Continuing on our walkthrough of the cabin - the rest of the cabin opens up like one big room with areas marked more by furniture than walls.
The sole thermostat to control the entire room was an old model dial that simply featured a varied blue line for cold/air conditioning and a varied red line for heat/warmth. The room varied throughout the voyage as to whether it felt too warm or too cold. It seemed that the extremes were felt more later in the afternoons and evenings. Some nights we slept on top of the covers where others were spent burrowed under them. We certainly could have called for it to be inspected but each time we'd be back in the cabin to experience it was when we wanted to crawl into bed and rest.
First let's turn to the right along the wall shared by the walk in closet. The bulk of this wall was taken up by a desk/vanity/storage area. Ignore the combined clutter that is my tote bag worth of port shopping on the chair there. The farthest right is actually a cabinet where we kept extra cans of sodas for the mini fridge. The narrow drawer in front of the chair held lots of information about the ship and the cabin perks like the room service breakfast menu and the afternoon canape request form. You'll also find some business letter sized envelopes and stationery. We used that for leaving Lilanie notes and tips at the end of the cruise. Note the light up magnifying mirror for use plugged in at the vanity.
Vegetable Spring Rolls:
Basket of Crispy Corn Tortilla Chips with Homemade Guacamole and Mexican Salsa Cruda:
Akshay also brought us a tray of the chocolate dipped strawberries. I didn't get a picture of those but neither of us tried them.
Breakfast Room Service Menu - We never actually ordered breakfast but we did order a few options for lunch one afternoon. The crew member who delivered them came with a white tablecloth ready to set up our dining table but we told him it wasn't necessary. One unique thing that was new in all of our other cruises is that just as we had finished eating, the crew member came knocking on our cabin door asking if we were done so that he could carry away the dishes. They must have a system for clocking food arrival so they know when 40 minutes to an hour have passed.
We tried three dishes from the All Day Room Service Menu -
Croque monsieur - Baked ham, emmental cheese, bechamel sauce, romaine lettuce. This was very dry and did not taste good at all.
Six pieces of Vegetable California Rolls - don't think I've ever had a California Roll with cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and asparagus tips inside. The fruit pieces were a little tough and having the mix of fruit juice sweet with savory filling was certainly a different taste sensation. Aside from the textures mixing, I did enjoy this dish.
Dad ordered the Black Angus Cheeseburger. A note under all the burgers states that they are "cooked to preference" but I guess they meant the chef's preference. His requested medium well to well done burger was severely undercooked and looked more like medium rare inside. Quite surprising since the slice of cheese was so melted on top of the patty that it looked painted on.
On top of the desk on day 1 was a nice branded Oceania Cruises pen continuing my tradition of bringing home a branded pen from each cruise. We overheard another cruiser talk about how he wished he could win a pen at the onboard games. Another passenger told him that there should be one left in everyone's cabin. He replied "I know, I want another one." Funny thing is, days later, we stopped by Guest Services to ask to borrow a pen so we could work on the Mensa Quiz while hanging out in the lobby. They happily handed me another pen identical to the ones in our cabins and would have gladly handed over more if I wanted.
Now riddle me this - why does our cabin have two phones? Certainly not for our Alaskan whale calls. Is floating on water and calling underwater considered roaming? Dad suggested that the silver phone was some sort of direct line for calling the butler but couldn't figure out how to use it. He picked up the larger phone and called down to guest services to ask. The person that answered let Dad know that they'd page Akshay. When Akshay introduced himself late on day 1, we asked about how to use the silver phone. He told us to do exactly as Dad had earlier, call and ask that they page him. His beeper/phone will then go off with a cabin number. His procedure is then to call the cabin number and ask what is needed to see if it's something that can be handled over the phone or something for which he needs to come visit the cabin. So apparently this second phone is simply there to hold down the desk.
Power outlets by the phones were limited to the one standard outlet but behind the water bottles you had more of a variety:
The mini fridge is the middle cabinet on the other side of the chair. It worked well for cooling Dad's medication, our sodas, plastic water bottles (bought in port), and the fudge I bought in port until we brought it home.The rest of the spaces under the desk were drawers of varying sizes so I kept my non hanging clothes here while Dad used the remaining drawers in the closet. That trash can became such a cat and mouse game because I'd push it against the desk so I wouldn't run into it but then Lilanie would put it back at the corner during cabin service so that it wouldn't block the cabinet door from opening.
Inside the fridge - I did notice after several days that the cabinet and/or the desk space above it would feel warm to the touch. Our drinks still felt cold to the touch and that fudge stayed cold. We are also still working our way through those squares of Oceania Cruises branded dark chocolate that were left on our beds each night. Everytime we cruise on a line that still gives out turndown chocolates I know better than to try and enjoy any myself. Dad commandeers most all of them saving them in the fridge to enjoy post cruise. He's enjoying them so much that he's now forgotten he hated dark chocolate so much that he used to leave me to eat all the dark chocolate after he was done eating the other flavors in the Hershey's Miniatures variety pack. Or in my case, the not so variety pack. In this case, we make a good pair. He'd eat chocolate flavored chocolate if that were a thing and I usually have to give him any chocolate dish I get because I can't finish more than a couple bites.
Also in everyone's cabin is these reusable stainless steel water bottles with a fitted branded cozy. Dispensers are positioned throughout the ship for you to fill your bottles with still or sparkling water. You are encouraged to also use these on your excursions in port and take them home. I found it interesting with these left for everyone that they'd also be included as a prize for cashing in your "Big O" points. These however, don't fit so easily in your cabin fridge.
One of the dispensers onboard where you can choose from chilled still water, chilled sparkling water, or room temperature water.
For routine drinking water in your cabin, aside from the classic fill your glass from the bathroom sink, Oceania chooses to go the reusable route and leave bottles of still and sparkling Vero water for filling your own glass in the cabin. Dad loves sparkling water and found that none of the bottles ever seemed to actually have sparkling water loaded into them. These bottles would be refilled each time the cabin was serviced. Lilanie was great about keeping our ice bucket full as well twice a day so I could down many glasses of ice water when I'd come back to the cabin.
You could do many things on your cabin TV. There was a similar channel variety as on Celebrity Cruises with a Prime Movies and a Prime One TV channel where we watched a good amount of Superstore and NCIS reruns. Also your standard channel for the bridge cam, one for showing your voyage progress on a map, and one playing that day's morning show on repeat. Another channel was devoted to Culinary Programming a.k.a. Food Network shows. A small variety of TV shows and movies were also available to watch on demand versus catching a TV show on Prime One already halfway through when you decided to turn on the TV.
I had hoped that the Entertainment and Enrichment section would feature recorded versions of onboard lectures but instead it was on demand educational and informational programming. We had a surprisingly little amount of onboard talks and lectures it seemed given the itinerary. Never saw a specific port talk unless you count the Tips & Tricks for insert port name here segment on the morning show. The most used features by us were to browse the Grand Dining Room & speciality menus and to check our onboard account. We did learn through tracking our account on the TV and confirming with Guest Services that our two passenger folio accounts do get merged by the end of the cruise, at least when they are both on the same credit card. It also gives a good specific breakdown on how much you have in non refundable versus refundable on board credit.
One other thing that happened in relation to our onboard account that we found unique was when we received a letter in our cabin near the end of the cruise. The letter informed us that we could either leave our refundable onboard credit on our account and wait around for a check to be sent to our home or we could visit Guest Services at any time before the end of the cruise and request the refundable credit be paid out in cash. We chose the latter. Keep in mind though that anything you charge to your onboard account after cashing out will now be a charge to your card on file.
Finishing off this wall of the cabin is where we have a small dining table and two chairs. This is where I'd often park myself to do anything because it was the only comfortable spot unless you wanted to lay down and sleep. Most of the time it was a place to work on Mensa quizzes or to sort through my port stop backpack's contents, hence why it spent most of the time parked in the second seat as seen in this picture.
Onto the beds themselves. When we arrived on embarkation day, the two twin beds were put together as a single bed and the benches were pushed together to look like one longer bench in front of them. Not uncommon as that's the default and a quick mention to the steward would have them changed by bedtime the first night. At this point, we've made our own running joke about how often crew assume we are a married couple since most people travel with their spouse. We get addressed as Mr. & Mrs., we get correspondence in our cabin addressed to Mr. & Mrs., the list goes on. Then every once in a while, a letter or a crew member greeting us will go back to Mr. & Ms. and we joke to each other about how we finally got divorced from each other. Inevitably someone or something else will come along days later using Mr. & Mrs. and we joke about getting remarried. Hopefully by now, you dear reader, have picked up on my fluency in sarcasm and warped sense of humor.
So this night when we made the request of separate beds to Lilanie the look of confusion on her face was priceless. You could just imagine the wheels turning in her mind trying to understand why Mr. & Mrs. would be asking for separate beds on day 1! When we returned to the cabin for bed, we found that her interpretation was to keep the beds physically together but make them up with separate sheets and blanket. This was also the first evening that I became thankful for double jointed flexibility and earned the rug burn marks on my elbows. Between the beds themselves moving at the slightest change in body position and the mattress topper sliding back and forth under the fitted sheet, I managed to fall out of bed twice over the cruise.
This first time was when I ended up on the floor between the two beds as they were pushed together in the center. They were so pushed together that I couldn't move to get up from between them. My only recourse was to army crawl along on my elbows dragging the rest of my body forward until I got past the end of the beds. Then there was finally enough room to twist into a position where I could get up off the floor. The second time happened after we had asked to switch the nightstands together in the center and put the one bed up against the wall. Lilanie's interpretation of that was to put one nightstand between the beds so at least we now had room to shimmy out the next time my body wants to try defying gravity. The next time I ended up falling off the other side and crawled out from between the bed and wall. I woke up at one point in the middle of the night to find Dad having barely caught himself as he rolled out of bed. Another night, I woke up at the sound of him moving around and instinctively threw out my arm for him to grab just in time to stop him from falling off again. Our neighbors must have had some weird thoughts at how much the top of our beds would slam back into the wall whenever we tried to find a comfortable position to sleep. I got the greatest ab workout each night tightening my core every time I'd roll over and feel myself starting to tip over the side. Oceania is phasing out allowing children to cruise on their line but maybe we should have asked for some crib bumpers by voyage end!
The plug and light options by each "side" of the bed. Each set of light switches worked the same on the toggle system as the one by the main door. You had the option of turning off lights from the front door or waiting until you were "safely" in bed. Each set of bedside light switches also let you pick whether you wanted one over the bed lamp, both, or none turned on. Worked well for when one of us wanted to stay up a little longer. There is also a little book light right by the pillows if you really want as little light left on as possible.
The remainder of the inside of the cabin featured a small loveseat that Akshay said folded out into a bed. He then promptly advised us not to use it because it would take up the other half of the room. Dad used the couch and storage ottoman as more of a catchall than a place to relax. Note the silver champagne bucket that held a bottle of Prosecco when we first arrived. We also gave that bottle away and noticed that the champagne flutes left on the desk disappeared as well a couple days later. The champagne bucket remained for the whole cruise. I still remember when a Celebrity Cruises waiter put my Sprite can in the nearest chilling bucket they were using to keep the nearby table's wine bottle chilled. When I smiled in response, he announced that I deserve to have a cold drink too!
I was a little surprised at the design choice of this little secondary window with dual curtain beside the couch. Perhaps a way to let in a little more natural light on that half of the cabin? Both sections had a sheer curtain for some light muting and the thicker curtains to block out most all light. The thicker curtains were drawn during evening turndown service.
How much light comes in when just the sheer curtain is pulled across:
Looking across the room with my back to the curtains:
Stay tuned for part 3 where we visit the balcony and take a trip down the hall to the Executive Lounge.
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