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Celebrity Cruises has entered into a preliminary contract with Meyer Werft of Germany to build a fifth of the new Solstice Class cruise ships scheduled to debut late this year.

The first of these ships, Celebrity Solstice, is scheduled to join the fleet this fall, and the others are scheduled to be added at yearly intervals.

The Solstice ships, significantly larger than Celebrity's current Millennium-class cruise ships, will accommodate 2,850 passengers in 1,425 cabins. More than 90 percent of all cabins are outside cabins, and 90 percent of these will have balconies.

These ships presumably will split the year between Europe and the Caribbean, because they will be too large to fit through the Panama Canal until the expansion currently underway is completed in 2014.