The Cure for Deck Plan Distress

Well, maybe I’m exaggerating the agony of trying to select a stateroom with those microscopic cruise catalog deck plans…or am I?
 
If you’re like me, you’ve pained and strained to read those numbers that seem to get smaller every year. We’ve done a Sherlock and wielded a magnifying glass. Stacked as many eyeglasses as our noses would hold. Held the catalogs up to the light and pushed them as far out as our arms could go.
 
The good news is that after the all the eye strain, the migraine and a dose of research, I now have a few decent suggestions for dealing with deck plans for picking that perfect stateroom:
 
1.      Blow it up. We’ve taken a page from the catalog, enlarged on the copier and then did it again and again until it got legible. Then, we mounted it on foam core.
 
2.      Look it up. Here are some websites that are a real help:

cruisedeckplans.com –Perhaps the best of the sites, it promises to “make cruise deck plans fun.” It certainly has a lot of neat features, which enable you to:

·        View a number of decks on one page, convert it to PDF for printing, and make the display larger or smaller (select “Deck Plans” from top menu)

·        Drag decks over each other to see what’s above and below (select “Drag Decks” from top menu)

·        Hover over a cabin to get a diagram and general square footage for a category

·        Where you see a photo icon on the deck, see actual photos of the area on the ship

·        Be alerted to possible issues in a deck area, such as “This blank space is a crew area and you may hear doors opening and other noise coming from this area” (a star on the deck plan indicates a comment)

 

And if you join for $8.99 a year, you get actual photos of rooms submitted by readers, as well as downloadable photos of public areas. There were quite a lot of photos, which makes the reasonable fee well worth the cost. 

In fact, they’ll even pay you—if you submit your own photos ($.25 each).

icruise.com—A great feature of this site is that you can plug in a room number and it takes you right to it on the deck plan, flagged by a can’t-miss-it flashing square. To use this feature, from the homepage, select “Cruise Lines,” then your ship and “Deck Plans” from the left menu. Enter your room number in the “Find Your Cabin” search. Be sure to include the letter with the room number when searching (e.g., D415) or it won’t work. 

Also, the deck plans are oversized and clear, and can be enlarged or reduced. If you select the “Public Rooms” tab (in the middle of the screen), it will show if there are any public rooms on that deck.

deckplangenius.com—This site claims advice on 83,000 staterooms. From the top menu, select “Cruise Ships,” your ship and then scroll down the page to select a deck. The deck plans are easy to read, but not enlargeable. Click on a room to get info about it, and pros and cons of the location. However, this info is very general in nature.

For example, the first room we chose, in a bump out, said, “At this time, there have been no extraordinary issues identified with this cabin. However, that does not mean that there are not possible issues with this cabin.” 

And the caption under the stateroom photo said: “It is not the actual picture of the stateroom, but should be quite similar to the actual cabin.” In fact, we’ve stayed in a mini-suite on the same Princess ship and this was not an accurate representation.

Some detailed reviews on specific rooms have been submitted by readers, which can be very useful, because they comment on everything from noise level to condition of the room. Unfortunately, there’s a limited number of reviews; for the Caribbean Princess, for example, there were only four.

cruiseshiprooms.com—Deck plans on this site are also easy to read, but, again, can’t be magnified. If you click on a room, you get just general info.  It provides an area for reviews and photos, but none was available for a room on either of two ships I searched.

 
3.      Give it up. The easiest way to pick a cabin, of course, is to let your travel agent do it. Or, select a “guarantee” room, which will save you some money, but you could end up with a room anywhere—including next to the laundromat.
 
Musing’s Top Tip: Other helpful resources for trip planning are cruise reviews—by folks like you and me who actually took the trips on the ships you’re considering. Check out this posting for some of the best cruiser review sites.

Fun Ship Photography: Unleashing Your Inner Artsy-Fartsy

There’s nothing like a hot-orange sunset or palm-lined seashore to transform a photo frame into a sweet cruise memory.
 
As fabulous as outdoor shots can be, there’s plenty indoors too to woo the lens. And with digital photography so cheap, it can unleash the creativity in just about anyone.
 

Zooming in on the Constellation's
Chihuly chandelier

Every ship is photogenic. You just need to know where to look. And you’ve got hours and hours at sea—take advantage and explore the nooks and crannies of the ship. Take photos from inside and out. Up and then down. This way and that. Find your inner artsy-fartsy. You’ll be amazed at the really neat things you’ll end up with:

Be practical. Documenting the room, the food and public areas will jog your memory should you plan another trip on the same ship. Amid the chaos of Disembarkation Day, we’ve snuck into some empty rooms categories above our own and taken photos for future reference. And appreciated it later.

Be experimental. Shoot the artwork from different angles, use it as a backdrop. Do super close-ups, use interesting grid work for framing. Even some of the murals make great shots.
 
Be goofy. Photograph you and your companions looking in a mirror or glass for a different kind of selfie. You’ll find your reflections in all sorts of places, like elevators and shops. And if you’re on an Oasis class ship, be sure to check out the Boardwalk funhouse mirrors to see what you’d look like if you took a world cruise.
 


On the ball in Allure of the Sea's Central Park

For some funky examples from our trips, follow this Dropbox link.
 
And if you need some ideas on what to do with all those photos now captive in your camera, see this posting: What To Do With Those Cruise Ship Photos.
 
Musing’s Top Tip: While your smart phone or tablet can take photos indoors, they’re pretty limited. They don’t do well in low light, you can’t zoom much and it’s hard to keep them steady. A better choice is a subcompact with a large sensor, like the Sony RX100 iii. It’s better in low light, it has a viewfinder and the camera is so small that it fits in a pocket or purse. Which is great for taking those surreptitious photos (but you didn’t hear me say that).