Cabin Review

We booked an obstructed outside guarantee and were assigned L102 on the Lido Deck. I had read some negative comments about the cabins in the very forward of the ship on the Lido Deck because the cabins were located directly under the gym. By the time I contacted our TA with my concerns, the ship was sold out so moving was not an option. Being easy- going travelers, we decided to try and make the best of the situation.

On the first morning, we were awoken at 7:20am to the sound of a very heavy man or woman just going all out on the treadmill. The stomping was loud and the vibrations rattled the glasses in our cabin. The pounding lasted about 40 minutes when we decided to get up and go to breakfast.

Just want to add that we are city dwellers and live on a busy main downtown street, and not in the quiet suburbs, so we are accustomed to a certain level of noise (traffic, construction, sirens, etc) but the pounding, along with the vibrations was even a little too much for us.

During the week, we heard stomping from the gym throughout the day. I did see signs on certain treadmills that said they were not to be in use before 8:00am. This cabin location is not for people who like to sleep in, have afternoon naps, or spend a lot of time in the cabin.

I mentioned our problem to the purser's desk on Monday morning and didn't hear anything back until Wednesday when they contacted us to see if the problems still existed. I said yes and they took note. On Thursday, Prakash from the purser's desk contacted us to say that we could be moved to a new room. The one cabin that was available was an unobstructed window on Deck 5 at the very forward of the ship. We were shown the room and it seemed tiny in comparison to ours and the window was 1/4 the size. We declined the room since we were already set up and there was only two days of the cruise left (a real case of too little, too late).

Our only solution was to spend as much time out of our room as possible ie: naps on the decks, reading in lounges, etc. It's a shame because we felt forced out of our cabin and that we couldn't really relax in there.

I felt a bit comforted that Princess offered us an alternative but I don't really think they should even be selling these cabins...Maybe use the area for the crew or storage? There are also two suites in this area, not sure if they could hear the pounding from the gym above but our neighbours in L103 and L104 also said they could hear it.

We definitely felt some motion being at the very forward of the ship but we are not prone to seasickness and enjoyed the gentle rocking of the ship which usually put us to sleep. There was also a huge deck just outside our room that was open at sail away and Grand Turk day.

Outside our window, we saw a passage that the crew uses and then the deck. Not to worry though, the windows are tinted and people can't really see in (believe me, I tried to spy into our own room) but we did try to keep at least the sheers drawn on the window all the time.