Celebrity Infinity

Stepping aboard Celebrity Infinity means entering a ship that has been touched up several times without ever being made over. Each refit left its own layer, and that layering explains what you'll find, in your cabin as much as at the bar.

• 2001 — Delivery. Infinity is the second ship of the Millennium class.
• 2011 — She receives Solstice-class features: Café al Bacio, Martini Bar, Cellar Masters, Qsine, Blu and the AquaClass cabins, along with new cabins.
• October 2015 — The SS United States restaurant becomes the Tuscan Grille, on Deck 3. The Rooftop Terrace appears at the aft end of Deck 12; the Penthouse and Royal Suites are renovated.
• 2019 — Le Petit Chef replaces Qsine. Celebrity announces the "Revolution" renovation for Infinity, which never took place.
• January 2024 — Michael's Club becomes the Retreat Lounge, Luminae is enlarged, the Sunset Suites are created aft and the public spaces are redone.
• 2025–2026 — Two technical incidents and a maintenance dry dock (see below).

The ship the Revolution left behind

In 2019, Celebrity launched "Revolution," a program meant to bring its older ships closer to Celebrity Edge: a Retreat with its own private terrace, redesigned cabins, a redone spa and restaurants. Millennium and Summit, two of Infinity's sisters, went through it as early as 2019. Infinity never did. She shares that fate with Constellation, whose refit was postponed by the pandemic.

January 2024 brought a real refresh, but a targeted one: lounges, outdoor decks, hot tubs, suites. In the standard cabins, nothing changed beyond the carpet and a few textiles. In practical terms, there is no Retreat Sundeck on board — Celebrity says so itself — the TVs offer no movies on demand, and the cabins still wear their original look.

What wasn't replaced has its loyal fans too. An outdoor promenade, lounges where you can always find a seat, a straight-ahead view that no cabin category reserves: Infinity keeps the grammar of a classic cruise, which the line's recent ships have partly redistributed among cabin categories.

Cabins: plenty of room, no outlets

Standard cabins are as old as the ship, and it shows: orange-toned wood, laminate, switches from another era, a shower curtain in standard balcony cabins, a step up into the bathroom. No USB ports. The TV shows neither movies on demand nor your onboard account statement. Beds are on the firm side — you can ask for a mattress topper — and the fridge keeps things cool rather than cold.

In exchange, space. Storage is more generous than on many recent ships, and so is room for suitcases, and several ocean-view cabins turn out bigger than you'd expect. Soundproofing between cabins is good: once the door is shut, you hardly hear a thing.

On the electrical side, the desk has two American outlets and two European ones. At the bedside, no outlet, at least outside the suites. Leave the power strip at home: Celebrity bans extension cords and surge-protected models, and even discourages ordinary power strips. A multi-port USB charger, plugged in at the desk, does the job.

The lower decks have a good reputation. On Decks 2 and 3, you can reach almost everything on foot by the stairs, and nights there are quiet.

At the table

The main dining room, the Trellis, fills the aft end of the ship on two levels, facing large windows that open onto the wake. Deck 4 runs open seating, Deck 5 fixed times, with a first seating in the early evening and a second around 8:30 p.m. The menu keeps its permanent classics — onion soup, escargots, Caesar salad, shrimp cocktail — alongside the evening's dishes.

The main dining room's cooking is one of the ship's strong points. Two caveats, though: some evenings, dinner stretches to nearly two hours; and on cruises longer than ten nights, the menu ends up repeating itself.

The buffet, the Oceanview Café, on Deck 10, is laid out the old-fashioned way: you walk around it, with the counters in the middle. It makes up for that with its made-to-order stations — omelets, poached eggs, pasta, meats grilled in front of you — an Indian corner every day, a vegan section and an ice cream counter. On port-day mornings, it's swamped before the shore excursions leave.

When evening comes, the buffet doesn't quite close. At the back, a pizza, pasta and salad corner stays open until around 1 a.m. Its quality divides opinion, but it exists. After that, only room service remains.

Three specialty restaurants round out the offering. The Tuscan Grille, on Deck 3, with Italian cooking and grills, gathers most of the praise. At Le Petit Chef, on Deck 11, the meal follows an animation projected onto the table. Sushi on Five, on Deck 5, is ordered à la carte and opens onto the neighboring wine bar: pleasant or noisy, depending on how lively the evening is.

Lounges, bars and decks

The heart of the ship is the Grand Foyer, a rectangular atrium spanning three decks. On Deck 4, the Martini Bar and its counter that frosts over in the evening. On the same deck, the Rendez-Vous Lounge traded its dark tones for light ones in 2024; the music starts there before dinner.

At the very top, at the forward end of Deck 11, the Constellation Lounge opens up: large slanted windows, generous natural light, armchairs at the very front that fill up early on sailaway days, and a bird's-eye view of the helipad. In the evening, it becomes the room for trivia, bands and dancing. You get there by the forward elevators, the only ones that go up to it. Just above, at the forward end of Deck 12, a terrace of loungers sheltered from the wind by glass panels, reachable only by the stairs and almost always deserted, also looks straight ahead. Both are open to everyone. On Celebrity Edge, the bow is largely reserved for the Retreat and the spa; here, the straight-ahead view doesn't require any cabin category.

Finally, all the way down, the outdoor promenade on Deck 4. It doesn't go all the way around the ship, but runs along both sides, right at water level, with a few loungers. It's Infinity's quiet open-air corner, almost always deserted.

A moment on board

It's the end of a sea day, and you're on the Deck 4 promenade. The sea is right there, within arm's reach: not a distant panorama, as from the upper decks, but water slipping past the hull, close enough to follow every ripple, every streak of foam.

Above you, on a sea day, the pool deck is very busy. Down here, none of that. A few loungers, slightly more of them than on a port day, and almost all of them free. A man is reading, his book open on his knees. Farther along, a couple says nothing and doesn't need to.

You take a chair, facing the open sea. The sun sinks toward the horizon, and the light changes minute by minute: the water turns from blue to silvery gray, then to copper. The promenade runs along the ship's side without circling her; at the end, it simply stops, and no one seems in a hurry to get there.

You understand why this stretch of deck has its regulars. Above, the ship is dining, getting ready, looking for a seat at the bar; here, you have a whole deck to yourself, and the sun touching the water.

"On Infinity, nothing was designed to impress you. Everything is there so you can settle in."

Selvague

AquaClass and the Persian Garden

AquaClass came on board in 2011. It opens the doors to Blu, the restaurant reserved for the category, at breakfast and dinner, as well as to the Persian Garden, the spa's thermal circuit. In the cabin: bathrobes, yoga mats, water replenished every day.

It's worth knowing what to expect from the Persian Garden before buying the pass, when you're in neither AquaClass nor a suite. It's small and dark: Turkish bath, herbal steam room, warm rooms, showers, and heated tiled benches — but no heated loungers and no pool, unlike the line's newer ships. No window either: in this part of Deck 10, the sea view belongs to the gym.

Suites and the Retreat

The suites received most of the attention in the 2015 and 2024 refits. The Retreat gives them access to the Retreat Lounge, the former Michael's Club, and to Luminae, the suites' restaurant, enlarged in 2024. No private terrace, however: that is precisely what Revolution was meant to add.

The Sunset Suites were born in January 2024, aft, from the conversion of former family cabins; Constellation received the same ones that same year. They come in pairs at each aft corner, and that's where the real question arises: the corner suite, or its neighbor? The corner offers the biggest balcony and a view that opens out to the side, but a solid metal railing that hides the sea when you're seated, and no shelter. The neighbor has a smaller balcony, a glass railing and a canvas awning that protects from the sun as well as from prying eyes. One gives you surface and view, the other shade and privacy: neither is the right answer for everyone.

Reliability: what happened in 2025 and 2026

In July 2025, a breakdown occurred while the ship was docked in Kuşadası, Turkey. She remained immobilized for several days; the following port calls were canceled and she returned to Athens, where disembarkation was scheduled. Celebrity referred to a technical issue.

In January 2026, Infinity spent nine days in dry dock in Marseille for maintenance and regulatory work.

During the night of February 15, 2026, the ship suffered a total loss of power as she approached Piraeus, at the end of a repositioning from Barcelona. She was towed to the pier and the cruise ended a day early. The next cruise, scheduled for February 16, was canceled; repairs were carried out at the pier and the ship resumed her schedule on February 27.

Infinity is scheduled in Europe until early 2029.

Practical notes

Everything on board happens in English, including announcements and safety instructions. Worth knowing if English isn't the language you're most comfortable in.

There is no self-service laundry: only the ship's laundry service washes your clothes. Pack accordingly.

The midship elevators are all on the port side, glass-walled facing the sea. From a starboard cabin amidships, you have to cross the ship to reach them.

In Piraeus, Celebrity offers an official program, paid and booked in advance, "Extend Your Stay," to remain on board until early afternoon on disembarkation day — handy before an evening flight.