I'm going to give you a tour of the very unusual cabin that we had on the Carnival Horizon.
Officially, it's known as a "Havana Premium Vista Balcony" cabin.
Unofficially, a lot of people call these aft wrap corner balcony cabins...
Because it's located at the aft end of the ship...
And has a huge balcony that wraps all the way around the back corner of the ship...
From the rear all the way around to the side.
From this huge balcony, you have a spectacular view of the Havana pool area at the back of the ship.
As well as the ship's wake and all the beautiful scenery behind the ship.
And if the ship happens to be sailing from east to west...
The sunrise looks pretty darned great from your big private balcony!
There are eight of these Havana Premium Vista Balcony cabins at the back end of the Carnival Horizon...
One on each corner of decks six, seven, eight, and nine.
A big advantage to the two on deck nine is that deck ten hangs out quite a bit over the top...
And that not only gives you shade, so you won't burn up on a hot day, but also privacy.
Looking down from deck nine, you can see that the balconies on decks eight, seven, and six are not private at all.
People up on the higher decks can look right down in to the balconies below.
But deck 10 hangs out over deck nine just far enough to provide complete privacy.
And let me show you the other advantage that the two corner balcony cabins on deck nine have over the ones below.
Here's a still photo, shot from a drone, of the aft starboard corner of the ship.
The balcony on the corner of deck 6 starts here...
And ends here.
The balcony on the corner of deck 7 starts here...
And ends here.
The balcony on the corner of deck 8 starts here...
And ends here.
The size of all three of those balconies is roughly the same, but...
The balcony on the corner of deck 9 starts here...
And ends here!
It's much longer than the others.
Let me show you that in a different way.
The one end of our balcony on deck nine starts at exactly the same place as the balcony on deck eight.
But as we follow it around the corner of the ship...
You'll see the balcony on deck eight ends here.
And now if we look back up to our balcony on deck nine...
You can see it extends quite a bit further around the corner of the ship.
In fact, the two aft corner balconies on deck nine...
Have the largest balconies of all the cabins on the entire ship!
Before I show you the inside of our cabin, I want you to take a look at the deck plans...
So you can see that 9471 is in an L shape...
And so you can see that the reason they had to do that...
Was to work around that staircase to the left of 9471...
Which, by the way, is for crew only.
So, now let's take a good look around inside.
Straight ahead is the doorway from the hallway, so that's your entryway there.
Then the bed, the television, a little bit of storage under the TV, and a refrigerator...
And to the left of the TV, the brown door leads to the bathroom...
And the glass door leads out to the balcony.
Looking at it from a different angle, you can see there's a big window by the bed...
And our travel companion is bouncing around at the window.
We jokingly call him our emotional support parrot!
Here it is from a third angle. You can see the cabin steward left us with a towel animal on the bed.
He and the parrot really hit it off well!
And it's hard to see in this shot...
This shot shows it better, though... by the balcony door is a chair and a small table.
Here's a look at the desk area.
There are two USB charging ports at the desk.
Two American-style electrical outlets.
And one European-style electrical outlet.
And to the left of the desk... is the problem!
Just to the left of the phone is the closet.
Notice that there are just two doors on the closet.
This shot is NOT of our cabin.
This is a more normal Carnival closet configuration.
This is a cabin we had on a different Carnival cruise.
Notice there are THREE doors on the closet.
Back to a shot of our cabin on Carnival Horizon...
Only two sections to the closet.
Way too little storage for two people to share.
It was really tight.
Now they could have made up for it by building some shelves on to this big empty wall here...
But they didn't bother.
They also could have built shelves on this big empty wall, but they didn't.
They did put some shelves here, to the left of the refrigerator, but it wasn't nearly enough storage space.
Another big mistake they made was that neither side of the bed had an electrical outlet or a USB charging port at the nightstand.
That's the kind of thing you usually see on a ten year old cruise ship.
It was disappointing to see that on Carnival's brand new ship.
The patio furniture was also a disappointment.
These two chairs should have had cushions.
That mini-lounger to the left of the chairs was worthless. Completely uncomfortable!
And I don't know what they were thinking with that cushion on the big lounger.
It puts your head in a really uncomfortable position.
They should have put a full cushion on it, covering the entire lounger.
The other big mistake they made was that door leading out to the balcony.
It makes a slamming noise when it closes.
They should have put a sliding door in there.
Well, enough complaining! Let me show you a couple of tricks I've picked up over the years.
I bring a wireless indoor/outdoor digital thermometer with me on a cruise.
I use a 3M command strip to attach the base unit at eye level on the wall.
And place the wireless outdoor unit in a shady spot on the balcony...
That way I can easily see the current temperature in the cabin, and out on the balcony.
I also bring along a little gadget along with me to convert the one European-style electrical outlet.
Essentially making it a third American-style outlet for my use.
Let's take a look at the bathroom.
Nothing special.
Pretty much the same as you would get in an inexpensive cabin.
Just one sink, and the shower is pretty small.
No shower door... just a shower curtain.
If a wonderfully big bathroom and shower is important to you...
Instead of booking the "Havana Premium Vista Balcony" cabin...
You might want to consider booking a "Havana Suite" instead.
It has a gigantic bathroom by cruise ship standards...
With double sinks, and a shower that is large enough for two people to share.
The shower has a glass door instead of a shower curtain...
And a rainfall shower head in the ceiling...
As well as a second shower head on the wall.
We stayed in a Havana Suite on Carnival Vista...
Decided to try the "Havana Premium Vista Balcony" cabin on the Carnival Horizon...
And we've decided we like the Havana Suite better...
So that's what we'll have for our upcoming cruise on the Carnival Panorama.
Another advantage of the Havana suite is that it's much larger...
With a curtain and partition separating the bedroom area from the desk and couch area.
Now I wish they hadn't used quite so much orange in the color scheme of the Havana Suite on Carnival Vista!
But here's an artist's rendering of what the Havana Suite on Carnival Panorama is expected to look like.
Thankfully, a little less orange!
I did enjoy my cruise on Carnival Horizon...
Especially that big balcony that wrapped all the way around the corner of the ship.
And of course, the best part of booking any kind of Havana cabin on Carnival's Vista-class of ships...
Is having access to the very un-crowded Havana pool area, which most other passengers don't have access to.
I'm Jim Zim. I hope you found this video useful.
If you did, please do me a favor and click on the thumbs-up button.
That let's YouTube know that this is a good video...
Which they should recommend to other people.
And listen, if you're interested in booking a cruise on any ship of any cruise line...
And you have questions you'd like answers to, or you just need someone to handle the details for you...
So that you don't make one of those stupid rookie mistakes that people new to cruising sometimes make...
Feel free to use the services of my travel agent, Caitlin Gallagher.
Her fees are paid for by the cruise lines, so her services don't cost you anything at all.
And I've learned that having a travel agent on your side has a LOT of advantages...
Over just booking a cruise directly with the cruise line.
Contact Caitlin, the owner of Ambren Travel, and she'll take good care of you.