Celebrity Cruises is making changes to the food and entertainment on Celebrity Eclipse in order to appeal to the British market.
There will be more vegetarian and Indian-style options in the main dining room, as well as British favourites such as Yorkshire pudding and gravy, beef stew and mushy peas.
Bistro on Five will be serving Indian-style crêpes, soups and paninis, while the Oceanview self-service restaurant will have a choice of Indian dishes as well as steak and kidney pies, pasties and pork pies.
A new West End tribute show, Ovations, will feature songs from We Will Rock You and Les Miserables; there will be a Union Jack party with darts games; and the Sky Lounge will become the Sky Pub on selected nights and serve British beers.
British chefs will offer on-board demonstrations, kettles are being put in all cabins and BBC Prime and Sky News will be available on the TVs.
President and chief executive officer Dan Hanrahan said the British-style food will be served in addition to the usual menu items and are designed to give the ship a British feel.
He said: “We are not taking anything away, but we wanted to offer some British additions so our UK passengers feel at home on board.”
Celebrity Eclipse is the third in a series of 2,850-passenger Solstice-class ships to be launched by Celebrity. The vessel will be based in Southampton for summer 2010 and is the first the cruiseline has based in the UK to sail for the British market.
The ship will be sailing a two-night roundtrip inaugural cruise from Hamburg for the German trade from April 16-18.It repositions to Southampton between April 18-20 and will be sailing two, two-night inaugural cruises for the British trade before its first revenue cruise, a four-night mini-break to Le Havre, for excursions to Paris, departing on April 26.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line associate vice-president and general manager UK and Ireland Jo Rzymowska said travel agents who are interested in joining the cruise from Hamburg to Southampton should contact Celebrity.