Celestyal Journey

Overview

Celestyal Journey is a ship of four names and at least four distinct careers. Completed in 1994 for Holland America Line as Ryndam, she was the third of the line's Statendam (S) class — the ships that carried a famous Dutch-American brand into the modern cruise era. After twenty-one years with Holland America she transferred within the Carnival group to P&O Cruises Australia as Pacific Aria, survived a sale to a cruise line that collapsed before it could sail her, spent the pandemic years laid up under the name Aegean Goddess, and returned to service in 2023 with the Greek line Celestyal Cruises under her present name. Few active hulls illustrate the second-hand cruise-ship market as completely as this one: the same steel, repeatedly rebranded for entirely different passengers.

Key specifications

The dataset records 55,877 GT and a length of 219.0 m — the 55,877 GT figure is also the one in Celestyal's own destination-guide material, which likewise gives a capacity of 1,260 and a crew of 597. Wikipedia's infobox gives variant figures of 55,819 GT and 219.4 m, and a beam of 30.8 m, draught of 7.71 m, a speed of 22 knots, capacity of 1,258 passengers and a crew of 602; the dataset figures govern the spec box. As built for Holland America she was a mid-sized ship by 1990s standards — large enough for the line's worldwide itineraries, small enough for the ports that have since defined her later careers. The dataset leaves several fields blank for this hull (beam, capacity, crew, speed); they are omitted from the spec box rather than filled from secondary sources.

Design and construction

She was built by Fincantieri in Italy as hull number 5883, ordered in November 1989 alongside her class. She was launched on 1 November 1993 and completed and delivered to Holland America Line on 9 September 1994 — both dates are given in Wikipedia's infobox and in the Dover Ferry Photos ship history. The dataset likewise records 1993 for launch and 1994 for maiden voyage. The Statendam class was Holland America's first generation of purpose-built modern cruise ships in a decade, designed in the line's traditional mould: a long, low profile, a single funnel bearing the company crest, teak promenades and interiors decorated with Dutch colonial and maritime art — a floating statement that the line's heritage was its product.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

She took the name Ryndam, a name with deep Holland America lineage, borne by earlier ships in the fleet. Her maiden cruise departed Fort Lauderdale on 20 October 1994, as both the Dover Ferry Photos history and the Castles of the Seas Ryndam history record — the latter adding that she was named at Fort Lauderdale by Madeleine Arison before that first Caribbean cruise. Each subsequent identity brought its own naming ritual: as Pacific Aria she was officially named at Fort Denison, Sydney, on 25 November 2015, in a joint ceremony with her sister Pacific Eden — Jessica Mauboy was godmother to Pacific Aria and Kate Ritchie to Pacific Eden, per Wikipedia and the Dover history — before departing on her maiden voyage for the Australian brand. Her renaming to Celestyal Journey in 2023 was accompanied by an extensive refurbishment of €20 million ($21.4 million), reported by Cruise & Ferry when she embarked on her first Celestyal cruise, the seven-night Idyllic Aegean from Piraeus on 2 September 2023.

Career by operator

Two footnotes complete the record. First, the dataset's operator history does record all four operating periods — Holland America Line; P&O Cruises Australia; Seajets; Celestyal Cruises — matching the researched history above. Second, a fifth name was planned but never sailed: Cruise & Maritime Voyages bought the ship in 2019 to become Ida Pfeiffer from 2021, but CMV entered administration in July 2020, the plan was abandoned, and P&O instead sold her to Seajets in October 2020. In December 2023, shortly after joining Celestyal, she was also chartered to Germany's Phoenix Reisen, as Wikipedia records: she was used for the first section of Phoenix Reisen's world voyage, ending at Cape Town, which had originally been intended for Phoenix Reisen's MS Amera, held up at the shipyard.

Onboard character

As Ryndam, her character was Holland America's: formal evenings, a wraparound teak promenade deck, a two-level show lounge and dining room, and public rooms hung with art and antiques — cruising as the line had sold it for a century, updated for the 1990s. The Australian refit of 2015 deliberately broke that mould, restyling her for a younger, casual local market with new bars and eateries; ship histories note, for example, that the atrium's Venetian-style fountain installed under Holland America was removed under P&O. Under Celestyal she was refurbished again toward a mid-sized, destination-focused Greek product with an increased share of premium and balcony cabins, as the line stated at acquisition. The constant through all three characters is the hull's scale: 1,260 guests in Celestyal's own material (1,258 passengers in Wikipedia's infobox) is, by modern standards, an intimate ship.

Major refits and incidents

Documented refit milestones include her Signature of Excellence update under Holland America in 2004 — she was the first ship updated under that programme, and was re-named in San Diego on 20 October 2004 by her original godmother, Madeleine Arison, after new spaces including the Culinary Arts Center and Explorations Café were added, per the Castles of the Seas history — a substantial refit for her P&O Australia debut in 2015, a twelve-day refit in Singapore in 2018 that applied the fleet's Southern Cross hull livery, and the 2023 Celestyal refurbishment. Her career's defining "incident" was corporate rather than nautical: the collapse of Cruise & Maritime Voyages in 2020 left her sold but operator-less mid-pandemic, leading to lay-up first in Asia and then in Greek waters — the Dover Ferry Photos history records that she left Heraklion under tow by the tug Christos XLIII on 21 June 2022, arriving at Lavrio on 23 June 2022 — before the Celestyal purchase rescued her from the fate that overtook many laid-up ships of her age, the scrapyard.

Sister ships and class

The Statendam class (S class) comprised four Fincantieri-built ships for Holland America: Statendam (1993), Maasdam (1993), Ryndam (1994) and Veendam (1996). All four eventually left the Holland America fleet for other operators — a measure of how thoroughly Carnival redistributed its 1990s tonnage in the 2010s. Her closest companion in this story is Statendam, which transferred to P&O Australia alongside her as Pacific Eden; the two were named together in Sydney in 2015.

Fate and where she is now

The dataset lists her status as active, operated by Celestyal Cruises, and her fate as operating — originally the Ryndam, formerly Pacific Aria and Aegean Goddess. The researched record supports that: after a career that has already outlasted two of her operators' plans for her, she is a working cruise ship again under her fourth name. This guide makes no claim about her present deployment, which is outside the evergreen scope of this directory.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Aria, https://www.doverferryphotosforums.co.uk/mv-ryndam-past-and-present/, https://travelbulletin.com.au/newsroom/celestyal-cruises-adds-former-po-australia-ship/