Cabin Review

Cabin 9626 is a nicely appointed cabin on the port side, good for a family of 4. Fit and finish was excellent. Everything worked well. No rattles or squeaks. Sliding glass door to the balcony was heavy, but solid and locked well and tight, completely shutting out the outside world. This cabin is located officially aft but very close to mid ship, and is surrounded on all sides by other cabins, so it's quiet. Deck 9's hallways run bow to stern so it's easy to get to everywhere on the boat without going outside when it's cold/rainy.I was pleasantly surprised that the room has THREE available 120VAC plugs (in addition to TV and hairdryer!), so I didn't need a power strip, although I used an extension cord so all the cellphones could be recharged on the top shelf above the TV away from the sticky fingers of younger family members. They confiscated my festive LED x-mas lights on the first day and left a letter citing fire hazard (LEDs a fire hazard? really!?) but we got them back on the last day. Fridge is reasonably sized but thermo-electric so takes about 24 hours to cool down anything not already cold. Good storage in the cabin, so we could stow everything for the entire family under the queen bed or in the drawers/closet/shelves. The cabin comes with the standard hotel-issue small coffee maker, which was nice to be able to make coffee/tea/hot-chocolate after hours when the buffets are closed -- which surprised us. Unlike Carnival which has juice/coffee/cocoa availalbe 24hrs, NCL shuts down over night!Heat/AC in the room functioned well, and highest and lowest settings were able to make the room too-hot or too-cold and we kept it within one or two clicks of middle most of the time. It has a timed "quick cool" setting which I'm sure is quite useful when the boat winters in Miami.The cabin has a pull out 3rd "twin" and a drop down 4th sub-twin-sized upper bunk. Both are perfect for children, but would be small/uncomfortable for large adults. A little challenging to get to the balcony when the top bunk is down as the upper and lower bunks overlap the "desk" which makes for a bit of gymnastics, but that's the price you pay for 4 peas in a pod. The bathroom was well designed with solid frosted glass doors for both the head and shower which allowed up to 3 people to be in the bathroom at the same time (shower, sink, head) with moderate family-privacy. There was excellent ventilation in both the shower and head stalls. No odors at all and even after four showers in a row it dried out completely within an hour. Even towels hung up on the clothesline inside the shower stall would dry out in a 1/2 day. Like with the rest of the room, everything was well designed, well built, and fit and finish were excellent with no rattles or squeaks. It seems that nearly everything was designed for quietness. With the door closed to the bathroom the normally volcanic blast of the uber-toilet would not wake fellow cabin-mates. We didn't even know the adjacent rooms were occupied until we saw them in the hallway!The balcony had two standard chairs and a small table, with floor-to ceiling sliding glass door to the cabin that opened 4' wide. The balcony had a glass front which the cabin steward cleaned daily. However the height of the teak railing was such that it perfectly obstructed my sight line to the horizon when sitting in a chair, so I had to either sit up with perfect posture or slouch uncomfortably to have a good view while sitting. This was the only design issue about the cabin that fell short of perfection.All in all a great cabin for location, features, and comfort! If we were going to do this again, we would probably pick a deck 9 cabin in the same spot but on the starboard side for the northbound coastline and southbound sunset views. Port side still had island views up the inside passage and west bound sunset views on departure day, so it's not really that much of a difference.