Celebrity Beyond 2026 Review: Is It Celebrity's Best Cruise Ship?

Cruise Radio: Weekly Cruise News & Travel Tips

Ben joins Cruise Radio to review his seven-night Celebrity Beyond cruise from Miami to the Caribbean, traveling with his extended family and a seven-month-old baby. He covers pre-cruise preparations in Miami, embarkation at

Key takeaways

• Ben traveled with his extended family (8 people total) and seven-month-old daughter on a Celebrity Beyond sailing departing Port Miami in August 2026.
• The Sunset Veranda stateroom featured a massive private deck that could be combined with adjacent rooms, though the aft location made it extremely hot and stuffy during Caribbean summer days.

Main topics

• Celebrity Beyond ship review & Edge-class features
• Stateroom comparisons: Sunset vs. Infinite vs. Porthole Veranda

Notable quotes

It really took my breath away. And I was noticing from the moment we stepped on, it felt there was like a cleanliness that was felt even on day one...

Conclusion

Ben's review underscores Celebrity Beyond as a premier choice for travelers prioritizing

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This is Cruise Radio. I cruise a lot and I always sail with travel insurance. You should too. Get a free quote today at TripInsurance.com. Speaker 1 (0:09) Here we go. Broadcasting from the TripInsurance.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida. This is Cruise Radio. Speaker 2 (0:17) Last month, Ben sailed a seven-night cruise on Celebrity Beyond out of Port Miami. He went down to the Caribbean and back and he joins us on the line to talk all about it. How are you doing, Ben? I'm doing great. So glad to be Speaker 3 (0:29) here. And after the awesome sailing that we had, I am just so pumped to get the chance to talk about it. Speaker 2 (0:35) Awesome. I can't wait to hear all about it, my friend. So we'll take a step back before we get to the actual ship itself. Give me some pre-cruise thoughts. Like what made you want to sail this seven-nighter on Celebrity? And are you typically a Celebrity cruiser? Absolutely. Speaker 3 (0:47) So we actually booked this about a year in advance. We had sailed Celebrity a few times, my wife and I. and had really, we've kind of become celebrity people. It's like the more we sail it, the more we love celebrity. And we were in a spot where we were expecting a baby in December of 25. And so we kind of were like, hey, we're going to cruise the second that she is like allowed to cruise. So we like gave ourselves a little bit of six month leeway because there's like a six month process and said August of. 26 is our time. And my parents kind of said, hey, we know that you guys are going to cruise, but we also want to hang out with our granddaughter. And they had like one cruise experience in 2016, and they did not love it. And it's definitely the reality of they were chaperoning my brother's senior high school school trip. Speaker 3 (1:49) had interior rooms that were not in the same rooms. And so like, it was absolutely not something that they enjoyed. And they were on like a ship built in the early 90s. So it was like, when we do this, we need to go modern, new, great experience to the best that we can possibly do. And they wanted to join. And so like, this ended up being something where it was all my siblings. So I have a brother and a sister, my brother's wife, my parents and my sister, and then my little immediate family as well. And we just wanted something that was going to be, I also wanted something that like my parents are going to be like, we want to cruise again. And so that was, that was what kind of inspired the Celebrity Beyond. Speaker 2 (2:27) That's pretty cool. Your parents giving cruising a second take there. You're in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Did you do any pre-cruise time in South Florida before you're sailing? We did. We actually Speaker 3 (2:37) flew in. We sailed on a Sunday, and we actually got in Friday mid-afternoon and spent a couple days in Miami. I mean, driven through Miami, but kind of wanted to experience the culture and just the unique things that Miami had to offer. And so we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Miami, which is right down there, right. It's like kind of walkable to a lot of different stuff right near Brickell and only like a 10 minute Uber ride from the cruise port. And so that was a great spot for us. We loved it. We walked everywhere and had no issues with it. And so we really enjoyed our time in Miami, probably a lot more than we thought we would. And so it was a good time. Speaker 2 (3:26) So you get to the cruise terminal at Port Miami. How was the embarkation and how long did it take you from the curb to the ship? It Speaker 3 (3:33) was like unbelievably smooth. I had heard the horror stories about Port Miami. You know, people talking about like hours and hours in traffic. And we got in our Uber and 12 minutes later, we pulled up to the cruise terminal. From when we got to the terminal to when we were boarding the ship was 12 minutes. And I was just shocked because we weren't taking escalators. We were having to take elevators because we had a baby with us. So they were pushing us towards elevators and things like that. And it was probably the smoothest embarkation I've ever experienced. We sailed out of the Royal Caribbean Terminal, which I think ICON had been there the day before, I believe, or something like that. It's a turmoil that's there for a huge number of people, but it was gorgeous. I absolutely loved it. So it was a really smooth process. Speaker 2 (4:32) What were your first impressions as you boarded Celebrity Beyond? Speaker 3 (4:37) You know, I was thinking through this a little bit. It's so interesting. YouTube videos of ships are such a blessing and a curse because I love the fact that weekly I was finding new videos about Celebrity Beyond on YouTube. It also meant, though, that some of the amazing like wow factors I had seen on YouTube, so I kind of expected. In saying that, it is so like YouTube videos do not do justice. to just the way it makes you feel when you walk in. And it feels so grand and so modern. Speaker 3 (5:15) It really took my breath away. And I was noticing from the moment we stepped on, it felt there was like a cleanliness that was felt even on day one, which is not necessarily, I've not always experienced that to be the case, but like a cleanliness plus a. Speaker 3 (5:32) Like the smell just still smelled new. And I know it's only a few years old. I think Beyond launched in November of 22. Speaker 2 (5:40) But Speaker 3 (5:40) it really smelled like a brand new cruise ship that could be on its second or third voyage. And it appeared as a brand new cruise ship. I mean, it felt like there was nowhere anywhere. And so it was just one of those things that as we were getting on, I felt that. And what was cool for me is to watch. My sister, this was her first time ever on a cruise. Speaker 2 (6:03) And Speaker 3 (6:03) to watch my parents and brother, who had only ever been on a ship that was from the early 90s, to watch their reaction as they stepped on. It was like, what is... This is a world that they had never experienced before, which was really awesome. So we loved it. It was fun to... Beyond has a ton of lighting in it that's unique, and it changes all the time. And a seven-month-old, she was loving it. And so it's like, you know, she was just constantly smiling, looking around at all the lights. And you could just tell. Obviously, I couldn't get in her mind and she couldn't speak. But it was just all of that kind of united into one spot blew me away with how the ship felt and all of that. So it was really neat. Speaker 2 (6:51) I love it. So you make your way to your stateroom. What kind of stateroom did you book for this seven-night cruise, and what did you think of it? We Speaker 3 (6:58) booked a sunset veranda. On the Edge-class ships with all the infinite verandas, we kind of were on the edge of where do we want to be. Man, I did not mean that pun. But, like, you know, do we want to do an infinite veranda, or do we want to try to get into porthole verandas, or... sunset brand us. And I guess like if we had gone up to like the retreat, we could have had actual balconies as well. But we kind of decided we wanted a real balcony with the door that we could walk out on. And so we made our way, we boarded the ship at 12, 15-ish. And when we got there, our rooms were ready to roll. Like we went to drop off our stuff and they were ready. And so We grabbed our keys and went in. And it was one of those rooms that you walked in and just kind of gasped at how beautiful it was. It just felt, it felt modern but practical, but not modern in a way so that it was, you know, sometimes I feel like modern can be uncomfortable, but this was not the case in this stateroom at all. It just felt perfect. And the size of the veranda with the sunset veranda, like I'd seen pictures and so I was expecting a little bit of a bigger balcony. But it was huge. And it felt like, I mean, it felt like we had our own full private deck. And then my parents had the Sunset Veranda right next to us. So we were able to open up the divider and just have this massive deck out behind us. But even like, even without just the deck size, it really felt like our room had a lot more space. You know, we had a crib in our room with the baby. and did not feel like we did not have space at all. I mean, like it was, we did not feel cramped even for a second. So that was really remarkable how nice that was. My sister-in-law, my brother and sister-in-law were in a porthole veranda. And my sister-in-law said that, I love this quote. I don't know if I've ever heard it on a cruise ship. She was like, there's more storage in our room than we have stuff to fill it. which I had never heard. I had never heard that in my life. And so I was like, sweet. Like that's, that's a sign of a well-designed stateroom in every way. One thing that I loved was the. Speaker 3 (9:21) I know I'm assuming on all the Edge-class ships, you can control all the things in your stateroom from your app, Speaker 2 (9:29) which Speaker 3 (9:30) I kind of thought it would be a little bit of a gimmick, except for that I never touch the thing on the wall. To be able to get in bed with the lights on and then hit the button to turn the light off was a game-changer. And change the temperature. I didn't realize how nice of a thing that would be. to have that. And I will say we have a 10-night sailing on Celebrity Eclipse coming up next year, and I will miss that. I'm already pretty sad about it, which was what it is. But it was a remarkable stateroom for sure. Speaker 2 (10:08) How about the space in the bathroom? It's a big question we get, especially on the Edge class ships. What do you think about the... Was the bathroom big enough? Did it offer enough space? It was absolutely big enough. I Speaker 3 (10:19) felt like the way they have it designed as well is plenty of space. And we were a little bit worried about that. I'll keep on going back to this. We had never sailed with the baby. And so having a baby, you know, when it's bath time for her, are we going to have space to give her a bath? And it was just like, it was plenty of space and well-designed. There was tons of storage in there. I think we were on like night three and I was like. Finding more storage that I hadn't seen before that was just really well designed So that the bathroom was really nice I will also say this but what I think sometimes when you have like an act facing veranda The idea of like the walk from the elevator is something to think about It took me I timed it one time took me about a minute and 25 seconds to edit like that was pushing a stroller pace to walk from the room to the elevator bay, so I felt like that was Well, you know while you miss being maybe a few doors down It was so quiet because you were at the end of the hallway and it was only really about a minute So it wasn't like it was actually taking a ton of extra time to get down there, which was really great I will say there was one negative that I didn't expect at all is that it was so hot I was nervous about the shade and obviously like we did a Caribbean sailing in August, so it was going to be hot no matter what. But what I didn't realize was the balconies were almost unusable. If there was any sun on them, they were almost unusable because it was so hot. Speaker 2 (11:54) And Speaker 3 (11:55) then, like, there was also because of you're sitting on the back of the ship, there was no breeze. And so it was like even in the evenings when the sun was down, it was still really stuffy and humid. And you just couldn't get anything away from that. So like there were maybe only a couple times where we were able to use the balcony as we wanted to. I took a pretty good nap on my lounger back there one morning. But like most of the time it was really, really hot, which was a little bit of a bummer for sure. Speaker 2 (12:28) Let's talk about the dining on board Celebrity Beyond here. We'll start at the buffet, the Ocean View Cafe. Did it ever feel too crowded during your cruise? And how was the quality of food in there? Speaker 3 (12:39) It Speaker 2 (12:39) did Speaker 3 (12:39) feel really crowded a lot of the time. And I don't know that there was ever a day where we couldn't find a seat, especially for a family of eight. I should throw that in there. But a lot of times it was like walking to the very back corners, like near the Ocean View Bar, I believe is