If you are planning a cruise with Celebrity, you may be considering booking an Infinite Veranda Stateroom. Here we take a closer look at these cabins and see how they compare to a standard balcony cabin found on other cruise ships.
What is an Infinite Veranda Cabin?
Instead of a standard balcony stateroom with a sliding door out to your private balcony area, Infinite Veranda cabins have a large window that opens at the touch of a button.
The window slides down from the top, and stops halfway – similar to a Juliet or French Balcony found on some river cruise ships.
The Infinite Veranda design is aimed at getting cruisers closer to the water by essentially turning the entire room into a balcony at the push of a button.
Celebrity says that these cabins offer more space, and there are many more new design elements and technological enhancements in the cabins
There aren’t rows and rows of balcony cabins on the sides of the Celebrity Edge, making the ship’s appearance quite different from those of other cruise ships.
If you do want a traditional balcony cabin on the Celebrity Edge you would need to book one of the few family Veranda cabins, an Accessible Veranda Cabin or a Sunset Veranda Cabin at the back of the ship. The majority of cabins are Infinite Verandas.
With the touch of a button, your entire living space becomes the veranda, letting you walk right out to the water’s edge. These staterooms feature the latest in design and technology, and they’re 23% larger than our award-winning Solstice® Series veranda staterooms.
Celebrity Cruise Lines
Our Experience On Celebrity Edge
I stayed in Infinite Veranda cabin number 7156 on the Celebrity Edge in July 2023. It was a beautiful cabin, with plenty of hidden storage space and a large well-designed bathroom.
There were a few things we weren’t so keen on – mostly to do with the Varanda/ balcony area of the stateroom.
Pros and Cons of the Infinite Varanda Balcony Cabin
Pros
- The cabins are large and well-proportioned with lots of storage space. I was still finding hidden shelves and drawers five days into our cruise! (look out for the large drawer under the bathroom sink and the curved cupboards with shelves above and below the display area.)
- You can lie in bed and get uninterrupted views of the sea. It reminded me a little of being in a modern, sea-view hotel room on land. There are no curtains or wooden balcony railings or glazed panels to obstruct your view.
- The Varanda is more private than the standard balconies on other cruise ships. You never see or really hear those in the neighbouring cabins sitting by their windows/verandas.
- Large, well-designed bathrooms. The shower is a good size, with glass shower screens – no clingy shower curtains!
- If you have children, you can see them all the time. There is no chance that they could let themselves out onto the balcony and start dangerously climbing on the balcony furniture. This might give you more peace of mind if your children are small.
Cons
- The glass window, and the electric blinds are quite noisy to open, and they take at least 20 seconds to open fully. If your cabin mate is asleep, even opening the blind up a small distance is likely to wake them.
- If you wake first in the morning, it is impossible to peep around the blind to see what the weather is like! The blind can only be opened electronically – so again, you wake your cabin buddy up!
- When you open up the veranda window, the aircon in the room automatically goes off and the mirrors in the cabin steam up! If you want a cool stateroom, the window will have to be shut.
- Although the window is full-sized, it’s only the top half that slides down when you press the button. Because of this, there is a glazing bar across the middle. I am of average size, but when sitting in the veranda balcony chairs, that glazing bar was exactly at eye level. That meant I was forever crouching down or stretching up to see over the top. Not a problem if you are tall – or short, I’m sure!
- The Captain can disable all of the Infinite Veranda windows from the bridge. This happened on the last two days of our cruise. The last day was perfectly understandable, as it was a sea day and seas were “Moderate.” The windows were also locked shut when we were docked in Ajaccio, Corsica. It was a beautiful, fine sunny day, but we were unable to open the window at all.
- You could hear your neighbours opening and closing their windows or blinds early in the morning or late at night. They weren’t being inconsiderate, there is no way of opening or shutting them quietly, it’s all electronic, you just press the button.
- The bathroom door had a very strong magnet on it. It was impossible to get up at night to go to the bathroom without the door slamming behind you. Believe me – I tried everything, from trying to close it gently to putting towels on the floor to get in the way. I even resorted to putting my fingers in the gap – but as soon as you removed your fingers, the door slammed! A very small niggle, but annoying all the same.
Are Standard Balcony Cabins Better than Infinite Varandas?
The answer to that probably depends on who you are cruising with!
If you are cruising as a couple, and you both sleep and wake at the same sort of time, the Infinite Varanda cabins are lovely.
I am sure everyone would enjoy the stunning sea views you get from this type of cabin.
I cruised with my Mum, and she wakes earlier than me. This was a bit inconvenient as she had to sit in bed in the dark in the mornings. If she tried opening up the blinds or putting on a lamp it would wake me up!
If you have children, it could also be a problem that there is no separate area to sit in. In a normal balcony cabin, you could put the children to bed and have a drink on your balcony, without disturbing them at all. There is no chance of that in the Infinite Varanda Cabin!
If I was travelling again on Celebrity Edge, I would consider booking a Panoramic Ocean View Cabin to save some money. These cabins have the same floor-to-ceiling windows at one end, but the windows don’t open.
As the Captain can stop the Infinite Veranda windows from opening at any time, you may feel you are paying extra for the additional benefit of an opening window – but not getting it!
Before You Go!
I stayed in a very interesting balcony cabin on the Costa Smeralda. This is a mega ship, built in 2018 that holds over 5000 passengers. To compare this to the Infinite Veranda cabin I had on Celebrity Edge, watch this video next:
The best cabin I have stayed in for multi-generational cruising was the Conservatory Suite cabin on P&O’s Iona. As well as having the cabin and the balcony space, there was an additional Conservatory area too. This was ideal for me, as I was sharing this cabin with my parents, and they could sit in the Conservatory area drinking coffee in the mornings without disturbing me at all!
There was one major disadvantage though! To hear all about it, click here next:
I Booked the Most Controversial Cabin on a Cruise Ship – P&O’s Iona Conservatory Mini Suite
One of my favourite ever balcony cabins was the one I stayed in on the Norwegian Prima. It was SO spacious. Click here to see my review and find out all about the things that made it such a favourite of mine:
I Stayed in a Balcony Cabin on The Norwegian Prima (Full Review)
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