Should I Book an Interior or Balcony Cabin on my Cruise?

Table Of Content

• What is an interior cabin on a cruise?
• Not All Inside Rooms Lack a View
• Inside cabins are the quietest cabins onboard
• The best inside cabins
• Still deciding which cabin to book for your cruise? Check out more of our tips & tricks:
• Best Accessible Inside Cabin: Celebrity Cruises
• Family Harbor Staterooms & Suites

Since there's no outside light, trying to navigate the room without lights on can be a challenge, such as when you wake up from sleeping and need to get to the bathroom. The holy grail of the frequent traveler is the complimentary, or at least cheap, upgrade to a nicer airline seat or hotel room than they paid for. You might wonder if there are tricks to accomplish the same on a cruise.

What is an interior cabin on a cruise?

Not all accessible cabins are the same, so do your research before booking. In general, newer ships offer better accessibility; older ships might have retrofitted a cabin to make it more accessible but might not be able to offer all the enhancements of a purposely designed room. You might also get nicer amenities such as name-brand toiletries, higher-thread-count sheets and linens, stocked minibars or fancy robes to enjoy on board. The benefit of this type of room (sometimes called an "infinite veranda") is that all of the cabin's square footage is usable rain or shine. With a traditional balcony, the extra outdoor space is wasted when it's chilly or wet outside. Typically, inside cabins are smaller and cheaper; suites are larger and more expensive.

Not All Inside Rooms Lack a View

If you value the added space of a balcony or the exclusivity of a suite, a tiny, windowless room will not be the best choice. Likewise, having natural daylight in the room is a major plus for many cruisers, making an inside cabin a last resort. Royal Caribbean has gone a step further, adding large "virtual balconies" to inside cabins on some ships. These are floor-to-ceiling LED screens that show real-time views of the outside, built into the walls of the cabins in such a way that they offer the illusion of a balcony. While Norwegian's solo cabins do have windows, they open up onto hallways, not the outside of the ship. They're also unusually small, at around 100 square feet, but they're superbly designed to maximize storage space, too.

Inside cabins are the quietest cabins onboard

Depending on the cruise line, you can save even more by letting the cruise line assign your cabin versus picking the specific cabin and location you want. A cruise through Alaska’s Glacier Bay or a Panama Canal cruise immediately come to mind as itineraries where you might want to have a way to see the sights from your own private space. If you know you want to treat yourself to room service often during your cruise (and why not? It’s often free, especially for breakfast!), an inside stateroom may not be the best cabin for you. The lack of a window isn't the only reason to pooh-pooh the idea of staying in an inside cabin.

The best inside cabins

These tend to be a little more expensive than the basic cabin in the same class but come with perks that can enhance your vacation. Some cruise lines, such as Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises, create special restaurants, lounges and sun decks exclusive to suite residents. This lets passengers avoid crowded public areas and enjoy fine dining in a less frenetic setting than the main dining room. For cruise lines offering promotions where you choose your favorite booking perk, suite passengers often get all the freebies instead of one or two or higher amounts of onboard credit. The private outdoor spaces are usually fairly small, but certain cabin categories might have roomier balconies due to the ship's layout.

For most passengers, including myself, this leads to a fantastic night’s sleep. Older cruise ships, for example, have thinner walls than Royal Caribbean’s newest ships, which may help noise travel from room to room. In addition, booking an inside cabin above or below a busy area of the ship—such as a nightclub or Adventure Ocean—can lead to increased noise levels.

Downsizing from a balcony cabin to an inside room can free up hundreds of dollars you can use to splurge on that couples massage or flightseeing helicopter tour. Remember when we told you inside rooms on cruises are cheaper than other rooms? That means you'll have more cash left over for indulgences like spa treatments, shore excursions and specialty dining. Cloud 9 Spa™ staterooms do things a little different than ordinary staterooms. For starters, we dare you to cross the threshold without feeling a little more relaxed. Once you're inside, you'll find pleasing decor and in-room amenities like ELEMIS bath products and spa-branded bathrobes and slippers to enhance your stay.

Modern cruise ships have stabilizers that reduce a lot of the rocking that you’d feel on a smaller ship. The Captain will also try to avoid serious storms that could cause the ship to rock or pitch. But weather can be unpredictable, and occasionally you will find yourself cruising through rough seas.

Family Harbor Staterooms & Suites

Sure the cost is less, but you can often get a location literally just feet away from some of the most expensive rooms on the ship. First and foremost, interior cabins are the cheapest cabins on the ship. So if you’re looking for a deal, then there is a lot to like about these rooms.

The price for the balcony room is $1,139 — or $420 more per person. That’s because rooms are sold based on double occupancy and also have port fees and taxes tacked on. After all, if you are out and about the ship most of the cruise, who cares if your room doesn’t have an outside space? You can just head to the pool deck or the promenade to get some fresh air.

Rather than purchasing a sunrise alarm clock, a no-cost hack is to leave your cabin TV on and tuned to the channel that has a view from the ship's bridge. Since you have no windows in your cabin, it's hard to know when you wake up on your own if it's 3am or 3pm. If you're like me, opening your eyes to check what time it is can be a dangerous game because you might end up waking up too much and find it difficult to go back to sleep.

I stayed in the cheapest, smallest cabin on Royal Caribbean's Enchantment of the Seas for $210 per night. Look inside ... - Royal Caribbean Blog

I stayed in the cheapest, smallest cabin on Royal Caribbean's Enchantment of the Seas for $210 per night. Look inside ....

Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Inside cabins are almost always the cheapest cabin you can book on a cruise. As someone who prefers cruising on a budget, this is the primary reason I book inside cabins. My balcony was located directly two decks above the carousel, which played carnival-themed music for over ten hours each day!

Think free laundry service, priority embarkation, or a free mini-bar setup. On my recent cruise in an inside room, I only visited my cabin to sleep, shower, and change. Instead of spending time in my small cabin, I spent my days lounging in the Solarium, enjoying a drink at the Schooner Bar, and catching a show at the AquaTheater. There are a few ocean-view cabins designed for solo travelers in the industry, but they are very rare. By offering you little more than a small, dark place to rest your head at night, inside cabins can be just the impetus you need to make the most of your cruise vacation. But that doesn't mean I'm opposed to the idea of staying in a cabin without a balcony.

Once you turn off the lights, it will be pitch black — the kind of darkness that's almost scary to contemplate. So are nearly all the ship's onboard restaurants, bars and lounges. For starters, inside cabins often are significantly less expensive than ocean-view cabins. They also offer a sort of "less is more" minimalism that can appeal to a keep-it-simple crowd.

Without a doubt, the best reason to book an inside room is for the cost savings, relative to other stateroom categories. Unlike at home or in a balcony room, where the morning light seeps in and wakes everyone up, 3pm and 3am look exactly the same in an inside room (so pack an alarm clock!). I never considered the layout of the bed can help with providing more space.

As long as you’re a light packer, you’ll find the closet and shelving in an inside cabin to be more than adequate to fit all of your stuff, even for two or three people. From enrichment lectures and production shows, dance lessons and trivia games, to lively casinos and bars, there’s always something for everyone going on on a cruise ship. Some insides can sleep more than two people, with pull-down beds that your steward will set up each night. Whether you cruise multiple times per year or you're new to cruising, the goal of Royal Caribbean Blog is for it to be a useful resource for keeping up to date with what's new and exciting with Royal Caribbean. In my experience, however, inside cabins have been more quiet than other staterooms. Cabins with balconies are more prone to noise, especially those located near the pool deck or within Central Park and the Boardwalk neighborhoods.