A review of the Celebrity Flora: a magnificent ship in the Galapagos

The Celebrity Flora is a cruise ship with the Celebrity Cruises line and is based in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. This post is to share our experiences of our time on the Celebrity Flora: a magnificent ship in the Galapagos while touring these islands in September 2024. For information on the cruise itself in the Galapagos Island reference our post on our adventures in the Galapagos. Coming soon – our mini-guide to Quito, Ecuador!

The Celebrity Flora is a ‘fit-for-purpose’ cruise ship, built specifically for the Galapagos Islands. It is intended to minimize its impact on its surrounding environment, and to give passengers on board the best experience while touring the islands. The Galapagos Islands are not close to the Ecuadorian mainland, and as such have their own ecosystem and requirements. Travel to the Galapagos, and what you can do there is quite regulated. More information on what boats and tourists need to comply with is available here. From a restriction on plastics to no non-endemic fruit, all providers of services in the islands have to be aware and comply with these rules and regulations. The Flora, as an all-suite mega-yacht, delivers on a superior level of service while meeting and exceeding these requirements.

Celebrity Flora – the ship

Details on the cruise ship itself are available here.

The layout of the Flora is ultra comfortable and tastefully casual. It is decorated with taupe and light blue colours along with steel and wood accents. It is easy on the eye, and there are no jarring colours, just colours to align with the environment which surrounds it. The common areas for passengers, such as the restaurants, lounge areas, and external decks are all tastefully appointed and flow easily into each other. There was obviously some thought given to passenger flow. For example, when you go for tender assignment in the morning for an excursion, you meet in the Discovery Lounge. When your tender number is called, you walk out the sliding doors from the lounge to the Sunset Lounge area and to the top of the stairs to walk down to the Marina. Once there, you check out from the ship, secure your life jacket, and prepare yourself to board the tenders. Then, when you return from your excursion, you remove your life jacket, wash your shoes, your feet, your wet gear, etc, then walk up the stairs to the Sunset Lounge. Here there are drinks and snacks following excursions. Then into the Discovery Lounge and onwards to suites.

There’s a fitness room onboard – really!

Well appointed on the fifth floor, the fitness room is sufficient in size for the 100 passengers onboard – and then some! To be honest, we went, took a quick look at it saw that it had a lot of equipment and then promptly noticed how incredibly clean and new looking all of the equipment was! We didn’t use the gym while on our trip because we were getting more than enough exercise outdoors. If you do want to use it, it had a lot – free weights and machines.

The spa gave relaxing massages 

We did have an opportunity to use the Spa on a couple of occasions. It provides massages and is just one room. really just to get massages. To be honest this isn’t that type of cruise – only massages are really needed. The massages are welcome after all the hiking, snorkelling and kayaking. 30-minute increments can be booked through Guest Relations (Level 3) and are well worth it. We did two one-hour sessions and enjoyed them very much.

Seaside Restaurant does it all – extremely well

This is your go-to point for all your meals. It is used by all passengers on board as well as the officers on board. In the back lefthand corner there is a buffet area which is used in the mornings and at lunch. Make sure that if you see something you like that you indulge then and there because it may not come back on the menu!

Breakfasts

Mornings were standard fare – made to order omelettes and eggs, various viennoiserie pastries, bacon, sausages, oatmeal with the fixings, and so on. We opted to have our breakfasts in our suite. You place your order on your door by 11pm in the evening for the next morning. Well done every time!

Lunches

For lunches, there was a theme for the buffet each day. For example, Ecuadorian, Italian, Mexican, etc.. These were extremely popular and included all the usual favourites and some new ones as well.

Dinner

In the evening, the Seaside switches to menu service. There are really three sections to the menu. On the left-hand side are everyday available items, like shrimp cocktail and steak. The main menu – which changed everyday – had a few starters – soups included. For mains, there was a red meat option, chicken and/or pork option, fish option and a couple other items including pasta. We asked for recommendations on some of the dishes which were new to us and the staff were extremely helpful in guiding us. There has been lots of comments online recently about the steak meat onboard. On the evening we had steak we asked what he (Jorge) would recommend. He suggested the tenderloin rather than the stripling and it was fantastic – like butter. We also immensely enjoyed the Ecuadorian beef stews they had in the lunch buffets. The desserts available were plentiful and included everything you could think of. We enjoyed a lot of ice cream.

A note on the liquor and wine

The liquor service on board was better than anticipated. To be honest based on prior Celebrity experiences, I was anticipating a very standard provision of both and didn’t really anticipate a whole lot of variety. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see some very high end liquors. Ron Zacapa was available as well as some excellent vodka and gin. There was some very tasty white and red Chilean and Argentinian wine. The staff were very accommodating to give you whatever you asked for. This is one of the great benefits of an all-inclusive cruise. A huge thank you to Jorge who made absolutely fantastic cosmopolitans as well as ensuring that we always had the red wine we were looking for at our dinner table every night.

The suites were amazing and full of conveniences

When Celebrity Flora entered the market, it was one of the first ships in fleet with infinite balconies. Not sure if we would like them, we booked the Sky Suite with Veranda. This suite has a regular deck. An opportunity came up a couple of months before our cruise to move up based on a bid process. We were successful and moved up to the Ultimate Sky Suite with Infinite Veranda (check out the video tour below). There is only one of these on board, but while it has a bathtub, which is what my husband was gunning for, it had an infinite balcony. The experience would be one different than what we were anticipating as we wouldn’t have an outdoor area in our suite; however, we would have a bath.

The Royal Suite #502

Once we got on board, we enquired after the availability of a Royal Suite, which is the next level up. It has an outdoor balcony along with the bathtub. There is two of these suites onboard. One was available and we moved up to that suite – Royal Suite #502. Check out the below video of our tour through this suite so you can see what is available. It was well worth it and well appointed just below the bridge and we were able to see so much of what was happening by hanging out on our deck. The other thing the deck allowed us to do was get some warm air into the air conditioned space and take some naps in the deck chairs!

The service onboard

We typically always experience great service. We try to be cheerful and polite, and we have found that this works well for us. On this cruise on the Flora, this was no exception. Everyone was top-notch. They knew our names, that we had been on a particular excursion, and they made sure that everything was ‘just so’ for us. We like to have a social with our new friends towards the end of the cruise and we did this on the Flora. Three evenings before the end of the cruise, we asked for some wine and cheese in our cabin prior to the 7pm excursion briefing. Their preparations commenced early afternoon with an ice bucket for the champagne and white wines, then continued until 6:15pm when our new friends joined us! So much food for the 6 of us, but, definitely enjoyed by all of us. This cruise ship is truly a magnificent ship in the Galapagos!

Staff who went above and beyond

Some of the staff definitely and noticeably went above and beyond in our estimation. These included the aforementioned Jorge; Andres who always had a smile with my morning Americano; Javier, who smoothly poured my Baileys into my morning cappuccino (after the first morning he ‘understood’ me!)’; Michael at lunchtime in the Seaside Restaurant who was always cheerful and asked how our day was going; Juan Carlos who ensured our room and needs were met in a timely and efficient manner; Polit, the 3rd Officer who gave an above expectations tour of the bridge with the Captain helping us to take our pictures!; Boris, whose enthusiasm, positivism and daily smiles were incredibly contagious; our naturalists without whom we would have been sitting adrift at sea – especially Elmer, Veronica, Inrry, and Faryde; our amazing tender pilots – they kept us safe, moderately dry (what’s a tender without some spray on a warm day?) and on course; and, Julia and Gina, who as the Hotel Director and Guests Relations Manager respectively very efficiently met our needs and ensured no question went unanswered!

It may sound like almost everyone, and indeed we could pretty well name everyone as we almost met and spoke with all of them!

Overall Experience

Superlative. Amazing. Lived up to our expectations and more. Highly recommend the Celebrity Flora and their ‘hand holding service’ which made this luxury expedition phenomenal.