"This a live testing environment."

Those words transport me to Salisbury Plain, the UK's largest military training ground. I don't really know why, I have zero experience of being a soldier.

Thankfully, I'm actually sitting on a comfy swivel chair in TTG's new office near London Bridge wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset worth more than £3,000.

I obviously don't tell Celebrity Cruises PR Ben Montgomery that bit about Salisbury Plain. He has been to Miami, no less, for lengthy training sessions to ensure he can give agents and interested journalists, like me, a glimpse of life onboard one of Celebrity River Cruises' ships. He has a script and everything. It's very impressive.

We're just over a year away from Celebrity Compass's maiden voyage from Budapest when Celebrity pays TTG a visit.

Celebrity River Cruises – everything agents need to know

We start our virtual tour in Cafe Al Bacio, which appears across Celebrity's ocean-going fleet and now on Celebrity Compass, too.

I've enjoyed a coffee in Cafe Al Bacio onboard several of Celebrity's Edge-series ships, but it's brilliant to see the gold scales synonymous with the venue through the headset.

Ben tells me later much of the onboard layout has been decided with lead designers wearing these headsets in The Cave – Royal Caribbean Group's virtual reality, computer-automated design hub on South Florida.

It's where many innovative ideas for both onboard and on-land experiences are developed. For example, Legend of the Seas, Royal Caribbean International's newest Icon-class ship, was designed in The Cave.

Ben says designers wearing the headsets will request various changes while team members take notes based on what they hear from their headset-wearing colleague.  

Celebrity Cruises

From Cafe Al Bacio, we pop out onto the sun deck, which is still yet to be given a name by Celebrity's design team. But it is nonetheless a stunning space like no other, set against the fictional European city backdrop on this ship tour

Before you ask how I knew the city was fictional, it had nothing to do with the high water levels I clock through the headset. I just managed to sneak in a question while Ben delivers his script.

Interestingly, it seems Celebrity has opted against having a pool in the middle of the sundeck, but Ben stresses: "This is a concept visualisation and design recreation designed to bring the experience to life. It may evolve."

Celebrity Cruises

We then shift over to the stern to see the Sunset Bar which, along with the Martini Bar, are other features familiar with Celebrity's ocean cruise passengers which are being replicated on the line's river ships. Here, there's a plunge pool for guests, which sits snugly next to the bar area.

At this point, Ben, who has quite literally stuck to the script throughout, is keen to have some fun. He throws me up in the air high above Celebrity Compass.

It makes my tummy flip and for a second or two, I feel a bit queasy. Thankfully, Ben quickly brings me back down onto the ship – I can see his cheeky smile through his headset.

Something tells me he won't be doing that when he takes these headsets on the road to the Clia River Cruise Forum this autumn. But agents can nonetheless look forward to a real treat when they get their hands on the tech – and their eyes on the product.