I hope you didn’t bruise your jaw when it hit the floor upon learning I was staying in a mini-suite onboard the Majestic Princess (Reminder: profcruise.com is, “read at your own risk”).
I get it – this does NOT look like a person booked in a mini-suite:
For further evidence, you should know that I bring two pairs of identical leggings on every cruise, one for casual wear (as pictured above) and one for formal wear. Should you think I’m kidding…
The photo on the left is what I wore to the dining room on the second formal night (stay tuned to see what I wore on the first formal night) and the photo on the right is what a wore to a meeting with several ship officers.
So how did this fashion challenged, world record holder for lowest onboard account balance at the end of a cruise (I bet you didn’t even know it was possible to have a negative balance) end up in a cushy mini-suite with fresh flowers, champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, and spa products she had to Google to learn how to use (I can’t be the only one who doesn’t know what a “sisal mitt” is)?
It’s a fair, if slightly long-winded question (take a breath, I don’t want you to hit the ground again). And the answer is, I didn’t pay for it! Well I paid for a portion of it, maybe like the hallway between the door and the bathroom. I was originally booked in the cheapest available inside cabin, but received a comped upgrade and some special goodies (like the flowers, chocolates, and a cheese plate) from Princess Media Relations (thank you!).
So is that going to bias my review? I mean, I was on a cruise, so I was already in an exceedingly good mood. But how could drinking bubbly and eating chocolate covered strawberries in a hot bath not leave me even more positively disposed? But I really did my best to, first, act like I’d been there before (I didn’t have much success in this area) AND to offer an honest review from the perspective of someone who’d paid full-price for the cabin. You’ll note that I loved many things about the mini-suite, but not everything. So…
First a brief tour which will serve as an introduction to my review and will definitively answer a question I’m constantly asked: “Why don’t you vlog, Prof. Cruise?”
Here are the many things I loved about my mini-suite.
While I don’t normally love the decor on Princess ships except that it reminds me of my grandmother who used to spray paint everything gold, I really enjoyed the decor of my mini-suite. It had a few traditional elements, but felt more contemporary than many older Princess cabins I’ve sailed in.
The cabin was also spacious and I enjoyed the layout with the closet across from the the bathroom and separate from the bedroom and living area. There was ample storage for my minimal needs, but even at full capacity I think it would be adequate.
If you think it’s hard to bridge the divide between dog and cat people or Republicans and Democrats, try doing it with shower and bath people. It’s literally impossible to see eye-to-eye when one person is standing and the other sitting. In the nude, no less (awkward).
So which am I? Cracked and hard boiled from spending so much time simmering in my own filth, I’m a proud bath person! And usually my least favorite part of cruising is not having a bathtub. That’s why, approximately five minutes after stepping foot inside my mini-suite, I was doing this:
Do those look like the feet of someone who stays in a fancy mini-suite though? Maybe Princess should have comped me a pedicure from the spa instead of the flowers.
As someone who’s lived in a downtown apartment for the past five years with a textured ceiling painted a drab shade of “hospital white,” the fancy tray ceiling and fixture above the bed made me feel like a desperate housewife living in a suburban mini-mansion – in the best possible way though. I really loved this detail.
Same with the half moon console table with mirror. This also served as a great place to keep my OceanMedallion so I wouldn’t forget to put in on when I left my cabin.
While I think the curtains are meant for dividing the space when multiple people room together, I kept myself entertained by laying down on the ground and positioning the bottom half of my body on one side of the curtains and the top half on the other and saying things like, “I think I’ll do my leg lifts in the living room so I don’t disturb my brain while its reading in the bedroom.”
While I’m perfectly happy bumming some Head and Shoulders off Mr. Cruise and have the frayed ends to prove it, I enjoyed the higher quality bath products provided in my mini-suite. Plus I came home with a bunch of Christmas presents!
Mr. Cruise and my son are each getting one of these eye masks:
My father-in-law is getting this:
My mother-in-law this (What’s a sisal mitt though? It’s not something that would be awkward to give your MIL is it?):
My mother this (because we always seem to run out of TP when she visits):
And my dog Henry is getting these:
Confession: When I first saw these slippers sitting in the cabinet like this I thought, “How did they know I have two left feet?” Turns out it’s two pairs of slippers, each with a right foot and a left foot. So if you have two left feet, just make sure you’re rooming with someone who has two right feet.
Between the two three-prong outlets located on the desk and the two USB ports next to the bed, I almost had enough outlets to simultaneously charge all the devices I use to maintain this subpar blog plus a small clip fan so I don’t overheat at the gym while sitting on a bike barely moving while watching Netflix so I can tell the person standing next to me at the buffet as I request extra syrup and whipped cream on my six slices of James Beard coated french toast: “I earned this at the gym this morning.” Wow, that last sentence isn’t going to help my readability score. That’s what happens when I drink a half cup of decaf coffee just before sitting down to write.
For me there was a TV to human ratio of 2 to 1. But having two televisions would come in handy for partners sharing a mini-suite who can’t agree on what to watch: “If you want to yell at the news ON VACATION, go in the living room! And close the curtains behind you!”
Take a moment to compare the desk on the left, from my mini-suite on the Majestic Princess, to the desk on the right, Mr. Cruise’s desk in our bedroom at home. There’s a joke I like to tell that goes like this: “What does a pig who wants to criticize the organization and cleanliness of another pig call them? Mr. Cruise!”
I appreciated the nicely organized desk space containing my Princess Patter (the daily schedule), information about the ship, some complimentary KN95 masks, and my excursion tickets (all of which were there when I first entered my cabin).
To be fair to Mr. Cruise, I once used a Daryl Hoole book as kindling in a dramatic gesture early on in our relationship to send a strong message that I had no intention of serving as his maid. Which you should also interpret as a confession to my own fairly low standards of cleanliness. So the desk in my mini-suite would not have stayed so clean and organized without the assistance of my fabulous room steward, Gilbert. He introduced himself soon after embarkation and explained current protocols (that cabins would be serviced once a day, unless a second service was requested). And from that day forward, he worked like a magician, somehow transforming my mini-suite each morning from something akin to a post-party college frat house to pristine in the time it took me to test the elasticity of my stomach at the buffet. He was also warm and friendly and I enjoyed our brief conversations each day. At the end of my cruise I gave him one of the nautical “thank you” cards I always bring with me with an extra cash tip inside as a small gesture of my appreciation.
True story: I was turned away from the dining room on the first formal night because I mistook this high quality plush robe for a wrap dress. I was so mad at having to walk all the way back to my cabin to change that I sought my revenge by putting on a creepy dress covered in birds:
Upon further reflection, I did feel kind of bad knowing that my waiter probably lost several hours of already limited sleep that night to a nightmare where he got pecked to death by a flock of birds while some Karen complained about the dining room dress code.
When I thought I’d be sailing in an inside cabin, I had big plans for how I’d spend my time around the ship, figuring I’d only use my cabin for post-binge naps (because no way I was doing my business in a cabin without a window). But between the bathtub, balcony, and two TV’s with dozens of free on-demand movies and an extensive menu of food and beverage delivery options (go HERE for the full OceanNow food and beverage delivery menu and more information on how it works), toward the end of my cruise I received a welfare check from security when my cabin steward didn’t see me for a few days and worried I may have eaten myself to death.
Speaking of security, I was really tempted to steal this card for future cruises to remind myself to “please insert this card to activate your stateroom lights” instead of hunting around the dark for hours looking for an old hotel key card to keep my devices charging when I left my cabin.
For stocking up on desserts from the International Cafe for late night sugar cravings too intense to wait up to 30 minutes for OceanNow food delivery. #extremefirstworldproblems
For those (me) who are always eliminated in the first round of Twister (Place my hand on green? You want me to bend down and touch the floor? I’m out!), I really appreciated a hair dryer with a long enough cord. Most cruise cabin hair dryers that attach to a hidden outlet via a short winding cord through a hole in a drawer should really come with a warning something to the effect of: DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU HAVE THE FLEXIBILITY OF A SIX-YEAR-OLD OR ARE SIMONE BILES.
While I always enjoy a balcony chair that reclines, the thing I loved most about my mini-suite balcony was the large table appropriate for eating and working from. But mostly eating from.
While there was so much to love about my mini-suite on the Majestic Princess, there were a handful of things that I didn’t love.
For someone so short her feet float an honest foot above the earth in a child-sized chair, I enjoy a foot rest. And if you refer to the photo of my balcony above, you’ll note how narrow it is and the glaring lack of foot support for the vertically challenged. My workaround was to position the two chairs facing each other and scoot them close enough to sit in one and use the other for my feet. That wouldn’t work with more than one person sitting out there at a time unless you have an exceptionally tolerant travel companion with a hearty lap and your feet are clean.
My cabin happened to be an adjoining one – great for secret celebrity couples who don’t want anyone to know they’re shacking up together, not so great for someone who starts her day belting out an off key rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” to try to motivate herself to get to the gym. I really didn’t appreciate my neighbors pounding on our shared door and shouting, “is there a wild boar in need of medical attention in there?”
All that is to say that sound travels between the adjoining cabin door, so unless your travel party will be using both, avoid adjoining cabins.
My cabin just prior to this one, onboard HAL’s ms Zuiderdam, had an actual medicine cabinet in the bathroom with a door that shut. While most cruise cabins have open shelving for storage in the bathroom, I’m not a fan and don’t understand why they’re designed this way. I prefer a more discrete spot to store my 6 bottles of Pepto. Also, smaller items tend to slip out and, sometimes during rough seas, larger items can fall off the open shelves.
I’m not much of a coffee drinker (supposedly I have an extreme sensitively to caffeine that causes me to write run-on sentences, but you haven’t noticed anything like that, right?), but I do enjoy having a coffee maker in my cabin for easy access to hot water for the weird hippy dippy mushroom drink I make every morning to convince myself I’m being healthy despite the 42 desserts I eat daily on a cruise.
There were motion sensor lights all over the cabin – under the desk, under the nightstands, and between the closet and the bathroom. While most of them weren’t an issue, the one between the closet and the bathroom was low-key annoying as a solo cruiser, but could be really disruptive to the sleep of other cabin-mates as it’s very bright and takes some time to shut off (meaning if you get up in the night to use the restroom, you essentially illuminate the whole cabin). I found a hack for it though (besides packing some Depends – see below).
While I avoided buying bandaids for the first 7 years of my son’s life so he wouldn’t constantly ask me for one (rub some dirt in it kid!), with the super annoying motion sensors on modern cruise ships, I now pack them as one of my favorite cabin hacks. In mini-suites on the Majestic, you’ll want to hop up on a chair and slap a bandaid over the little crystal ball looking thing on the light fixture between the closet and the bathroom. Buy travel insurance and don’t blame me if you fall though (attempt the bandaid hack AT YOUR OWN RISK).
There are outdoor smoking areas on the starboard side of the Promenade deck (deck 7) and you may smell it if you have a balcony on the starboard side of the ship. If you’re sensitive to smoke, book on the port side.
These are noted on deck plans. Double check before booking to make sure you don’t have one unless you need it for another member of your traveling party.
Since there’s no coffee maker in the room, you’ll want to order your morning coffee or tea (or hot water for your mushroom drink) each morning by placing the breakfast card on your door the night before. And as long as you’re bothering, why not order a few dozen pastries and a breakfast sandwich (“real food” so you can justify the pastries)? And with that…
Class Dismissed.
Homework (10 points): Feel free to ask any questions you still have about mini-suites on the Majestic Princess in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them. Then check out the current Princess dinner menus and the full menu of OceanNow food and beverage items available for delivery almost anywhere on Princess ships.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the blog (scroll up to the top right if on a computer or keep scrolling down if on a mobile device) and follow Prof. Cruise on your favorite social social media sites:
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