Cabin Review

Cabin 1150 and aft mini suite, our first time sailing in an aft cabin. I was so looking forward to sailing aft and thought I would love it. Well after 1 week aft I'm really torn. Cabins were ready by 2 pm and our bags were already there when we got back from the muster drill.

The positives: the view is spectacular, the sound is so soothing from the props, louder than I expected. No wind! This was key on this cruise because our weather was lousy for most of the cruise but the aft balcony had zero wind and allowed us to enjoy being out there much more than a traditional balcony. Balcony was larger than the side balconies but not as big as deck 10 and 9. It had the traditional two chairs and small table. The mini suite is the perfect size for the 4 of us. Traditional bath room setup was well laid out, hair dryer was great, and there was plenty of storage in the room. Cabin steward, Loey, was polite, efficient and unobtrusive, towel animals every night except the first and latitudes mints left on our pillow every night. Zero noise from the sides, we heard nothing all week from our neighbors. I purposely booked this cabin because it had a suite on one side with no balcony and therefore only one balcony next to it. It was nice to be able to lean out and look left without worrying if there were people on the balcony next to us.

The negatives (minor): mattresses definitely slump a bit and were a bit uncomfortable even with a topper. Also I'm 6' and my feet were over the edge. One thing that this mini didn't have is the curtain to separate the beds like we had in our Dawn mini. There was a Velcro strip down the ceiling but we asked our cabin steward and he said there is no curtain. I read all the complaints about the mini tubs and thought people were just being picky. Well I found out the hard way during my first shower. I turned on the shower put my left foot in and boom it slid out until my right knee slammed into the outside of the tub and stopped my momentum. What had happened is my left foot was on a curved part of the tub and it was wet and I lost my footing. The tub/shower has very little flat surface area so be careful when getting in and out. Its also a high step over, the top of the tub was above my knee. Needless to say it only happened once, clearly was due to user error and was fine the rest of the week after I learned my lesson. Pillows were like bricks. After the first night we requested feather pillows and our wonderful room steward, Loey, provided them before our second night. He also replaced a broken chair that we didn't even know about.

The biggest disappointment we had about sailing aft is that the bed is east/west not north south. Normally we sleep like babies and the rougher the seas the better but not so in the aft. Because the bed is east west we were not lulled to sleep by the waves and really missed the motion of the ocean.

The biggest complaint about the cabin is noise from above. Around 5 or 530 every morning we were woken up by noise from above. It sounded like chairs being slammed and dragged around in the Great Outdoors buffet area. The big issue is that it wasn't for a min or two, it lasted up to 40 mins most mornings. Once it stopped we would occasionally hear chairs being dragged from time to time when people were dining, this was not too bad. I finally broke down and called the Head of Hospitality, Stephen, on Thursday to see if they could do anything. He was extremely nice and knew exactly what was causing and apologized. He was on his sat. phone so I think he said it was because of power washing. He was very positive that they could correct this. We went to bed Thursday night upset that we didn't call sooner. Unfortunately, 5:30 Friday morning crash boom bam, even louder but it stopped after a couple mins. To NCL's credit they did follow-up to see if it was corrected. When I told the guest services rep what happened she seemed puzzled. She then apologized and tried to make it up to us. I told her we weren't looking to get anything out of this and she kept trying to make it up to us so I finally accepted one of her offers. We did hear the noise again on Saturday morning again it was loud but was short lived. So my recommendation is if you are a light sleeper, this is not the room to book. But if you are an early riser it does offer a lot of privacy and there is zero sound side to side.

As far as our overall experience with cruising aft, I'm still undecided. I think I would cruise aft again but it's not a cabin that I have to have or will pay a lot more for. Also due to the Great Outdoors, noise I doubt I would book an aft mini again.