I Stayed In The Smallest Cabin on a BRAND NEW Cruise Ship

If you’ve ever seen a cruise line advertise their cruises, you’ll notice that they usually show you balcony cabins.

They don’t share that many rooms have no outside space at all, and a massive percentage don’t even have windows.

Inside cabins are basically big metal boxes, without any daylight that have one way in and one way out. 

30% of the cabins on this cruise ship didn’t have a balcony. I stayed in the cheapest and smallest room on the entire ship to see if the price saving was worth it.

I was given a cabin with a location that many would consider one of the worst, and this cabin came with lots of little surprises.

I’ve wanted to cruise on Cunard’s newest ship Queen Anne, ever since she was launched. When I saw a short 4-day cruise on her sailing from my local cruise port, I thought this would be the perfect time to give it a go.

I knew that my cabin might be the “perfect home away from home”, as some of the reviews said – or it could be, as one person put it “, tiny with miniature furniture which made it very claustrophobic”.

Miniature furniture made it sound like a doll’s house, but I was looking forward to seeing what it would be like!

Cunard definitely aren’t a budget cruise line – and I wanted to see how they could make an inside cabin feel luxurious. 

I would be sharing this room with my brother, so plenty of storage and plug sockets would be a bonus.

When I booked this cruise, I didn’t pick the specific cabin location. I booked what is called a “guaranteed” cabin, meaning that I was guaranteed to have a cabin, but it could be anywhere.

I’ve stayed in cabins right at the front of the ship, right at the back, under nightclubs and above theatres. I’m not normally too bothered by noise – and it’s a good job I wasn’t because I was given a location that would be a problem for some.

Find out more about guaranteed cabins here:

I Always Book Guaranteed Cabins on Cruise Ships – (Photo Examples, Regrets & More)

My cabin was assigned a few weeks before the cruise, and I headed straight to the cruise line’s website to see what was around my cabin.

I noticed immediately that my room was on deck 1. I’ve never had a cabin that far down before, and I wasn’t sure if this meant we would be miles away from everything – or if everything would just be lower down than I’m used to. 

Looking at the deck plans I could see that there were just cabins around me which was good. Heading up a level I saw that we would be under an area called the “Bright Lights Society.” It turns out that this is the ship’s nightclub, but I didn’t realise that at the time. 

My boarding time for this cruise was 2:30 pm which is quite late. The benefit of that though was that our cabin was already ready when we got onboard.

Sometimes on cruises, you’ll have to wait a few hours before you can go to your cabin.

I loved the design of the corridors, and it already felt very different to what I’m used to from Cunard.

I have cruised with them in the past and they are a very traditional cruise line.

Queen Anne is Cunard’s first new ship in fourteen years. I was wondering how they’d designed the cabins to be both classic and elegant – but with a more up-to-date feel than the older ships in the fleet.

We found our cruise cards outside the cabin, and this is what you use to open the cabin door.

These cards are how you buy drinks onboard and get on and off the ship but don’t worry they do have your photo and details attached, so nobody else can use your card.

They could, in theory, break into your room and use your toilet or something before you if they wanted, but that would be very weird, and the envelope is sealed, so you’d know if somebody did that. 

Walking into the room I was very impressed with the design and the colours and a little surprised to see the layout.

Almost all inside cabins on cruise ships are exactly the same, and when you open the door, you are normally faced with the bed.

You might find a sofa or a desk but that’s pretty much it for an inside cabin. In this room, though, the beds are tucked around the corner. The cabin itself is the same size as the others but the layout is just different. 

I wondered if there would be any benefits or negatives to that. Usually, when all cruise lines do something the same way, theres a reason. 

It’s not often I think “wow” when looking at the desk of a cabin, but this desk area was so cool. I love the attention to detail and the light up mirror made the cabin feel bigger and brighter.

This is the only mirror in the main part of the cabin but there is a full length mirror if you open the door of the wardrobe. 

In the desk is the most important drawer, the stuff drawer, where you can put wires and occasionally biscuits. I always find I can keep the cabin tidier when I can scoop everything into there.

There was also a daily schedule here, which lists everything that is happening on the ship.

It talks about where the cruise is going, when bars and lounges will be open and what events are happening.

I love getting this paper schedule because I always sit in bed and read about the next day. I took my first cruise when I was 11, and I remember doing that on the first trip. 

The beds were very close together though so I decided to move over the bedside table to give us some more space. I could do that easily and it was no problem.

Moving the bed over did mean that I lost a little bit of the space on one side, but it was totally worth it. In the bottom corner is a mini bar fridge but I never use that anyway. 

The cabin felt bright and spacious, it felt a lot more modern than the cabin I stayed in on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. (Not that there was anything really wrong with that cabin – but I do really like the updated look.) 

Find out about the inside cabin I had on the last Ocean Liner at sea, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 here:

I took a river cruise recently where the beds wouldn’t move even 1cm apart, I ended up sleeping upside down and kicking my Dad in the head while I slept, I didn’t fancy doing that again! This was much better. 

I was happy to see that the beds were set up as twins, this is something that I requested pre cruise as I was cruising with my brother.

The little touches like the blue pillows here, definitely made the cabin feel more luxurious.

I always wonder how often things like this are washed whenever I stay in a hotel or on a cruise but they’re mostly just for decoration anyway, if I was to sleep face down I’d do it on the regular pillows. 

On the desk was a welcome onboard bottle of sparking wine, which everybody gets when they sail on a Cunard cruise.

We had a soda package on this cruise, so we enjoyed this bottle before we went to dinner the first night. 

It was around now that I spotted something that is very rare to find on cruise ships – and that is UK plug sockets.

Most cruise ships have US or European sockets but because Cunard are a British cruise line (well, kind of a British cruise line) they have UK sockets.

Everything onboard is done in US dollars, so it’s not that British, but the UK sockets were a nice treat. 

There were USBs and even USB As which is the newer kind. This is what I use to charge my phone so I always appreciate that. This was a really good sign that this would be a comfortable cabin.

Sometimes, it’s the small things, like being able to have my phone near me while it’s charging, that make a big difference. 

The cabin didn’t feel claustrophobic to me at all, but I know that many people do feel like that and inside cabins are often described as “shoe boxes”.

If I think too much about the fact that theres only one door that does make me feel a bit weird, but I find it easy enough to distract myself with something like the biscuits and the kettle, which I always get very excited about.

Cruise ships are made fully formed like this and slid into the side of the cruise ship so there really is just one way in and one way out. It’s a solid box.

We used our kettle to start every day with a cup of tea, and although we didn’t really stop eating for this whole cruise, we did manage to find some time for biscuits! I’ve said biscuits so many times, we didn’t find any cookies on this cruise though, just biscuits…

Another thing I get excited about is a nice big shower and preferably if it has a shower door instead of a curtain.

I did speak to a person once who had a small shower on a cruise with a curtain and they said they accidentally shaved the shower curtain when trying to shave their leg. No such problems here though! 

The shower was a really good size, and the bathroom was a decent size, too. I don’t think this is a particularly big bathroom and I’ve definitely had bigger, but it was well-designed, and everything worked perfectly, as you’d expect on a ship of this age. 

It wasn’t long until our luggage arrived in our cabin. Cunard are the most formal cruise line that there is and formal dress codes are a big part of that.

I generally wear what I’d wear for other cruise lines formal nights on the informal nights on Cunard. On formal nights I put on something even more fancy – something that you really couldn’t wear just out in every day life. 

It’s all good fun, but all those extra clothes do mean that you need storage. As we began to unpack, we realised that there was plenty of storage for us for the four nights, but if we were onboard for a couple of weeks, that would get tricky.

Especially since cabins like this can hold three or four people. I can’t imagine four people’s clothes fitting in here for two weeks, but for the majority of people, it would be totally fine.

Cruise lines can’t always design their cabins with loads of storage; it’d have to come at a cost of something else.

I for example wouldn’t want to give up the space that these lovely dressing gowns took up, they were so comfortable and soft, I loved them.

It was little things like this that did make the cabin feel more luxurious, most cruise lines don’t provide dressing gowns and on most you do have to pay for room service.

We did decide to order a room service breakfast one morning, just because it was included.

Usually, I’d just walk up to the buffet, but as we were down on deck 1, it was quite a way. Still, we always managed it. They do have elevators of course but the walk was good and our location on deck 1 did have some extra benefits I’d find later. 

We did have a TV in our cabin and on there there are lots of movies that you can watch that are included in the fare.

There is also a bridge camera so you can see what is going on outside. It doesn’t really help too much – when you’re trying to get dressed and to work out what the weather is but it’s better than nothing.

I made the mistake of mistaking brightness for warmth a few times but I did buy a WiFi package so I could Google what the weather was like. 

I bought the package mostly so I could work of course, it wasn’t just to see what the weather was like. 

I bought the cheapest WiFi package and it was a bit odd in the things that it let me do.

It clearly blocked YouTube because I couldn’t upload a photo here, even though I could upload the same one to Facebook.

Facebook was fine though and I could literally watch full movies on there, bit odd but it was well worth the money for me and I’m glad I didn’t pay more for a higher package. 

When I was on the cruise, I talked to a few other people who also had an inside cabin but they had their beds at the end with the TV on the side wall. At the moment I don’t believe that the TV swivels out at all so that’s silly but I’ve heard that Cunard are fixing that – and I hope they do.

I don’t really watch TV when I cruise but still having a TV that just faces at another wall is bizarre. You’d have to just perch on the end of the bed awkwardly. 

One of the weirdest things about staying in cabins like this is the disconnect with the outside world. It is really impossible to tell if it’s 3 a.m. or 3 p.m.

I actually really like how the beds were positioned because it meant that we couldn’t even see the light coming under the main door from the corridor, it really was as pitch black as possible.

Well, apart from a glow-in-the-dark button right by my head! I ended up putting a plaster on it in the middle of the night because it was annoying me. An easy fix but a worthwhile one. 

The button turned on a light over by the bathroom and thats a nice idea if you’re going to the toilet in the night.

Personally, I’d prefer there to be a little nightlight in the bathroom. Some cruise ships have a dull light red light or something in there, but because my phone was charging so close to me, I’d just use that as a torch. 

I definitely preferred the location here being a bit further away from the door.

I love a YouTube channel called Dear Modern and he always explains that if you’re facing the door your body sort of feels like somebody will come and attack you so this is much better.

I felt really comfortable and snug in here so I think that works. 

The next morning I was woken up by the Captain letting us know that due to bad weather we would be delayed getting into our first port of Bruges. I honestly had no idea that we had any bad weather at all – and really didn’t feel a thing. 

I have been seasick on cruises in the past, so I’m certainly not immune to it. I think the ship handled any bad weather very well.

I’m sure it also helped that we were so far down in the ship, as you feel the movement more up high. I’ve had cabins in the past on the higher decks and you could feel the difference in movement as you walked around the different areas of the ship.

Speaking of prints, do you think that the carpet in my cabin looks like crinkle-cut chips/ fries? I do! Once I saw that, I couldn’t see anything else. 

The carpet and the whole of the cabin was spotlessly clean. Helped I’m sure by the fact that the house keeping team clean all of the cabins twice a day. 

That was always the norm on cruises, but many cruise lines have reduced it to once a day.

It is quite bonkers to think about cleaning the room twice a day, but they pretty much just turn the room into bedtime mode in the evening. They’re not hoovering again or anything – unless you’ve made a mess. 

The great thing about twice-a-day services is the bedtime chocolate left on the pillow.

To let the team know if you don’t want to be disturbed, you stick a magnet to the door. I do like it when cruise lines have buttons for this instead of a magnet that could be turned over, but it works for the most part. 

I really love having a bedtime chocolate and it’s amazing how fast you can get used to something like this. It’s like how in December you get used to having chocolate from your advent calendar, and then in January, you miss it – the same idea. 

I also got used to the music that would come through from the nightclub above.

I always have some earplugs in my suitcase and with those in it wasn’t too much of a problem. If you were sensitive to noise or had kids in here, I imagine it would be annoying, but for me, it was okay. 

It was more just the baseline than being able to hear the words of the music. Cruise ship cabins aren’t exactly known for being soundproof, and I’ve definitely been in louder cabins before. 

Find out more about soundproofing in cruise ship cabins here:

Are Cruise Ship Cabins Soundproof? (Thin Walls, Balconies and Travelling Sound)

There were benefits to this location – like being just one deck down from the Theatre and being very close to the pub – which I liked.

I found the layout of this ship quite confusing. I’m not sure why, but having my cabin at one end definitely helped with that. If in doubt, look at the sea and head forward and down. That was always my plan, and it worked. 

We never heard anything else from any guests around us, which was nice. Nobody walked past our corridor unless they had a cabin down here.

I did have a couple of friends onboard, David and Steve, who had the most amazing suite. It was huge, and I’m sure I would have liked their bath. But still, considering the price I paid, I was very happy.

I paid £589($762) for this four night cruise, based on two sharing an inside cabin. ( That was my part, and my brother paid the same amount again)

Cunard definitely aren’t a budget cruise line but I don’t think that’s a bad price. We also paid extra for the daily gratuities, WiFi and a soda package. 

At the time of booking it was another £120 per person for an oceanview cabin or £160 ($207) for a balcony cabin.

Given the fact that we cruised to Bruges and Cherbourg (both of which aren’t really the most picturesque ports) and that we went in autumn we wouldn’t have ever had that sunbathing on the balcony image that most cruise lines advertise. I didn’t miss out too much. 

To have a better look at my cabin, check out this video next:

Before You Go

Cunard is a very formal cruise line. Find out more about their dress codes here:

Cunard Dress Code – (Mens, Womens, Childrens – Real Examples)

Cunard own the last Ocean Liner at sea, the Queen Mary 2. Find out what the differences are between cruise ships and Ocean Liners here:

Cruise Ships vs Ocean Liners – Measurable Differences You Need to Know