HORROR roomate... with a shared roomo..

[reefshoe]

Have anyone shared a room with a complete stranger.... (maybe met on here or talked only a few times)

 

I am curious how it worked out, or did you get the cruise from hell...or the time of your life???????

[Roz]

I've never done it myself, but I think you'll find the responses will tell you it's a crapshoot. For every horror story, there's someone who met a lifelong friend.

 

As far as I'm concerned, once you experience having that entire (tiny) cabin to yourself, you'll never want to go back to sharing. :D

 

Roz

[elycelynne]

And it worked out really well, even though I had never met or talked to her before. It might have helped that we were part of a singles group, but she was a really nice girl and I lucked out. That being said, I'm sure that one time was probably my lifetime allotment of good luck and any other attempts to share with a stranger would be downhill from there. I think it also helped that I was very young at the time and was less particular. I'm sure more little things would bother me now that I'm older and set in my ways.

[matchman]

Hi Reefshoe, I tried it twice on Carnival when they used to offer to match roommates up on the 3 and 4 day cruises .(In the early 90's) You paid an extra $50 for the booking but no surcharge. So you didnt get any chance to meet your roomate until you walked into the cabin.

 

Laugh I do remember both cruises fondly but then I was a lot younger and tolerant :) The first cruise was for 4 days leaving if I remember correctly on the Fantasy from Miami, I was around 25 at the time and my roomate was a Canadian (32 Divorced, two children who lived with him and this was his once a year break on his own.)

 

Well my new roomate upon meeting me decided to take me under his wing and give me guidance on the sometimes confusing subject of young ladies. He went to great lengths to impress upon me his worldly knowledge, which consisted of "you must wear the right aftershave (Old Spice being recommended!)", "You must dress well to impress them" (Polyester Suit, with silk Mickey Mouse tie, its a talking point!) and last but not least drinking a good beer to show you had class such as MGD. I know this sounds like I'm making it up but it was exactly how the conversation went. He then broached the subject of what to do if we got lucky and proceeded to pull a red scarf from his bag to be used on the door handle to tell the other roommate that he wasnt to enter :) *damm I am laughing so hard remembering this* Now I should mention I'm British (So I have a very British accent, and as I said I was 25 but looked around 21 and had spent the last 4 years living in Italy and Germany were I travelled a great deal.) And I find myself on a cruise ship full of young and beautiful American's young ladies.

 

I leave it to you to decide how lucky I was, but I had an entertaining cruise, I think it was the 3rd night by the time my roomate finally decided that I didnt need any help. (I should point out that he was a really nice guy and didnt have a bad bone in his body, but was just from such an extremely different back ground to mine.)

 

The second cruise was again 4 day Miami on the Ecstasy, this time my roomate was very interested in taking picture of the sunrise's and docking of the ship. Talk about chalk and cheese, this was the early 90's short cruise with Carnival and they were party ships. People slept on the Lido while getting a Tan and the disco was open until 4-5am every night. I'd would find myself falling into bed at 5am, to be shaken awake by a roomate at 6am who wanted to know if I wished to see the sunrise or the ship dock :) the amazing thing was he did it every morning of the cruise and would come back thru the early part of the day to see if I wanted waking. (I actually thought by the second morning he was doing it as revenge for my early morning retreats, but it actually came out he thought I was missing the best part of the cruise and felt guilty that he was letting it happen!) I think those were the only parts of the day I ever actually saw my roomate.

 

So niether was a roomate from hell, although after the early morning wake-ups I decided that traveling completly solo was preferable, but neither of them was even close to me in temperament. I look back now and laugh and wouldnt have missed the chance, but would never consider sharing again.

[lindnet]

I've cruised 3 times with 3 different girlfriends. My upcoming cruise will be my first one in a cabin by myself.

 

The first one was the Zuiderdam out of Fort Lauderdale. The girl I went with was my best friend and I assumed we would have a blast. Well, we were travelling with several people from her work and let's just say that they had a different picture of who she was. So she was torn between having fun with me and acting like herself, or being the goody-goody that she had convinced her co-workers she was. Add that to the fact that she brought almost no money with her and so didn't have money to go do things in port. She didn't want to do anything onboard, either. Stayed in bed all day on sea days watching tv in the cabin. And I'm an early riser, she's not. Let's just say, it wasn't the dream vacation I thought it would be.

 

The next year I got a great deal on the Norweigan Dream out of New Orleans. I brought a girl I work with. When I arrived to pick her up to go to the airport, she informed me that she was getting sick. So she didn't feel very good the first day and night in NO. Not her fault. But after getting antibiotics for pink eye and a sinus infection, she felt better. We had excursions planned in each port and it should have been a great trip. She turned on me the second day, screaming at me that she wished she could get away from me. We didn't speak for about 4 days. After the trip was over, she apologized and told me she had forgotten to bring her hormone patches with her!

 

The third trip was better. We went on the Grand Princess out of Galveston. But my roommate wouldn't let me out of her sight. If I was ready for dinner and would tell her I'd meet her in the shops or something, she would get upset and tell me to just wait for her. We never actually fought, but things were a little tense by the end of the cruise. I had finally gone and done a couple of things on sea days without her and she wasn't happy about it.

 

I'm meeting a couple I met last year and they will be on the ship with me, but I will be in my own cabin on this one. That way I'll have the best of both worlds...I can hang out with them or do things on my own with nobody getting upset. I have a feeling after this one, I may never want to share a cabin again!!

[loungelizard]

I always book my own cabin and would never consider a total stranger for a room mate. I work way too hard for my money and I can only afford to take one cruise a year. I'm not a gambler so I think spending the extra money is a wise investment because I value my freedom, privacy and sanity...lol.

[Alysa]

Once I shared a cabin and it worked out OK but all my other cruises I have booked single. Privacy is worth the extra money and I never book a cruise that has a 200% single surcharge. I always book inside cabins which can also be pretty small - fine for one person or lovers but much too cozy for a complete stranger. Once on a bus trip I shared a hotel with someone which turned out to be a big mistake - I never knew someone could snore so loud! I thought the actors on TV/Movies were exagerating snorers - not anymore! She was as loud as a train.

[racephoto]

Yep, I shared too once, on my first cruise. It was a shared cabin arranged through an outfit that did singles group cruises. We had a blast and got on wonderfully well. It was a good group too. I am not sure if I would do it again, although I'd REALLY like to go on an eclipse cruise next March and spending all that money for a single occupancy.......it hurts a bit! :) I am going completely solo on my upcoming cruise, we'll see how it goes. The person I used to travel with lost interest when she got seriously involved, so it was go alone or don't go at all.

[Arubalisa]

Way back in the "olden days", early-mid 80's, some of the cruise lines did what they called a "guarantee share". They stick you in a cabin with whoever. Being young and just out of college with no money to speak of, but wanting to travel, it was worth the risk.

 

Cruise 1. Roomate was okay, we did not have anything in common and made our own friends and went our own ways.

Cruise 2. Roomate was from the Middle East. Luckily she spoke perfect English. Unfortunately with hygiene routines being different in that part of the word, it made for an unpleasant week only when in her prescence. Unless of course she had just stepped out of the shower.

Cruise 3. What a hoot! 4 female strangers in 1 cabin. 3 of us all the same age, had a really fun time. The 4th was an older woman and alcoholic. We had some small difficulties, but when we came in one night and she was sleeping in her top bunk with a lit cigarette, well that was that. Us, the band of 3, marched on down to the purser and they took care of it.

 

Now that I am older, there is NO way in this day and age I would share a cabin with a stranger.

[Diane&4girls]

I booked the EOS with a colleague but her brother was killed in an accident 3 weeks before the cruise. So I posted a thread on CC to find a new roomy and got "SueCruise" from Toronto.

 

She and I had a great cruise together! She was a smoker, smoked on the balcony, but she snored like I had never heard a person snore before!

 

After the 2nd night, I was in tears. She gave me ear plugs but they didn't help at all. The cabin stewardess asked me why I was sleeping all day every day and when I told her, she had her boyfriend bring me a cushioned lounge chair from the Solarium for the balcony... that's where I slept all night.

 

But everything else worked out fine. She was very nice and we enjoyed a lot together.

[caitlyn20]

but it actually came out he thought I was missing the best part of the cruise and felt guilty that he was letting it happen!)

 

That would be me! I'm not at all a party person, but I'm up early every morning to watch (and take pictures of) the sunrise. I took my two girls on most of my cruises, and they stayed out till late and were not at all interested in the sunrise/docking.

 

If I were to get a cruisemate now, I would let them do their own thing and not bother them unless we happened to have interests the same.