When Celebrity Cruises launches the 2,900-passenger Celebrity Edge in December 2018, just 18 months away, one of her signature spaces will be Eden, a garden-inspired lounge designed to serve various roles throughout the day. With its aft location, dramatic 32-foot-high glass wall overlooking the wake, and large floral displays, Eden will have a "living tree" made out of ferns and orchids, a "library" of plants, and more outward-facing glass than any other ship at sea.

The space will fuse dining and entertainment in new and creative ways. During the day there will be cooking workshops in the open show kitchen, and dishes will be garnished with herbs growing in the library. But most impressive is the new dinner concept that the line calls "performance dining." During these elaborate, fanciful meals dancers (called "Edenists") will serve meals that are integrated into their performances and bring guests into the show. (If you're thinking of the "Sleep No More" or "Queen of the Night" shows in New York City, you're on the right track.) The dancers interact with passengers in a variety of ways, and the creativity extends to the dishes themselves, which will include (for example) steak designed to be topped with sea salt that's micro-planed from a candle holder on the table, a chocolate cake surrounded by a white chocolate dome that cracks open when hot fudge is poured on top, and a playful sea urchin-topped seafood salad presented on a bowl of goldfish and topped with a smoke-inducing shaving of dry ice.