Question about balconies on Sea Princess

[SF]

I've noticed from pictures that the balcony opening on the Caribe deck looks smaller than the ones on the Baja deck, is this true?

[julieh]

The balcony is the same size but the opening which is a cut out of the ship is smaller on Caribe than Baja.

 

Julie

[loriliz]

I just returned from the sea princess last night. I can tell you I had a balcony on Caribe deck and it was very tiny compared to balconies on other ships. When you look at the ship from the outside it does appear that there are smaller balconies on Caribe, but I can't say for sure because I did'nt see thje Baja or Aloha cabins.

Lori

[cruiser02]

Did you enjoy the SE Princee? Are the cabins smaller then the other Princess ships? I've booked a cat B on Baja deck Looking for comments

[Coral]

Yes - the balcony is the same size but the opening is smaller on the Caribe deck.

[SF]

Thanks for responding. That's what I thought from looking at the pictures. It did look like the balconies on Baja had a bigger opening. We are booked on Baja.

 

Lori,

 

How were the cabins on Sea Princess? I booked a category BB on Baja.

 

What itinerary was your cruise? I'm looking for information on the Iceland, Norway, British Isles itinerary. Did you like the Sea Princess? Please let us know what you thought of the food, entertainment and overall ship.

 

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Globaliser]

SF,

 

There's one thing that you might want to think about cabin choice for that cruise. The weather may or may not be good enough for you to use the balcony. On the Spitsbergen cruise last month, we had 8 cold/damp/drizzly/rainy days out of 13, and two of the other days were unremarkable. None of this was surprising given where we were.

 

In anticipation of the likelihood of something like that happening, we deliberately decided not to have a balcony (even though it was within budget) but to go for one of the outside cabins on the decks with balconies - we ended up with one on C deck, forward. These cabins have the same floor area as the balcony cabins on the same deck, including the balcony - ie the balcony area is inside the cabin rather than outside it. It made the cabin feel substantially bigger, which we verified by poking our heads into a nearby balcony cabin when we were disembarking.

 

We were very glad that we made that decision, because it would have been very frustrating to have had that floor area outside the balcony door and unusable for most of the cruise. If you're somewhere like the Caribbean where these issues aren't going to arise, then a balcony cabin may well be a very nice idea - but the Arctic Circle may be a very different kettle of fish.

[aclay]

we were on the same cruise as Globaliser. We had a balcony cabin on Aloha. We have to agree that the balconies seemed smaller than on the Grand class. We spent nearly $3k pp thinking the scenic Arctic landscape would warrant the balcony, whereas last minute insides were going for $1600.

If we were to go again it would be for an inside and try and save the $$$. Another argument is that for a few days it was 24 hour daylight (or greylight as it was for us) which, along with the shock to the body clock, we often found really annoying when trying to fall asleep -we would often have to get out of bed to adjust the curtain to stop light coming through - something you would be oblivious to in an inside cabin. There were perhaps two days where the balcony paid off: waking up to a glorious day and breakfast on the balcony in Spitsbergen- Magdelena Fjord, and waking up to similar weather on the journey into Bergen.

Anyway just my thoughts- your choice..

[SF]

Thanks for the extra viewpoints, may consider that suggestion. I don't like inside cabins as I prefer to be able to see outside but having a window wouldn't be too bad. We just got back from our Alaska Cruise and we only used the balcony a few times but it was definitely worth it when we cruised Tracy Arm. Last time cruising Glacier Bay (several years ago) we didn't take one. Globaliser would you by any chance have a picture of the inside of one of these cabins from your trip? I'd really like to see it.

[Globaliser]

Globaliser would you by any chance have a picture of the inside of one of these cabins from your trip? I'd really like to see it.

No, I'm afraid not. By the time the camera was unpacked, so was everything else (our bags arrived really fast) and my partner wouldn't have permitted any photos of the resulting clutter!

 

But if you can find a photo of a standard balcony cabin, just imagine that the doors to the balcony aren't there, and that the balcony hull cutout is the window of the cabin at its far end. You have that extra 3 or 4 feet of depth inside the cabin instead of beyond the balcony door.

 

I can second what aclay said about the daylight through the curtains. The curtains were definitely not designed to keep out daylight and bright sunshine at 3 am! My partner eventually resorted to sleeping with eyeshades. But it was nice to have a window for a long cruise, even though I'm normally an inside cabin person myself.

[SF]

Globaliser:

 

Appreciate the info and I'm going to check out if any cabins like that are available and compare the prices.

 

Not to sure I'd be happy with sunlight coming in thru the curtains at 3am :eek: