Cabin Review

Okay. When it comes to ship cabins, I don't have many requirements. We generally lean toward the cheap inside rooms unless we find a super bargain, that way we can take 2-3 cruises a year for about the same as one cruise with a room with a balcony. All we really ask for is a clean, well lit room to sleep and shower in.

Well the room was clean.

The biggest shock is the open-concept bathroom. It's weird. The toilet is directly at the entrance to the room, with a thin wobbly glass shower door for "privacy." This doesn't exactly help the smell of the room, because all cruise ship toilets emit a stink pretty much all the time, no matter how well they're cleaned. So the lack of a door to seal that off from your tiny room makes the room a little toilet-y at all times. But on to bigger problems about that lack of a proper door.. privacy. I don't really like pooping in front of my significant other. Call me crazy, but that takes a little of the romantic element away.

The shower is also open in the room, and while that's not as big of a problem for a couple, it does pose a problem when someone comes to your door. This is not only an issue in the cheap inside rooms. The friends we were traveling with all had larger balcony rooms, and their biggest complaint was the bathroom. They were traveling with teenage kids, so as the kids come and go from the room, they are essentially walking in unannounced on their parents in the bathroom. No one wants that. There's a tiny sink open in the room as well, and it doesn't seem large enough to catch the water that comes out of the faucet, so you end up with a damp counter.

This counter leads to another problem: Getting ready. Now to go out on deck, no one needs makeup and a hairdryer. But if you're heading out for dinner and a show, most of us ladies like to be able to do a little primping. That's darn near impossible in these rooms. There is no overhead light in the center of the room. there is however, a spotlight on the ceiling that will shine directly into your eyes as you lay down at the head of the bed. In-eye lighting in bed wouldn't have been on my list of must-haves as a designer. A light over where you dry your hair and apply makeup... now that would've been a good thought. But instead, they put a minibar fridge OVER where the built in hairdryer is placed. So, as a 5'5 100lb woman, I had to scrunch up sideways and bend myself into an advanced yoga position under the minibar fridge and stick my head into a dark hole to get to the small mirror to dry my hair. It made for an uncomfortable time consuming process, especially because the hairdryer only had one heat setting, lava hot, and it's designed to automatically turn off for safety when it overheats.. which is about every 3.2 seconds. No kidding. No kidding. We found from our friends that the more expensive balcony rooms were the exact same way. Who actually uses a minibar now anyway? Those of us in the super value inside cabins surely aren't going to go getting $10 bottles of water out of there. Just eliminate the darn thing or put it under the counter.