| IMO | 9192387 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 90,940 GT |
| Length | 294.0 m |
| Beam | 32 m |
| Service speed | 24 knots |
| Builder | Chantiers de l'Atlantique |
| Hull number | T31 |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Maiden voyage | 2001 |
| Class | Millennium-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Celebrity Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Celebrity Summit; Summit |
Overview
Celebrity Summit is the third ship of Celebrity Cruises' Millennium class, delivered in 2001 from Saint-Nazaire, France. She entered service at a moment when Celebrity, the premium brand within the Royal Caribbean group, was defining itself against both mass-market contemporaries and the older ocean-liner tradition it liked to invoke. At 90,940 GT in the dataset and 294 metres long, she was large by the standards of 2001, yet she has come to be read as a mid-sized, comparatively spacious ship as newer vessels have grown far larger.
Her technical distinction matters as much as her size. Celebrity Summit — originally named simply Summit — was one of the first cruise ships powered by gas turbines, using a combined gas turbine and steam turbine arrangement driving azimuthing pods. That machinery choice, unusual then and still uncommon in cruising, gave the Millennium class a contemporary engineering identity to match its contemporary hotel design.
Her cultural signature was more backward-looking: like her sisters, she carried panels and a bronze statue from the French liner Normandie in a restaurant named for her — gas turbines below, 1930s liner art above.
Key specifications
The dataset records 90,940 GT, 294.0 m length, 32.2 m beam and 24.5 knots speed, with hull number T31 at Chantiers de l'Atlantique. Wikipedia's infobox gives closely related figures — 90,940 GT, 294 m length and 32.00 m beam — and a speed of 24 knots.
The dataset leaves passenger capacity and crew blank. Published sources give 2,158 passengers at lower berths, rising after later refits, and a crew of about 999. Those figures are not dataset figures and should be read as published-source figures. Tonnage is gross tonnage, a measure of enclosed volume, not weight. The ship has 11 passenger-accessible decks in published descriptions.
Propulsion, as described on Wikipedia, is by two General Electric LM2500+ gas turbines providing a combined 50,000 kW, driving two Rolls-Royce Mermaid azimuthing pods, with three bow thrusters. That podded, gas-turbine plant is the defining engineering fact of the class.
Design and construction
All four Millennium-class ships were built by Chantiers de l'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire. Celebrity Summit followed Celebrity Millennium (2000) and Celebrity Infinity (2001), and preceded Celebrity Constellation (2002). The dataset gives her build cost in no field; Wikipedia records a cost of US$350 million.
The class was Celebrity's first wholly new design of the Royal Caribbean era. Layout followed the lead ship: multi-deck atrium, two-level dining room aft, theatre forward, and a spa and pool complex reflecting the era's wellness emphasis.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The ship was launched on 9 March 2001, according to Wikipedia, within the dataset's launch year of 2001. She was delivered in late summer / autumn 2001 — sources differ between a delivery date of 31 August 2001 and acquisition in October 2001 — and began her inaugural season from Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, on 1 October 2001, with an 11-night Western Caribbean sailing, according to Cruise Industry News reporting of the 25th anniversary.
She was named Summit at entry into service, without the Celebrity prefix. The prefix was added in 2008, when she became Celebrity Summit, aligning her name with the branding used across the fleet. The dataset's names list records only Celebrity Summit; the original name is documented in her own article and is included in the career table below.
No separate naming ceremony detail is reliably recorded in the sources used for this guide, and none is invented here.
Career by operator
Celebrity Summit has had one operator throughout her career. Her career is therefore a story of deployment and refit, not of resale.
| Name | Operator | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Summit | Celebrity Cruises | 2001–2008 |
| Celebrity Summit | Celebrity Cruises | 2008–present |
In her early seasons she sailed from Fort Lauderdale in winter and repositioned for Alaska, Panama Canal and Hawaii work until a first Mediterranean season in 2008, with Bermuda, Canada and New England work later — recorded as history, not present itineraries.
Registry changed over time, as recorded on Wikipedia: Liberia (Monrovia) in 2001–2002, Bahamas (Nassau) in 2002–2009, and Malta (Valletta) from 2009. Registry changes of this kind are administrative and do not imply a change of operator.
Onboard character
The Millennium character was premium restraint plus liner nostalgia: a high space ratio, two-level dining room, large spa and glass-roofed solarium — an adult-leaning, food- and wellness-aware product, not the waterslide-led model that later dominated.
The Normandie material was the most discussed design gesture. Several panels from the 1935 French liner and the bronze figure La Normandie, purchased by Celebrity from the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, were installed in the specialty restaurant named for the liner. Wikipedia notes the statue was removed from the main dining area during the March 2019 refurbishment. The gesture belonged to a brief period when new cruise ships explicitly quoted the golden age of ocean travel in their interiors, even as their machinery — gas turbines and pods — was entirely contemporary.
This guide does not list current restaurants, bars or amenities, which change with each refit and are not evergreen.
Major refits and incidents
Two refits define her material history. In 2012 she was refitted at a reported cost of US$16 million, with extra cabins created and features aligned with Celebrity's newer Solstice class — a programme often described as “Solsticizing.” Wikipedia records that this work raised double occupancy to 2,158 and her tonnage to the 90,940 GT figure in the dataset.
In March 2019 she spent about three weeks in dry dock under Celebrity's fleet-wide Revolution modernisation programme. All existing cabins and suites were refurbished and about 30 new cabins added, according to Wikipedia and contemporary reporting.
The Mermaid pods proved unreliable early in the class's career, a well-documented teething problem for early podded cruise ships, later mitigated by upgrades and operating experience. In March 2017 the ship had an unscheduled dry dock for a propulsion issue, with one sailing cancelled and another shortened.
Two other incidents are on the public record. In summer 2006 she arrived in Seward, Alaska, with a dead humpback whale on her bow, reported by CBS News. On 3 April 2010 a passenger who went overboard survived after swimming for many hours to Cayo Lobos, off Fajardo, Puerto Rico, as reported in contemporary coverage. Both are recorded here as reported events, not as findings about cause.
Sister ships and class
The Millennium class comprises four ships, all built at Saint-Nazaire: Celebrity Millennium (2000), Celebrity Infinity (2001), Celebrity Summit (2001) and Celebrity Constellation (2002). All share the gas-turbine, podded-propulsion plant, similar dimensions around 90,000–91,000 GT, and the liner-memorial restaurant concept, each ship commemorating a different historic vessel.
The class was succeeded in Celebrity service by the larger Solstice class from 2008, but the Millennium ships remained in the fleet through successive modernisations, a longevity that reflects both their sound basic design and the premium niche they occupy below the size of the newest ships.
Fate and where she is now
The dataset records Celebrity Summit as active and operating, originally named Summit, and that remains her documented position: in service with her original operator, under the name she has carried since 2008. No sale, renaming beyond the 2008 prefix change, or withdrawal is recorded in the sources used. Beyond that recorded status, this directory makes no claim about present position or future deployment.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Summit