Cabin Review

The cabin is small, but we only sleep in it so that's not an issue. BUT, there is nowhere near enough storage and the bathroom is far too small. And the sliding wardrobe doors are awkward and hard to move. There's an area of hanging space that is hard to get to because the door does not slide fully out of the way. If young, slim, and flexible you will not have a problem with the bathroom. But if you are slightly larger, or have shoulder / back problems, you'll struggle to reach the toilet roll which is under the basin bench below the level of the toilet seat itself. We gave up and put the toilet roll on the bench instead of the holder. I must say, however, that the ventilation of the shower was the best I've experienced on a ship. The hinges for the door to the bathroom are tight, and noisy. You'll definitely wake your partner if you go to the loo in the middle of the night. The bin is a recycling only bin - one compartment for plastic, one for paper, one for food - and too small. It took us a few nights to find the more general rubbish bin inside the cabinet below the bathroom sink.

Our cabin steward was polite, but there was a hair on the bathroom sink when we moved in that didn't disappear until several days later (we left it there to see how long it would take). My husband caught a cold and went through tissues at a rate of knots. When empty we put the tissue box on the sink bench so that the cabin steward could easily see it and replace it, but he still missed it once and we had to call housekeeping. And we missed the little touches. He did not do things like put our PJs neatly back on the bed after making it.

As for Zoe and the medallion - what can I say - they're just gimmicks. The medallion was rarely seen on a guest, and when I tried to use it to open our cabin door it didn't work. After the first day we just didn't bother with it anymore and left the wrist band in our cabin. Zoe is basically useless. You can use it to turn the TV on and off but can't use it to select live TV, or a movie, or pick a channel so you end up having to use the remote control anyway. And you can't use it to turn off the lights in the cabin either. If you ask the time, it answers. If you ask about the weather, it offers to turn on the TV to show you the weather forecast but then you have to find the remote (again) to indicate select which cabin resident is asking the question before the weather is actually displayed. Why it needs to know who is asking defies understanding. Ask Zoe "what time is my tour" or "what time is my dinner booking" and you are simply told to check your ticket, or to contact the restaurant. Ask other stuff and you're invariably told to contact a crew member, or read your paperwork. There's a list of suggested questions, and it does answer those answers correctly, however by the time you've listened all the way to the end you've forgotten everything that was already said, and it's all information that is in the daily planner. Basically, Zoe is a gimmick that just repeats information that is readily available elsewhere and is not personalised AT ALL.