Crystal Cruises offers some of the world’s most amazing cruise packages. You can truly travel the world and see fantastic destinations and expand your own horizons. Best of all, they do so in an affordable manner, meaning that anybody is able to enjoy the holiday of a lifetime. Let’s take a look at their flagship cruise ships that you could be traveling on.

Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Serenity
Crystal entered negotiations with Chantiers de l’Atlantique, a French shipyard, to start construction on the Crystal Serenity. The order was place on the 7th of November 2000 with a Letter of Intent. The final contract was signed just over a month later and it was expected that the ship would be completed in June 2003, even though the original plans had allowed for half a year more. The Serenity was christened by Dame Julie Andrews on the 3rd of July 2003 in Southampton, UK.

The designer of the Serenity was Robert Tillberg, who worked together with the Garroni Designers from Italy, the Okada designers from Japan, the Nix Firestone designers from the USA and the Stephenjohn designers from Great Britain. As such, the Serenity is a true piece of international collaboration. The beautiful interior of the ship was creted by BBGM, who are based in New York.

Now completed and in action, the ship has 13 decks. Nine of these are accessible to passengers. She holds 1,070 passengers and has a crew of 655. This means there is more than one crew member for every two passengers, which allows for the luxurious feel of the entire cruise ship.

Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Symphony
The other cruise ship used by Crystal Cruises is the Crystal Symphony. Order for this ship took place in December of 1992, and she first started sailing in May 1995. In 2006, she was refitted at a cost of $23 million. Crystal Cruises has never invested so heavily in a refit, and it was clear that they intended to have the ship back in action as soon as possible. To achieve this, they added 750 external employees to the crew of 545 that was already there. The repairs and refit were completed in Norfolk, Virginia at the BAE Systems docks.

Another refit was completed in 2009, which cost even more money at $25 million. This was completed n Boston.

Finally, in 2012, the ship took part in an “extreme makeover”, which took two weeks to complete. All of the crew members took part, including external crew, which totalled 1,100 workers. This was completed in Germany at the Blohm + Voss docks. Unsurprisingly, the Symphony is now one of the most luxurious ships on the crystal line and the one most people would like to travel on.

She has 12 decks, eight of which are accessible to passengers. She can hold 922 passengers and has a crew of 545. These fantastic crew to passenger ratios allow people to travel in luxury and style, feeling as if they are waited on hand and food with all their needs catered for.