfast or lunch?

Evening Entertainment On Celebrity Silhouette

After dinner, guests can head forward to the 1,115-guest Silhouette Theatre, which was designed with a stage that thrusts out beyond the proscenium, bringing performers closer to the audience, plus complex gear up above that lets aerialists fly out over the audience’s heads.

Just down the corridor, the smaller Celebrity Central is a performance venue for late-night comedy shows, films, and other entertainment, while Quasar is the ship’s dedicated disco/nightclub, done up in a streamlined, space-age look.

For a quieter vibe, you can hit the Ensemble Lounge, which offers after-dinner jazz, or Cellar Masters, a Napa-inspired space that does wine tastings by day and casual relaxation by night.

Celebrity Silhouette Staterooms & Suites

Silhouette’s 1,291-square-foot Penthouse Suites each feature an enormous living room, wrap-around balcony with whirlpool tub, and palatial marble bathroom.

Silhouette’s staterooms are an evolution of the standard cruise cabin, from their shape and ergonomic design to their thoughtful details and amenities.

In all, Silhouette offers private balconies on 85 percent of her cabins, and each is big enough to fit two deck chairs and a table. Inside, in each standard stateroom, one wall bulges outward to give more maneuvering room around the foot of the bed, whose mattress is designed with rounded corners to make moving around it even easier. Beds are also higher than normal, allowing more luggage storage beneath, and are surrounded at the wall by a tall headboard that has an unobtrusive little cabinet that’s perfect for purses and other small items.

In the bathrooms, the shower stalls are larger than the cruise ship norm and have little foot rails that make it easier for women to shave their legs. There’s also a nice collection of little drawers, cabinets, and other nooks for storing toiletries.

Suites range from the 300-sq.-ft. Sky Suites, which are larger versions of the standard 194-foot veranda cabin, to the 1,291-square-foot Penthouse Suites, each of which has an enormous living room, wrap-around balcony with whirlpool tub, and palatial marble bathroom.

AquaClass stateroom 1642

Between her standard stateroom categories and her suites, Silhouette offers a middle ground in the form of her 130 adults-only AquaClass staterooms, which promote a “wellness” experience through things like special music/sound and aromatherapy options, jetted bodywash showers, pillow menus, and perks like free use of the spa’s Persian Garden aromatherapy steam room and relaxation room and access to the wellness restaurant Blu.

Avid Cruiser Posts, Photographs and Videos Featuring Celebrity Solstice-Class Vessels.

• Feature Video: Avid Cruiser Celebrity Solstice Review
• Is Celebrity Downgrading Its Main Dining Room Experience To Boost The Bottom Line In Its Specialty Restaurants?
• Celebrity Solstice, A Formidable Competitor To The Luxury Lines? One Person’s Perspective: ‘Crystal Light’
• Celebrity Cruises ‘Qsine’, The New Food Concept on Celebrity Eclipse
• Celebrity Solstice: Celebrity’s Newest Ship Breaks The Mold