Cabin Review

Since I had been closely watching many websites for information and pictures of the illusive Seaside YC interior seeing the cabin for the first time was not too big of a shock. Initial pictures of the handicap YC interior looked promising, later revelations about the non-handicap version were a letdown. Standard YC interiors are listed as 226 sq-ft, while the majority of non-YC interiors are listed as 150 sq-ft. After visiting both I could tell the YC interiors are slightly longer, but I really don’t feel they are 226 sq-ft. I suspect they are closer to the 176 sq-ft as shown on the Meraviglia plans. The bathroom size & fixtures, cabinets, shelves, desk, bed, TV, etc… basically 95% of the cabins are identical. The four extra feet of length let them put the desk unit on the same side of the cabin as the closet and bathroom (opposite of how the floor plan shows it) which frees up enough room for a single chair and small table opposite of the desk and TV. One YC interior I saw had the two chairs as in the floor plan, someone must have demanded the second chair, but in my opinion it just crowded the cabin. The only other differences I could find is the YC interior had a darker ceiling, and a small folding vanity mirror and rainfall shower head option in the bathroom. Missing were any finer furnishings and fixtures I had hoped for that can be found in the YC handicap interior and YC balcony cabins. As expected the cabin width is narrow and there is barely more than one foot on either side of the bed, this makes it a bit close for the person on the desk side to exit easily. If two people want to watch TV it has to be from the bed, the small TV folds out but is thus angled against the desk mirror causing a disturbing reverse image for the viewers. After seeing the cabin ahead of time we decided to pack for one week and purchased a laundry package. There is one small drawer in the desk that is mostly taken up by the hair dryer. There are three shelves and two drawers in the closet, but unfortunately the safe takes up the larger top shelf, making it unusable. My 10" android tablet was too big to fit inside the safe. The right closet door opens only far enough to see the shelves and a tiny part of the hanging closet, the left closet door opens only far enough to see part of that hanging side, items hanging in the middle were lost. Compounding this was the desk on the same side of the cabin which made getting to the left side closet even more difficult. We made it work using suitcases under the bed as drawers. They have to be narrow enough to slide in from the foot end so remember these are really two twin beds, our 26 inch suitcase would not fit this way. The only other issue I can think of is that the air conditioning comes out from above the closet. Having the head of the bed on the back wall opposite the air duct creates a bothersome air flow on your face while sleeping. If you turned up the temperature it would just get too warm and still blow the air on your face, so I finally resorted to stuffing pillows into part of the opening to stop it from blowing cold air directly onto my face.

We were actually booked as two separate cruises with two different cabins on deck 16. I feel the bathroom deserves a small paragraph unto itself. I was okay with sitting a little sideways on the toilet so my knees weren’t pressed into the sink cabinet. I am 6’4” 200lbs and barely fit into the shower, unexpectedly it was a problem width wise. What a disappointment after the wonderful shower design on the Divina. If something was dropped it was better to not try to pick it up as you were likely to hit the controls if you tried. The cramped conditions were not the worst part though as both our cabin’s showers (and a couple of other cabins that I asked) had a terrible time with temperature control. I like to splurge a little when on vacation so I might want to spend a few extra minutes in a nice hot shower. I know - it’s the biggest user of water on the ship. Well forget it because if you set the temperature to a nice hot temperature about every minute or so the temperature would jump to scalding for several seconds before suddenly returning back to the level you had originally set it to. It was actually dangerous because there was no way to get out of the scalding water stream. You quickly learned to set the temperature to barely warm and would every once in a while get a nice hot blast.