Cabin Review

We had a balcony cabin on the 6th floor (6235) on port side on the hump and were very, very pleased that we were on the outside of the hump. Look closely at your balcony cabin selection for this ship or you may be disappointed. First of all, the port side had the sun for the transatlantic crossing. It would have been much more difficult to be starboard side for the week plus of the crossing and never see the sun. But in general, most of the balcony cabins on the 6th floor have an obstructed view, although most are not listed as such by Celebrity. Look at a map of the ship (such as the one here at CruiseCritic) to understand which cabins are obstructed and which are not (although the map itself does not show the obstruction, see my following notes). Any of the cabins on the outside of the hump or within two of the outside on the angle are not obstructed. However, the balcony cabins forward of 6235 (which is located near at the stern stairway/elevator bank) in the center of the ship that are not on the hump have a lifeboat that is almost at the level of the railing in front of the cabin. So while were were able to see almost straight down into the sea and could watch dolphins, etc., these cabins only have a view further out at the horizon. The cabins toward the rear of the ship not on the hump also have a partially obstructed view, since the lifeboats are not as large in this area, but the winches to launch them are still just as high. Even the balconies on higher floors (such as 7, 8, 9, etc.) have a partially blocked sea view when looking down at say a 45 degree angle. So consider this fully when you book your balcony cabin to avoid disappointment. One other thing to consider with a balcony on the 6th deck port side is that the 5th deck port side promenade (which is not much of a promenade, since most of it is blocked by lifeboats) is a smoking area, so the cigarette smoke will be directly below your balcony, which may bother some people. This is especially apparent on the bump-out portion, where the smokers tend to congregate directly below (since the view is not obstructed by lifeboats).

The cabin itself was nicely appointed and worked well for us for the 25 days. Although I had read complaints on other reviews of the overhead storage above the beds, we found it to be quite helpful for storing additional items that were not needed on a daily basis. However, I can see how the overhead storage would be difficult to reach for an elderly person with mobility issues. One other interesting design note is that the bed has rounded corners. So if you are either tall or sleep with your toes hanging off the end of the bed (as I do), you may find this bed design to be a challenge. Yet I've stubbed my toes on the corners of rectangular beds on past cruises and never did with this one, due to the rounded corners. Good for getting around the cabin, not as good for sleeping. Although the bed itself was very comfortable otherwise. The TV is a Samsung flat screen, about 30-32" and worked well for the variety of TV and movie offerings (including a large number of free on demand movies) in the cabin. It has a decent interface that worked well most of the time, although there were some issues with both sound lockout and being frozen in the middle of a movie (requiring a full reboot of the system, not obvious how to do this unless you are a techie, ask your cabin steward if this happens). We typically did not watch much TV or movies on past cruises, but found ourselves doing so on this cruise due to the lack of available entertainment on the ship. The bathroom area is the standard small bathroom layout, although we found the shower area to be larger than other ships. Yes, you could actually drop the soap and pick it up without having to step outside the shower. The balcony area had a small table and two chairs that recline almost flat to become loungers. My wife at times brought the vinyl padded backs to the couch out onto the balcony to make a padded area on which to lay out in the sun. In a design flaw on the ship, the opaque glass separating the balconies (which could be opened if you have adjoining rooms with family members) would rattle with vibration of the ship. The quick fix was to simply roll up some paper to force in between the glass and the separator, problem solved. Another design flaw that only showed up on days that they were cleaning the balcony directly above (twice during the cruise) was that the water drainage channel leaked (we're talking gallons, not just drips) onto the front half of our balcony. We alerted the room steward, but apparently nothing could be done to fix it until dry dock. One specific area of concern we had with this cabin is that the door is in full view of the hallway in front of the stairwell. Just be careful when opening the door that you don't expose your spouse to the world. In a rather weird design quirk, the peep hole in the door sent a laser of light from the lobby area directly to the bed at night. Since we didn't have a cover over the peep hole, we had to stuff some tissue in there to block the light. Regarding noise, the cabin was fairly well insulated. The only exception was the one evening when they did Dancing with the Stripes in the 3rd floor lobby and there were people watching from all of the atrium levels (including our level, 6th level). People were screaming (yes, screaming, since the level of noise was how they determined the winner) from our deck level (this happened on both of our cruises) and it was also rather late at night, so either go to bed late that night or expect to be awakened by screaming in the nearby atrium. The cabin steward (Rufina) was excellent and was always there to meet any of the needs of the cabin and to keep things clean and tidy.