Imagine a 10-storey block of luxury flats as long as a city block and you are coming close. The Celebrity Reflection SM is the largest in the fleet with a weight of 126000 tons, a length of 1047 feet, and a maximum passenger capacity of 3046. Celebrity Reflection boasts an extra deck, 72 additional staterooms overall, more seating in the main and specialty restaurants, more sun loungees on the pool deck, and more seats in the theatre. After a flight and a long bus trip, we finally arrived in Eemshaven and caught our first glimpse of our home for the next 2 nights. Built by Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, she was completed on 12 August, and sailed backwards (impressive video available here) down the River Ems before being delivered to Celebrity Cruises for sea testing. I think it is safe to say that expectations of cruising were not unduly high when I agreed to go on a 2-night pre-launch cruise to introduce 1500 travel writers to the Celebrity Reflection SM, the fifth and final planned ship to be added to the Celebrity Cruises award-winning Solstice Class ® series. Since then, my memories of cruise ships have entailed: feeling seasick being unspeakably claustrophobic in our cabin the omnipresent smell of olive oil and singing Rod Stewart’s We are sailing with tears in my eyes as we left Mauritus – I was ready to seek political asylum rather than re-board the Ship of Doom. Understandably, we were less than ecstatic with my father’s plan to cruise to Mauritius on this deathtrap in 1989 (that is to say, somewhere in between the hijacking and the final sinking!). Face it – the ship was cursed, suffering an onboard explosion in 1964 a huge fire in 1972 while being converted to a cruise ship a collision with a cargo ship in 1975 an onboard fire in 1981 an infamous hijacking in 1985 in which a passenger was killed and finally another huge engine fire in 1994 that led to her sinking off the coast of Somalia in December 1994 (and not a moment too soon!). But I do remember the day my dad came home with tickets to the Achille Lauro. Strictly speaking it was not the first cruise I’d been on: when I was about 2 he had attended a medical conference on a cruise ship that sailed around off the coast of Cape Town for 2 days, but I remember nothing of that (other than being told repeatedly by my mom that all I ate the entire time was 2 olives!). When I was 19 years old, my father decided that it was time to take the family on an ocean cruise.
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