Design Time Web Extra: Best Cruise Ship Suites

Our favorite features in the Best Cruise Ship Suites at sea.

As if it’s not enough to have suites the size of apartments, today’s cruise ship suites go above and beyond sheer size with their amazing added amenities. From incredible outdoor spaces to personal touches by cruise line owners themselves, here are 10 sweet suite features.

Regent Suite

Regent Seven Seas Cruises’ Seven Seas Explorer

Best Feature: The showstopper: a gilded master bathroom with heated-tiled lounge chairs, a sauna, a steam room, plenty of gleaming white marble, a giant gilded mirror, and amber-hued stone that’s backlit to golden perfection.

Owner’s Suites

Oceania Cruises’ Riviera and Marina

Best Feature: The custom-polished nickel light fixtures with teardrop glass balls are so pretty and jewelry-inspired you’ll want to buy one for your home, but it’s the Jacuzzi and TV-outfitted wraparound deck — the perfect place to watch new ports come into view — that makes this list.

Grand Wintergarden Suites

Seabourn’s Seabourn Encore

  Best Feature: These suites’ glass-enclosed solariums, complete with a day bed and soaking tub, are the perfect place to sip Champagne at sunrise with caviar-topped eggs or at sunset with caviar-topped canapés — all of which is included in the fare, of course.

 

Garden Villas

Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Dawn

Best Feature: Sure, they have grand pianos and giant flat-screen TVs, but it’s the outdoor space —which stretches over several levels — that blows every other outdoor space at sea out of the water. On one level, you’ll find a palapa-topped Jacuzzi tub and open-air dining area; on another, a giant sun terrace with day beds and panoramic views of the ocean.

Owner’s Suite

Viking Ocean Line’s Viking Star

Best Feature: In the bathroom, you’ll find a very Scandinavian feature — a private two-person sauna designed with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea.

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection Suite

Celebrity Reflection

Best Feature: True, the suite also has a tub on the balcony, but we suspect you won’t be able to resist the unique experience of showering each day — admiring the rolling sea beneath you — in the glass-enclosed shower that’s cantilevered off the side of the ship.

 

Royal Loft Suite with Balcony

Royal Caribbean International’s Anthem of the Seas

Best Feature: The private balcony has a whirlpool tub overlooking the aft end of the ship, so you can toast to your vacation as you admire the ship’s wake.

 

 

 

Queens Grill Grand Duplexes

Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2

Best Feature: Make an entrance through the decadently long hallway to an open living room with a half-circle staircase that’s lined with frosted glass and leads dramatically upstairs to the bedroom.

 

 

 

Crystal Penthouse with Verandah

Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Serenity

Best Feature: Just as in a new marriage, the best parts here are the surprises: Look for illuminated rods in the custom walk-in closet and a bidet in the master bathroom.

 

 

Balsorano Owner’s Suite

Silversea Cruises’ Silver Muse

Best Feature: We love the selections made by Manfredi Lefebvre, the luxury line’s Italian chairman, which include some of his favorite books (The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century by Jules Verne, and After the Victorians: The World Our Parents Knew by A.N. Wilson) as well as family photographs, sculptures from his private collection, and a bottle of his favorite vintage port.

 

— Sherri Eisenberg

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^{Photos: Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Oceania Cruises, Seabourn, Norwegian Cruise Line, Viking Ocean Line, Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean International, Cunard Line, Crystal Cruises, Silversea Cruises}