Cabin Review

We had a balcony cabin on Aloha deck (deck 11). Cabin A336 (port side). We were careful this time not to choose a cabin that is directly under the Riviera Bar so whilst there were no loud scraping noises from the moving of the furniture, chairs and tables whenever people were getting on and off chairs and no issues with smoking fumes, the cabin was really getting a bit too shabby for my liking. The cabin is not cheap being on A deck but I found that the upholstered bed head was badly stained in the regions where your head is supposed to rest (no doubt from greasy hair) which is off putting. The carpet in this cabin is stained just a bit too much in my opinion to be passable anymore. These cabins really need to be refitted again (not that I know when the last refit was) but we were on this ship 6 months ago and you can really see the deterioration even in that short amount of time which I suppose comes from constant 24/7 use year in year out. Even the picture on the wall had a brown watermark stain on it that I woke up to each morning. It's really not a luxury cabin so keep your expectations low so that you won't be disappointed.

Also note that these cabins are a bit small for balcony rooms. In the other cruise ships we have been on we did have a 2 seater lounge in each of the balcony rooms so you don't have to watch TV on the bed all the time. I put up with the sheets last time and didn't worry about them but this time they were even more of a really old bone colour. The sheets are not a crisp new white colour and whilst they seemed to be clean, Princess really need to bite the bullet and get some new linen. You can only use this stuff for so long before people start to complain. Perhaps the men don't notice that type of thing but women tend to a bit more and I spoke to another woman on the ship who was not happy with her sheets either. Our bed was so hard that after the first 3 nights I had some real concerns about how my back was going to go after a couple of weeks of this type of torture. I thought that my back was going to snap in half. My husband asked the room attendant if we could sleep on the doona and then obtain another doona for the top of us so that it would make the bed a bit softer to lie on. He said that he could help with the problem and that night he had remade the bed with a foam overlay over it. I was so grateful as not only was the bed more comfortable but that dreaded gap in the middle between the two beds was eliminated and all in all it was really good after that point. But they wouldn't have those sorts of foam covers for every bed so if everyone asked for one, I doubt that they'd be able to help everyone. Personally, I think that the beds all need renewing but perhaps I'm being unreasonable about that aspect.