Cabin Review

We had a BE category balcony cabin on the 14th deck. I liked the cabin layout, with the bathroom coming off what is essentially a small walk-in closet. This seemed to create more storage room without really cutting down on the usable size of the cabin.

The balcony itself was shallow, so shallow that there would not have been enough room to put the deck chair in the most reclined position with the footrest extended and still be able to open and close the sliding door (speaking of which, the sliding doors are far superior to some of the swinging cabin doors we’ve had on Carnival).

Our particular location (aft, under the buffet) was extremely convenient. We had no noise from above, and it was just a matter of going out our door, a few steps down the hall, then up one deck for breakfast and lunch. We also had direct access (out the aft door), to the aft pool deck. Any time we just wanted to step out and see more than what we could see from our balcony, we could get to the aft pool deck area in less than 20 seconds.

The in-cabin TV system was pretty good. There was an ample supply of TV and movies on demand, as well as a number of live channels (although not any standard US broadcast channels, if I recall). I was mainly concerned with being able to catch some NHL playoff action. Their two sports channels showed one game among them every day except one. I don’t watch much TV while on a cruise, but at the end of the day, or on a rainy day at sea, it is nice to have options.

The biggest “misses”, in my opinion, were:

• There were motion-activated lights at the bottom of each side table, as well as in the closet area, by the bathroom door. This was fine in the evening, but would jolt anyone wide awake in the middle of the night. We taped over the three sensors, and simply removed the tape from the one in the closet during the day, and put it back on at night.

• While I would be the first to complain if the cruise director was constantly pumping announcements into the cabin, on this cruise, there were no announcements that made it into the cabin. They all ended in the corridor, which meant that if there was an important announcement (e.g., what time do we have to be back on board, they’re closing the outer decks due to rough weather, we have arrived at port and you’re free to disembark), we had to prop our door open in order to hear it (by which time we had often missed some salient points from the announcement).

• The shower curtains (rather than doors) are simply flawed. They hang over the lip of the shower edge and it is hit-or-miss whether the water drips down into the shower or onto the bathroom floor. On the other hand, the water pressure was amazing and the temperature was very easy to control.

• The automatic door locking system was clever, but as much frustrating as helpful. We are the type of people who leave our hotel/condo rental, lock the door behind us, and then grab the door knob and turn and shake vigorously to ensure that the door is actually locked. The Princess doors unlock themselves when you approach (usually) and lock the door when you leave (we think). However, the timing or mechanics of how and when the door locks itself when we left the cabin was unclear. We attempted to ask our cabin steward(ess) to explain the mechanics, but we gave up after a couple attempts (I think the best we got was, "Don’t worry, the door locks automatically”). The problem is that when you exit the door, it is unlocked. If you continue to stand outside the door after exiting, the RFID system recognizes that you are outside your door and wants to keep it unlocked for you. There seemed to be times when the door would lock, you could hear the mechanism turn, and a red light would briefly flash. However, as often, nothing would happen. We tried walking away a few steps, but then when we went back to check that the door was locked, of course it would read our medallion and unlock it for us. We never figured out how to ensure the door was locked behind us (i.e., where we could test the door and make sure it was locked). It was a complete hit-or-miss exercise every single time.