I Cruised in a Deluxe Verandah Stateroom onboard Celebrity Silhouette - Here’s my Review…
I took a 7-night cruise onboard Celebrity Silhouette out of Southampton, England. If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll probably know that I tend to book Inside (or Interior) cabins on ships, and it can often save me a fortune versus my fellow passengers who have opted to book the more expensive balcony options. I spend most of my cruise life cruising solo, however this time around I was with one of my friends.
We decided to book a balcony stateroom for this cruise, and we were happy with the price it was going to cost us each to share one room. In my experience, Celebrity Cruises have always been pretty poor at offering decent rates for solo passengers on their ships, and so I hadn’t even considered checking how much it would cost us to have our own room, until the very last minute. I’ll tell you now - I’m so glad that I did!
I should add - throughout this post, I’m going to be using the words ‘cabin’ and ‘stateroom’ interchangeably when talking about my room. I usually call my room on a cruise ship my ‘cabin’, but some cruise lines (Celebrity being one of them) call them ‘staterooms’, so don’t worry - they’re the same thing!
We were absolutely delighted to discover that there was NO SOLO SUPPLEMENT on our sailing, which meant it was going to cost us exactly the same to cruise in separate cabins as it would to share. We also noticed there was a really small optional up charge to upgrade our rooms from what Celebrity call ‘Verandah’ (or Balcony) staterooms to ‘Deluxe Verandah’, (or Deluxe Balcony) staterooms.
We opted to take the upgrade, in the hope that we would receive ‘better rooms’ in return. The rooms that we booked were directly next door to each other, and we opted to remove the divider between the balconies, in order to allow us the privacy of not having inter-connecting rooms, but having the ability to move between the rooms in a way that didn’t force us to use the main corridor.
The rooms that we booked were on Deck 8: 8197 (me) and 8199 (my friend). Interestingly, although these two staterooms were right next door to each other, they were pretty different inside - more on this later in this post. For now, here’s my room - welcome to stateroom 8197, a Deluxe Verandah stateroom on Deck 8 of Celebrity Silhouette.
One thing that you need to remember when you look at this room is that Silhouette isn’t a new ship. Her inaugural cruise was back in July 2011, so you do need to remember she’s not going to be an equal player if you’re comparing her to, for example, her much newer EDGE-class relatives.
A few things that we really liked about these rooms ‘on paper’ before we got onboard…
The location of these rooms is nice - you’re towards the back of the forward section, so you’re probably not going to be impacted too much by the motion of the cruise ship. Note: you’re always going to experience the least motion on the middle of the ship - worth keeping in mind if you struggle with motion sickness…
These cabins are surrounded (on both sides, and also above and below) with other passenger cabins. This is always my golden rule if you’re sensitive to noise - the last thing you’d want is to be located directly beneath the buffet restaurant, or right above the nightclub…!
These cabins have a nice angle to them - that usually means that you’re going to benefit from a much bigger balcony simply due to where your room falls along the frame of the ship. In our case, this certainly came true, but I’ll show you a picture shortly…
Anyway, enough about ‘on paper’ - let’s talk about the room itself…
In this room, you’ll find the bed on your right as you walk into the room. Celebrity have been quite clever from a design point of view here - the curve of the bed gives the illusion that you’ve got much more space at the base than you actually do. Since cruising on this ship, I’ve seen more and more ships taking this approach, and I can understand why looking at it in the above picture!
All around the bed, you’ve got plenty of storage. You’ve got 2 large over-bed cupboards, storage in the bedside tables on either side of the bed, and then you’ve also got a good sized double wardrobe to the right of the above photo - here’s another picture looking across the bed from the other side to let you see that.
Moving away from the bed, the far side of the room then offers you a sofa bed (which could accommodate another 2 passengers) on the right hand side, and both a vanity area and a storage unit on the other. While I didn’t need to do any work on this cruise, I can imagine it would make a wonderful working space to have your laptop over on that desk, with the door open to allow you to hear the water outside - bliss!
The storage unit here offers multiple deep drawers, so you’re not going to struggle at all with storing your belongings in this room. Inside, you’re going to find plenty of empty space for you to do what you want with, in addition to a refrigerator, safety deposit box (safe), and also your Celebrity branded laundry bag, price list and also umbrella.
I really love the addition of an umbrella in a cruise ship cabin. So many people associate cruises with warm, sunny weather, but unfortunately rain can feature just as often on some itineraries!
Until this point, the layout and features of this Deluxe Verandah stateroom are pretty much identical to what you’re going to get if you book a standard Verandah cabin. It’s when you look at the outside space with this room that you get an understanding as to the increased fare.
The balconies that we had in these rooms were much larger than what our neighbours on either side had. The furniture on our balconies was exactly the same as the rooms around us, but I reckon we could’ve squeezed a lounger on there too, if we were on a warmer itinerary!
I remember when I took my first cruise how surprised I was at the size of the balconies - I’d expected them to be more like a balcony in a hotel on land. For most cabins, there’s usually just enough room for you to get past the chairs and table, but as you can see above, we had loads of space!
As I mentioned earlier in this post, the views from our balconies were absolutely brilliant - we had the same ‘outward facing’ view that everyone has on the ship, but we also benefitted from this awesome sidewards view, that allowed us to look right along the side of ship. I appreciate that some people might not love this as you can see other people out on their balconies, but I absolutely loved it.
This added perspective made the balcony a great space to watch sailaways from, as you were able to watch the ship pushing off from the dock, but also leaving the port behind. I should add - your privacy in these cabins isn’t any less than in the ‘standard’ Verandah rooms that you’re looking down onto - if anything, it’s a bit more private. Yes, if you’re out against your railing, people will see you, but the rest of your balcony is pretty much the same level of privacy as the other rooms - don’t worry - all those people aren’t able to look along and see you out there!
Finally, let me take you back inside and show you the bathroom, the part of the room I have the least amount to report. Here’s a few shots:
As you can see, you have your toilet on the right, sink directly infront of you, and your shower on the left side. A couple of observations in here would be:
Storage - can we talk about this? I hate having open storage shelves in a cruise ship bathroom as the only storage option - I find it makes the room look really messy. Having so many cupboards and drawers with doors in here was a massive plus point to keep everything hidden and out of sight.
Lighting - this bathroom was lovely and bright - exactly what you need to get ready for the day ahead! I’ve been on some ships that have horrendously harsh lighting in the bathroom, but that wasn’t a problem in here at all!
The shower - it’s a fixed shower head in here, which is annoying for someone as tall as me (I’m over 6 foot tall), but probably totally fine for most people!
The toiletries - you get the standard Celebrity Cruises branded toiletries in here. Nothing overwhelming to report, but I really enjoyed using them.
So, would I recommend this grade of stateroom to you if you’re considering a cruise onboard Celebrity Silhouette? In short, yes!
It’s important that you don’t pay a huge amount extra from the standard Verandah stateroom to secure one of these rooms, as you’re only really gaining a larger and different size of balcony - the core room is still the same.
If you plan to spend a bit more time in the room, and enjoy taking in the views from outside, then I’d say this is a decent room for you!
If you’d like to see it in more detail, why not head over to my YouTube channel and check out my video tour? I should warn you - this is one of my oldest videos, but it’ll do the job to show you around! While you’re over there, it would be amazing if you’d consider supporting my channel by clicking both those LIKE and SUBSCRIBE buttons - I’ve got so much more still to show you!
If you’d like to explore more of my Celebrity Cruises content, you can head up to the tab at the top of the page, or CLICK HERE.
Happy Cruising!