A Mile Above the World:
Champagne, Ice Fields, and Alaska in Retreat Class

The Base: Retreat Class in Alaska

Alaska by cruise ship is already a compelling proposition. Alaska by cruise ship in a Retreat Class Royal Suite is something else entirely — and the difference starts the moment you board.

Our suite was one of just a handful of Royal Suites aboard — fully retrofitted with Edge-class aesthetics that Celebrity has since carried forward across its Alaska fleet. Separate living room, dining area, floor-to-ceiling windows that in Alaska become the most important feature of the space. The morning we arrived in Skagway, I walked into that living room half-asleep and stopped cold. Mountains. Just mountains, close enough to feel like you could reach for them, filling every window.

The bedroom is all clean lines and quality linens. The marble bathroom — double vessel sinks, soaking tub, walk-in shower — is the kind of space that makes you actually look forward to getting ready for dinner. After five hours on a glacier, that soaking tub earns its real estate.

The Retreat: Alaska's Best Seat

Retreat Class comes with exclusive access to the Retreat Lounge — a sanctuary of quiet that the rest of the ship simply doesn't have. Comfortable seating, attentive service, and the kind of unhurried atmosphere that makes a long sea day feel like a privilege rather than a waiting room.

But the real story of Retreat Class in Alaska isn't the lounge. It's the deck.

Celebrity's Retreat deck — reserved exclusively for suite guests — becomes a different place entirely when you're threading through Southeast Alaska's Inside Passage. On the morning we approached Dawes Glacier, most of the ship was crowded along the rails below us. We had the forward Retreat deck nearly to ourselves: provided blankets, hot chocolate, champagne, and a spread of morning snacks, with nowhere to be and nothing between us and one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth.

Ice floated in the water below. Clouds clung to the cliff faces. The glaciated peaks of the Coast Mountains rose on both sides as we pushed deeper into Tracy Arm Fjord.

Luminae: The Table You Come Back To

Retreat Class comes with exclusive access to Luminae, Celebrity's suite-only restaurant, and over the course of this sailing it became our dining anchor. The room is quiet and gracious in a way the main dining venues simply can't be — fewer tables, unhurried service, and a kitchen that takes the work seriously.

The burrata was textbook good. The pork belly was more ambitious. The braised short rib over whipped potato with wild mushrooms was the standout of the sailing. Luminae deserves its own dedicated post — and it will get one. For now: if you're sailing Celebrity in a suite and skipping it, stop doing that.

But ... seriously there are so many spectacular restaurants onboard Celebrity you just can't miss — including Le Voyage, available on both Celebrity Ascent and Celebrity Xcel, which just garnered the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star award in February 2026, marking the first time a restaurant at sea has achieved this honor. If you're a foodie like me, don't miss out on this one. You can see my full review of Le Voyage on my post about the all-new Celebrity Xcel. There are restaurants across the fleet that will surely match whatever flavor you are looking for. But some mornings and evenings I want to just go light — which makes Raw on 5 (or Sushi on 5, depending on the ship) some of the tastiest, freshest sushi I've ever had. And in the morning, for a simple freshly made pastry, croissant, or cappuccino, a quick stop at Café al Bacio or Le Grand Bistro and I'm good to go. Bon Appétit!

The Glacier

Here's something worth knowing about how Celebrity structures an Alaska glacier day when you're in Retreat Class: it can start long before you ever set foot in port.

That morning — the same day we'd later board a helicopter onto Mendenhall — we were up before dawn on the Retreat deck as the ship threaded through Tracy Arm Fjord toward Dawes Glacier. Blankets provided. Hot chocolate and champagne on hand. The fjord walls rose on both sides, close enough to feel the scale press in, and the water below was scattered with ice. We reached Dawes as the morning light came up — watched it calve from the bow of the ship, standing on a deck that was ours alone.

Then we docked in Juneau. And did it all again, from the air and on foot.

The pre-departure briefing is the first moment it becomes real. Helmets, harnesses, crampons fitted to your boots, a quick tutorial on ice axe technique. The five of us stood there in our gear, looking at each other with a particular alertness that comes right before you do something you've genuinely never done before.

The flight takes only minutes, but it is disorienting in the best possible way. You lift off from Juneau, cross a ridge, and suddenly the Mendenhall opens up below you — a field of ice so vast and so impossibly blue-white that the scale doesn't register immediately. And there, tiny against all of it, a single orange tent. The guides' basecamp.

We landed on the ice.

That first step off the helicopter and onto the glacier is something I won't forget. The crampons bite into the ice immediately — there's a confidence to the grip you don't expect. The guides were already there, unhurried, completely at home in an environment that felt to the five of us like another planet. Their setup was minimal: one tent, essential equipment, everything necessary and nothing extra. There's something clarifying about that simplicity against a backdrop this enormous.

The trek itself ran five hours. Late August, and temperatures climbed to around 45 degrees at the warmest point of the day. Cold by most standards, but on a glacier in full sun — with ice reflecting light in every direction — it felt almost warm. We moved across ridges and channels carved by meltwater, around crevasses the guides navigated with practiced ease, up to vantage points where the scale of the glacier and our own smallness within it became impossible to deny.

The color of glacial ice is something photographs don't fully capture. It's not white. In the deep channels and shadows it runs a saturated, almost electric blue — the compressed color of centuries of snowfall. When the sun hit the surface directly, the entire field seemed to glow.

We were five people who had never done anything like this. By the end of five hours, none of us wanted it to be over.

The Contrast That Makes Alaska Work

Here's what I want to say to anyone planning an Alaska cruise and wondering how adventurous to go with the shore excursions: lean in.

The combination — Retreat Class luxury as your daily baseline, genuine wilderness adventure as your excursion — is not a contradiction. It's the point. Coming back from five hours on a glacier, stripping off the gear, stepping into a marble shower, and walking to Luminae for dinner — that contrast is precisely what makes an Alaska sailing at this level feel complete. Neither half works as well without the other.

Six friends. One of us had a brilliant day in Juneau. Five of us walked across ancient ice in the Alaskan wilderness with ice axes in hand. All six reconvened at Luminae that evening, and the conversation didn't stop for three hours.

That's the trip. That's what Celebrity's Alaska itineraries, done at this level, can actually be.