Our cabin door - still with an insert key lock
We didn't even notice the doorbell for the first couple days. Above is two closets next to and opposite our door so we only had neighbors on one side.
Inside our cabin looking back at the door. It really felt like you walked the length of two cabins to move from space to space.
Our muster station was supposed to be the Aquatheater but those plans changed due to the weather.
It was quite the trial and error when it came to what light switch controlled what. The cabin really is set up for each of your extended family groups to have their own zones with separate light switches, thermostats, and safes. Below, our entryway left plenty of room to stow our empty suitcases. No need to force them under the bed or in a closet. Now if you had 6 other cabin mates, that might not work so well.
The door on the left is the secondary bathroom. To the right is a small closet behind that wood door with the first safe. By the bathroom door is the first thermostat control presumably for the living room space. We never did find a proper balance for any of the spaces.
This bathroom held an enclosed shower stall and decent counter space. Both bathrooms had enough spare L'Occitane products to take 20 showers a day if we wanted. I never used the conditioner since I don't use conditioner at home but I found the shampoo left my longer fine hair a little tangled and stringy. This was the bathroom Dad used exclusively since he wanted the enclosed bedroom. It took me until nearly the end of the cruise to realize that both showerheads not only slide up and down for height challenged people but it also pivots at the top so the water can either come straight down or at an angle from above. Spent many a shower trying to hold the sprayer in the inch of space between my head and the ceiling inside my bathtub shower and I'm only 5'7". Dad, who is less fluffy than me, said he had to prop open the shower door in order to bend down to wash his lower body.
With your back to the first bathroom, you can peer into the master (a.k.a. mine) bedroom.
Just around the corner from the mirror in the above picture is this full closet. That thinner lower bar for hanging clothes also had hangers with smaller rounded tops just to fit that bar. Note that both this and the master bedroom closet had robes supplied. We never bothered trying them on. We took to tossing our dirty laundry into the bottom of this closet until we were ready to fill a laundry bag.
Dad's bedroom on the left, mine on the right. You could hear if the other person opened their door and walked around but it was quiet enough if one person wanted to stay up and watch TV or snored.
First up - my bedroom. A rarity for me to get to sleep in a full size normal bed on a cruise:
Plenty of storage and a flat screen TV I used for everything from late night channel surfing to fall asleep to constantly double checking our account balance. It was here that I'd notice how they'd always put our specialty restaurant tip charges on Dad's account, reverse it, and then add it to my account as the primary name. This was the case whether I signed the receipt or he did. And yes, even though there was no cover charge or upcharge for any specialty restaurant meal, we still had to sign a $0 total receipt. It was also here that I discovered we got charged erroneously for popcorn in the theater. One quick note to Smitha via the Loop got that cleared.
Since it was just me, I basically used up these two shelves for sunblock and meds; and the cabinet on the other side for shoes and underclothes. Tons more storage than I ever needed in this bedroom alone.
Yes, there is a second fridge behind the middle door under the TV in this master bedroom. However, as others have reported, it does get blocked from totally opening by the edge of the bed. Still opened enough to have me grab a water bottle for medication and any Vitamin Water I could desire.
The cabinet on the far side also gets blocked by the edge of the bed:
Long stretch of open floor space leading from the side of the bed to the vanity area. To the left is yet another door leading to the balcony. For each of the floor to ceiling entrances to the balcony, there was this sheer curtain for daytime light and the darker brown thicker curtain for privacy and darkness for sleeping.
There is a light around the mirror plus the side mirrors open for tiny storage shelves. Also a moveable magnifying mirror for ladies to sit and enhance their beauty.
And since everyone always asks about plug options - that's my Kindle charging so it fits big box plugs just fine. Also used these outlets to charge my phone via a USB converter plug with my charging cable.
And for the first time on a cruise, a hair dryer that wasn't either attached to the wall or to the inside of the drawer!
Standing on the other side of the bed looking across the room. The open door is the door leading to the bathroom. As you can see, those four hooks on the inside of the door came in handy after our beach day at Labadee. The one drawback about the wardrobe style closets with mirror doors - you can only get the two right doors open if you fully close the bedroom door. Otherwise it swings open and bangs into the open closet door.
My closet had the same setup as the hallway closet with its own robe set. This is the inside of the first two doors.
This is the narrow third closet that requires the bedroom door to be closed in order to open fully. This is where I found it easiest to hang longer clothes like my dress. Note the 2nd safe in this closet. Below: the bedroom door fully closed from the inside. There was separate light switches for the balcony, the overhead recessed lightning and for the bedside lamps. I took to just turning on the bedside lamps until I got into bed and then could reach their switch from bed. Another thing to note if you're traveling with extended family: The bedroom doors themselves have no lock. No guarantee of privacy so either get really up close and personal with your family members or save the alone time for when everyone else is out of the cabin.
The nightstands on each side of the bed had a drawer and cabinet for storage. The silver box above in this picture is the tap switch for the bedside lamps. There was a single outlet behind each nightstand but it wasn't easy to get to. I just convinced myself that it was more beneficial if I was made to get all the way out of bed to turn off my phone alarm in the mornings and left it plugged in on the vanity counter.
My bathroom - keep in mind both bathrooms and the balcony entrances required a small step up to go in and out. One of the last days I misjudged the step into this bathroom and ended up kicking my bare toes into the door frame. Thankfully I caught myself by reaching out for the bathtub edge so the only thing that bruised was my knuckles.
This bathtub was high as can be to get into. Not my most graceful moment each time having to brace my hands on the edge and swing one leg in at a time. No shortage of trash cans in this cabin either for trash or for purposes of showing height in a photo. One thing we'd forgotten since we read the tip about our first RCL cruise; while that small folded over towel worked great for a safe place to step onto with wet feet post shower, there is no traction whatsoever on the bottom of the tub. I had to move around in the shower very carefully using the grab bars and still would end up getting my feet caught on the bottom of the shower curtain. One plus though is that never once did the shower overflow and get onto the bathroom floor. I suppose with the height of this tub you'd have to plug it up and leave the water running till next week to achieve that.
For some reason my bathroom hit the jackpot for towel supplies. Again, if anyone was lacking, my yard sale booth will be open soon. I lacked a lot of counter space because in addition to the 4 full size hanging towels, I always had this stack of hand towels on the right and a stack of washcloths on the left. I took to stowing my travel kit on the shelf below and opened it on top of the closed toilet to get things out as needed. My kit has a zippered pouch on each side and zips totally open to lay flat.
My one source of natural light in the bedroom with all curtains drawn back. Here you can see the partition between ours and the balcony cabin next door. If our neighbors are reading this, I hope you enjoyed the view of our balcony. Several times I turned around and spotted a curious lookie loo craning around the partition. Served as a great reminder to close the curtain before I hopped into the shower.
Looking back from the vanity toward the bed. There was a phone in each bedroom and the living room but we found that when we got calls, only certain phones would ring?
A couple nights into the cruise, I figured out that taking the front pillows from each side and laying them upright in between lessened my ending up at the bottom of the covers by morning. The side of the bed I'm facing in the above picture and often used to get into bed was severely sloped and sunken in. I'd have to crawl in and then quickly shimmy into the middle of the bed.
Moving on to the other bedroom. That's not a weird flash effect. That white space right by the door is the first Pullman bed mounted on the wall. You learn to go wide to enter this bedroom real quick. Dad said by the 2nd night he learned to just dive into bed from the center because it was too tight to walk around under the wall beds to pull the covers back.
Dad also had a TV, phone, hairdryer, and vanity mirror along with a handful of drawers he barely needed.
Looking back toward the bedrooms from the living room. I always felt like I was walking to another country whenever someone rang the bell.
Yet another trash can - they even supplied this fancy trash can on a pole too! You'll soon learn that a lot of my posts drip with humor and sarcasm. We did get offered a bottle of wine to have in our cabin but we turned it down since we're not big drinkers.
Our "dining room" - I made a constant joke throughout the week that I was in training to become a pole dancer since you had to swing around that white pole to walk around this table. I can't imagine trying to seat more than a couple people to eat at this table. There is cabinet space to store things along the wall behind the table but we just used the counter space to stow the snack remnants we wanted to keep for later.
Formerly appearing daily in cabin 8330 - it's Pole (itely)! My new stage name?
Behind the pole is another entrance to the balcony.
Living room TV, PlayStation 3 (never used it although I was tempted) and wet bar with phone and coffee maker. We mostly just used these drawers to corral the extra Compass papers I wanted to keep till cruise end. We did get slightly different Coke Freestyle cups - one is a lighter blue cloud coloring than the other. I finally grabbed one randomly the last day just to say I tried using it and all it reported was that I had until 5/11/18 to use it. Never identified me by name like it did when I bought the soda package for myself on the last cruise. If you're partial to keeping your cup solely your cup, you may want to bring some sort of way to mark it like a hair tie wrapped around the center. I did hear from new trivia playing friends that the Windjammer Freestyle machines were frequently broken. When I finally used mine at the machine by Sorrentos, it was out of ice. The funny thing is that while we had all this extra silverware, the glasses we used to drink from the minibar (which is included in Star Class) didn't get replaced except for the last sea day when we got down to 1 left and found we'd been returned one more.
People always ask about coffee creamer and sugar choices and I aim to please even if I didn't use any of it.
This is the safe we used and you can see the extra drink supply stowed underneath. It is a keypad safe where you decide on the 4 digit code when you first use it. I found though that this safe door was super temperamental and would not close enough to latch properly if you held the door closed too tightly. It was a fine balance of barely holding the door closed with the tip of one finger while using my other hand to punch in the code. I think this safe needed more caressing than the genie lamp.
A full closet with the same setup as the others for those using the sofa bed to store their clothes. This was where we initially found the laundry bags to use.
The sofa that becomes a bed. The cushions along the far window are just single cushions held there by Velcro strips. One design flaw I found is that behind the couch is where the main lights and sounds from any movie or aquatheater show would come into the cabin the most. The couch being flush against the wall meant that the light blocking curtain you can see in the near left corner never got pulled across. I know a lot of people say that this cabin isn't bad for noise and light disruption except when there is a movie or show. What they don't tell you is that at least on our sailing, there was a new aquatheater show cast onboard so they practiced all the time with lots of stops and starts of the same music over and over. The flip side is the great vantage point for not only the show but also whenever the performers or entertainment staff used the rock wall floor space to practice and stretch.
On the right is yet another balcony entrance. I can only imagine the time our across the way neighbors had keeping so many little ones from running out every balcony entrance.
This is the one balcony entrance we used the most as it was the easiest path to take a snack outside or to grab anything for relaxing on the balcony. Despite the noise, this was hands down the best balcony we've ever had on a cruise. A close second is the Regal Princess' aft wrap balconies but even those are just one big curve so you're always walking around the furniture.
Whenever we hung out on these loungers or dining table, I kept wanting to peek back through these windows into the cabin like I expected someone to walk in without us knowing.
Below is what my bedroom entrance looks like from the balcony side:
Sat here one evening in these chairs enjoying the changing colors of the sunset. What a lot of people say about forgetting you're on a ship because you rarely see the water is so true. Missed a lot of my usual sunset and sunrise photo moments this trip because I didn't see the water view most days.
Below is the door leading into the dining space. Those little shelves along the sloped partition made me want to store something there so bad.
You really can spy on people climbing the rock wall from here. I noticed a lot of staff stepping away to help someone who'd just walked up and other times the gate would just be left open to the wall area.
I'm pleased to say that these loungers passed the fluffy person test! Regal Princess' teak loungers - not so much.
I'd like to introduce you to the dining room's cousin - Pole Jr.
Is it wrong that I fantasized about sliding down this wide post?
Lots of wide open space in front of the loungers. You had to pull a chair over or sit at the bar stools to get a decent view of the aquatheater shows but for a relaxing water view, the loungers is the place to be.
My family knows that by trip end, I usually end up not only counting up bruises from randomly injuring myself but will often have ones I don't even remember getting. One such clumsiness is sitting in these bar chairs pulled over in front of the railing to watch the show. Thought I could just tip forward and slide my feet down before lifting my booty off the seat. Nope - instead the chair tipped forward so abruptly I took a balcony railing to the gut. Thankfully no actual bruising but my abs felt like I'd done 200 crunches for the next day or so. Not so pleasant when you're trying to walk around in port and your camera hangs right at the same spot swinging back and forth. Definitely be mindful of any little ones on those bar stools.
With my back to the door that leads behind the rock wall and thus why the door at the end of our hallway says "crew only."
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