how do you pick a cabin on a cruise ship is very important because the location
of your cabin can actually determine a lot about the experience that you end up
having for example in the cabin I'm in right now in Carnival Inspiration we're
immediately above the place where you get off the ship when the ship docks at
land so in Ensenada we wake up we open up our ocean view and we can see the
gangway right underneath us and so that can be good and bad it's good because
it's super handy we go down one flight of stairs and we're out of the ship when
we come back we go up one flight and boom we're right in our cabin but
there's also a little bit of noise associated with that you may or may not
care about that so one of the things when you're booking
a cabin is the basic stuff people will tell you is midships gets less motion at
the back of the ship you get the vibration of the engine the front of the
ship you get the rocking of the ocean so the most stable part of the ship is the
middle generally speaking higher is better
although in a dream class or a spirit class they actually have things on like
deck 5 or deck 2 so in terms of closeness to attractions higher isn't
always better depending on where you want to spend your time but if you
really care about the buffet higher is usually better so those are the basic
things that I think most people know about but the real thing that if you
want to take it to the next level in your cabin selection process is you're
going to want to go to the carnival website and look up the ship plan for
the ship that you're gonna be sailing on you know just quickly download the PDF
have it in another window when you're on your desktop and you're like okay look
at that cabin find it and the key piece here is look at what is above it and
below it I mean it's also probably good to know like oh I'm you know I'm near
the elevators so there might be extra foot traffic you may care about that or
you may want to be close to the elevator for accessibility purposes or
time-saving that's up to you make informed choices is what I'm saying
but really look at what's above and below because that can be a huge impact
on the sunshine I we were I believe directly above where they stored all the
luggage which for most of the sailing was fine but on the last night was
horrific because they were getting all the luggage ready and storing it in and
then in the morning shipping it out we slept horribly on the last night
of that sailing because we didn't check the map and so one of the things
you're gonna want look out for is am i above or below the
galley am i above or below a nightclub a comedy club a showroom something like
that the piano bar these are things that generate noise sometimes into hours
where you wish they wouldn't and also if there's a big blank space and you don't
know what it is maybe that's where the luggage is maybe that's where
maintenance work is being performed maybe you know it's right above the
engine or something so ideally you want to have cabins above and below you and
probably to either side of you and that's the way you can best insulate
yourself from a sound standpoint but also looking at that map you can see
like hey if you're on a dream class you might want to be on Deck five because they got
the hot tubs on Deck five and those are awesome
or maybe you want to be really close to the food so you're going to be you know
near deck 9 or 10 for the Lido buffet or maybe you care a lot about the comedy
club if you're on the legend or in the miracle that's on like deck 2 so you
might want to be on might want to be lower it depends on what you care about
but make informed choices and there's often an opportunity to save a little
bit of money by allowing carnival to pick the cabin for you and hey that's a
choice you can absolutely make but know that they might not give you an ideal
cabin and so one of the ways you can mitigate these problems and I highly
recommend as a packing tip is bring earplugs no matter what your experience
is or what you're expecting or where your cabin is you never know if the
people in the next cabin are going to be you know playing music all night or
people above you exercising in their cabin in the middle of the night or some other
thing your you know your cabin mate might snore you might end up in rough
seas and there could be water splashing against you know the side of your window
because the sea or the or rain or hail or whatever might happen so to be
prepared for you know a variety of that kind of stuff you're gonna want to I
think have earplugs and it's going to make it you know more adaptable you can
adjust to adversity easier if you have that so that is definitely something I
recommend