I Booked an Obstructed View Cabin on an Old Cruise Ship

I recently went on a cruise, and I stayed in a cabin that had not changed in 22 years.

I booked a quirky cabin type, too, that most people don’t know is an option, and it’s certainly not a cabin you’ll see the cruise lines advertise.

When I cruise, I’m usually more than happy with an inside cabin. I stayed in one on a very similar ship a few years ago, and it was totally fine.

Not great, but fine. I like to cut costs where I can and I usually can’t justify the balcony upgrade price.

I came across a third option, something that I hoped would be better than an inside cabin, but wasn’t as expensive as the standard balcony cabin. 

The ship was Carnival Miracle, which has over 1,000 cabins onboard. I booked a “guaranteed balcony cabin,” which was $130 per person cheaper than the standard balcony cabin. 

That meant that I would at least get a balcony of some sort, but it could be anywhere on the ship.

I would basically be given one of the leftover cabins and it could be one with any number of downsides.

I knew that my cabin could have some sort of obstruction to the view because it mentioned that.

I didn’t know if that meant I’d have something small in the way or I’d just be staring directly at a wall for seven days. It could have gone either way… 

Looking at the deck plans I could see that 66 of the balcony cabins were marked as obstructed view so there was a high chance I’d get one of those.

I didn’t know if I’d get a cabin in a noisy location or one where I’d feel more movement, but I do like to take the risk. 

Pre-cruise, I’d read lots of reviews, and a couple had mentioned the cabins being dirty and scruffy.

Given the ship’s age, I wouldn’t have surprised by that, but I hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Outdated is totally fine with me, but dirty is something else entirely. 

It wasn’t until I checked in for the cruise and downloaded my luggage tags that I found out where my cabin was.

I saw on the luggage labels Cabin 5228 and went straight to Carnival’s website to have a look.

I found my cabin towards the back of deck 5. Looking at photos of the ship, it looked as though we would be right behind the lifeboats. 

All the pictures and videos I could find online of the cabin were pretty old, and I thought to myself, “I’m sure they’ve updated the cabins since then”.

It turns out they really haven’t changed much at all.

It felt quite like I had time-travelled back to 2003 for a week, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – although we had some problems, and I missed a few things. 

When we boarded the ship, we found it very easy to find our room because the signs were very big and very obvious.

The decor in the corridors was a little overwhelming, but it was nothing compared to the rest of the ship. Subtle isn’t a word I’d use to describe Carnival Miracle. 

Our cabin, on the other hand, was actually quite relaxing. When I entered the room, it felt light and comfortable.

It was colourful, sure, but I didn’t feel like I needed to wear sunglasses inside like I did in some of the other spaces onboard. 

I noticed straight away that we had been given a double bed, but as I was cruising with my brother, I knew I’d have to ask to have that changed.

I phoned housekeeping later in the day on the cabin phone. They came by to change the beds into two twins for us. 

The beds split like this on almost all cruise ships, and I knew that they did here because I was asked pre-cruise how I’d like the beds. I said twins.

That message didn’t get to the ship, though, which is a shame because the last thing I want to do is create more work for the housekeeping team.

They always work so hard, and they have a lot of cabins to clean. 

I’m not sure if the art on the walls was falling over surfboards or bananas but I did like it, these are definitely not 2003 originals.

I thought the lights at the top around the edges were fun, too. The look is definitely a bit outdated, but honestly, I quite like it. It’s like icing on top of a cake.

Things like the lamps and this light on the mirror aren’t to my taste, but the world would be very boring if we all liked the same things. 

Generally, the cabin looked a bit grubby, with marks on the walls and little discoloured bits on the lamps and other materials.

This is just what a 22-year-old lamp looks like. It’s impressive that it’s still going, honestly, but it wouldn’t take much to change the lampshades. 

I had heard some rumours that these lamps would have USBs in them, but we didn’t have any luck with that, they’re just regular lamps. 

I headed out straight away onto the balcony to have a look at our obstruction.

I was so happy to see that we had a clear view out to the horizon. We missed only the view looking down.

The lifeboat never came up above the barrier, and even when I was sat down, I still had a view out. 

When I was sitting on the sofa I couldn’t see the lifeboat at all, because it was behind the bed. 

Looking to the side, I saw that some cabins had more of an obstructed view, with privacy barriers to the side or metalwork that came up higher, so I do think we got lucky here.

I wasn’t sure if I’d miss out on anything happening directly down at the ocean, but I doubted it. 

The balcony itself had two chairs on it and a little table, it definitely isn’t the biggest balcony I’ve had by a long stretch but it was fine for the two of us to sit out there.

We did have to move the chairs so we could open the door, but overall it was fine. If there were any more of you trying to share this space, you’d all have to stand in an orderly line.

This cabin does hold three because the sofa is a sofa bed. 

Coming back into the cabin, I headed over to the desk with the wall of mirrors. These made the cabin feel so bright and open, I bet they’ve had to replace a lot of mirrors on this ship in the last 22 years.

Carnival Miracle was built in 2003, so she was twenty-two years old when I sailed on her.

The big mirror has lights around it, and the lighting was really good here.

Often on old ships you find that the lights flicker for a while before coming on but there was none of that. They made me feel like I was in a dressing room backstage at a theatre. 

On the desk was a phone, two plug sockets and some $4.75 bottles of water.

I usually drink tap water when I cruise, but after one mouthful of the water on this ship, I decided that it tasted like it had come from a pond.

From that point on, I got water from the buffet, which is free, and just brought it down to my cabin. 

There were two plug sockets on the desk and two extra USBs in the lamp over above the sofa which I assume is a new addition, but that’s it for power. It was totally fine for us because I had an adapter where I could charge multiple things at once. 

It’s definitely worth bringing an adapter like this because the plug sockets were so close together that you couldn’t use both and that’s definitely something that catches people out.

I used a travel adapter like this, it is all I ever need:

Apparently, to “catch you out” is a Britishism. I had no idea about that one…

I often make lists of things that’ll “catch you out” on a cruise – and what I mean by that is things that’ll lead you to make a mistake, in a tricky way.

Like, somebody didn’t tell you these plug sockets were so close together, and you assumed you could use both, but you couldn’t, and you got caught out. 

Under the desk, there are lots of drawers, including one for all the important bits and bobs you need on a cruise.

There was a fridge here too with nothing in it, and the door to that didn’t close properly. Looking closer, it looked as though one of the hinges was broken.

The cabinets and wardrobes are 2003 originals, though, so I think they deserve to be cut a bit of slack. I’m sure this could be fixed easily though. 

Another thing that seemed very old-fashioned to me, and that I’ve actually never seen on a cruise ship before, was that the safe under the TV was operated by card.

It says to swipe your credit card, but I didn’t do that. I’m sure any card with a magnetic strip works. Usually, you type in a PIN number. 

There are some shallow cupboards on the other side, but we didn’t use these during the cruise. We had far more space than things, and I didn’t use my bedside tables either.

The TV isn’t 2003 original, that’s for sure, but that’s one of the only things that changed in this cabin. 

That said, though this isn’t a new TV. I’m just thinking more like 2010 rather than 2003.

Still, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. It doesn’t have any smart features at all, it’s just a loop of channels. 

The walls in the cabin were slightly textured but its nothing compared to the river cruise cabin I had once where the walls were padded and patterned.

Have a look at those weird walls here:

I’m sure patterned walls are slightly more forgiving of slight scuffs and scratches than plain colours. 

Opposite the desk is a sofa and a table. It definitely shows its age, but it wasn’t dirty, just worn. I set up my office here for the week, and it mostly worked well. 

I did buy a WiFi package so that I could keep up with the video calls I needed for my work with my company The Cruise Globe.

We’ve just passed 30,000 users on there now which is phenomenal. Thats enough to fill this ship 14 times.

Have a look at the amazing, free Cruise Globe here:

thecruiseglobe.com

The Wi-Fi worked well on this cruise, and I never had any problems. My video calls did buffer sometimes, but they do for me at home, too.

I bought the highest internet package, which cost me $196, so you’d hope it would work. 

My biggest problem with doing calls here was that the air conditioning was right beside me, and it would turn on and off whenever it felt like it.

It was almost as though it was on all the time, but every so often it would get a big burst of energy and start going full power.

There wasn’t any way to turn it off on the control panel. That wasn’t a problem for the rest of the cruise, but the whistling was tricky to ignore during the calls.

I was tempted to move and sit on the toilet to do the calls, but that would have been an even worse idea. 

Our luggage arrived around now.

Embarkation had taken almost three hours, so I didn’t unpack until the next day, which is really unheard of for me.

I usually like to be organised, but food was a much higher priority. 

The part that I was most nervous about in this cabin was the bathroom, I’d read some bad reviews and bathrooms do tend to show their age.

In terms of space, the bathroom was a fairly good size. The shower tray was nice and high so that the water didn’t spill out, and there was plenty of space by the sink to put our things. 

The shower worked well, and the temperature control was good. We each had a bath towel, but I decided to use the blue pool towel instead, just because it was bigger and I didn’t plan on going in the pools anyway. 

The bathroom did look run down and grotty in a few places, but it definitely had been cleaned.

The vent thing above the toilet was gross, and it blew air all the time. I also didn’t like the bar of soap instead of the usual liquid, but that could be personal preference. 

I knew of a couple on this cruise, whose cabin hadn’t been cleaned at all. It was so filthy that Carnival moved them and gave them a full refund for the cruise.

That’s a pretty generous outcome, and I’ve never heard of that happening on a cruise before. I’m happy to say that my cabin was clean and was cleaned once a day by our cabin steward.

Our cabin steward did go above and beyond with the towel animals. Every day when we’d come back to the room there would be somebody waiting for us.

It was like a zoo in there, but a zoo where I didn’t know what the animals were!

All of the housekeeping team were so friendly, as were all the crew onboard. It’s not a normal thing to have your waiters dance for you in the restaurant, but they did! 

Shower curtains are always a bit disappointing, but it is what it is, not the end of the world, it mostly kept itself to itself. They couldn’t really change this without changing the whole bathroom.  

When we headed to bed, we put the “do not disturb” sign on the door and closed the curtains. The curtains were very good at blocking out the light, which was good because we could see the lights from the other balconies if they had them on. 

We barely saw or heard our neighbours at all during this cruise. My guess was that they were out most of the time, and as we didn’t have a lot of sunshine on this trip, they probably weren’t spending time on the balcony. 

I loved coming out onto the balcony at night, though. The views are amazing, and for me, this is what cruising is about. 

One thing that I loved about this cabin at night was that there was a nightlight under the wardrobes. This was motion-activated, so when I went to the toilet at night, it would light up the way. I wish all cruise ships had something similar. 

The next morning, we unpacked and I put my suitcase at the bottom of the wardrobe.

We had two full wardrobe sections of hanging space, but almost all of my clothes fitted into two drawers. I travel light, and Carnival is a pretty casual cruise line, so I didn’t have any formalwear. 

Carnival does offer room service, but it is at a charge, so we didn’t try that during this cruise. We were only three decks below the buffet anyway, so it wasn’t far to walk if we wanted something to eat.

We didn’t get to pick the deck, but deck 5 was pretty perfect. The main areas inside the ship were down on decks 2 and 3, and the pools were up on deck 9, so we were in the middle.

If I could have chosen a deck, this probably would have been the one anyway.

Being a little bit set into the ship was nice too, we hardly felt any movement here at all. 

We never heard anybody in the corridor, and I was probably the one being noisy because every time I walked past a door with magnets on it, I had to stop to read them out.

Guests on Carnival love decorating their doors, and that’s just one thing that makes Carnival cruises quite unique.

That said, I don’t think Carnival are really a line that suits me and the way that I cruise.

Have a look at the video I made from a Carnival cruise I took out of New York City, it was quite an experience and one I’ll never forget:

Before You Go

Have a look at the food onboard Carnival Magic here:

Carnival Cruise Review – (Food, Ship, Entertainment and More)

Have a look at the food onboard Norwegian Cruise Line here:

Everything I Ate on Norwegian Prima (Menus, Speciality and Included Dining) #ad