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I often select an inside for two reasons, cost being the most obvious one. Insides are the least expensive option, meaning I can cruise more often. It’s sort of a quantity versus quality trade-off for me, although I’m actually of the opinion that you don’t sacrifice much quality booking inside cabins, even for Alaska (you may disagree – many do).
Second, if there’s one thing I love almost as much as cruising and dessert, it’s sleep. And I never sleep better than I do in a pitch black inside cabin on a cruise ship. In fact, I’d probably sleep straight through a 7 day-er if my bladder would stop being such a demanding jerk and if I could make it past 6am without craving breakfast cinnamon rolls.
So I booked cabin 5439 on the Bliss for the cheapest available fare. Here’s some basic information about the cabin…
Cabin Type: Inside
Sub Category: IC
Occupancy: 2
Bed Configurations: Queen or two twins
Cabin Size: 135 square feet
Cabin Location: Deck 5, starboard side of the ship, midship
Directly Above and Below Cabin: A crew deck is located below and Q Texas Smokehouse is located above (I did hear music coming from Q some nights, but overall the noise wasn’t bad).
Before I get to the things I loved and didn’t love about my inside cabin on the Bliss, view my Bliss inside cabin tour below with strategically chosen elevator music so bad as to distract from my poor attempt at cinematography and commentary.
If you happened to like the music, you can call Comcast customer service and listen to it for upwards of 3 hours before someone comes on the line: “sorry, wrong number.”
Surprisingly – as I chill easily, prefer to dinner at 4pm, and wear underpants in a style you might find in the sturdy French provincial oak dresser belonging to your granny – I loved the contemporary style of the room. Simple, clean lines and outfitted in shades of brown, gray, and blue.
Every time I fell back into bed after rising to pee or treat my cruise-binging-induced-acid-reflux, I’d sigh and say, “heaven” before returning to blissful slumber. I’d also pledge not to eat so much tomorrow, but note that this routine continued for all seven nights.
I know some cruise to unplug and I count myself among them. But I have a lucrative (picture my nose growing as I say that) blog and associated social media sites to maintain, so I bring a lot of technology with me that I need to keep charged.
So I was pleased that my stateroom on the Bliss had three outlets just above the desk and an additional two USB ports, one on either side of the bed.
Although almost every cruise ship I’ve ever sailed on has featured this, I’m always grateful for the retracting clothesline in the shower. It’s where I hang my sole gym outfit, dripping with sweat, until I recycle it again for the next day’s workout.
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve always wondered why the gym is so crowded on the first day, but from day two onward, clears right out upon my approach. I suppose not everyone can be so disciplined.
On my last sailing I lost the little “privacy please” door hanging about 12 times (on a 3 day cruise) and had to resort to a post-it note on the door that read, “ENTER AT OWN RISK: EXCEEDINGLY GRUMPY AND WILD-HAIRED WHEN AWAKENED!” So I was impressed by this cutting edge technology and my cabin steward was spared accidentally seeing me in the footed adult onesie with butt flap I wear for lounging.
This was critical because on embarkation day they had my favorite carrot cake on offer up in the Observation Lounge and my brain was like, “What if they never have this again?!?! I need to horde enough to last me 7 days.” So I balanced 21 (a very sensible 3 per day) of them down approximately 45 flights of stairs to my cabin on deck 5 and stored them in my mini fridge until eating them later that night.
Honestly, it’s like whoever designed this cabin climbed into my weird little brain and was like “she’s going to go hiking in improper shoes for the weather conditions and need a place to hang her soggy socks as far away from the bed as possible so their putrid stench doesn’t give her nightmares of decomposing skunk corpses.” Anyway, these two little hooks were located near the door and would probably also work well for hanging all sorts of other items, although I will forever be referring to them as “sock hooks.”
You never know what you’re going to get weather-wise on a cruise to Alaska, but I can tell you the one time I failed to pack rain gear because the forecast seduced me with 7 straight days of sun emojis, someone I wronged in heaven noticed my omission and thought it would be hilarious to shake up a novelty-sized bottle of sparkling water and explode it down on me from embarkation to debarkation. Anyway, having good temperature control in your cabin on an Alaska cruise is particularly important and my thermostat on the Bliss kept up very well with my frenetic temperature changes (too hot, too cold, too hot, make up your mind woman!).
People say the same thing about me, except for the useful bit. My husband also likes to call me “Dr.” when I go in the out door and push when I’m supposed to pull. And if he’d been on the cruise with me, he’d have called me “Dr.” when I tried in vain for several minutes to “open” this non-opening doodad.
While it doesn’t open despite, in my defense, the silver thing that looks like a drawer pull, the blue bottom portion functions very well as a foot rest, stool, and backless chair for strengthening your abs between buffet runs. And the top part comes off and makes a perfect tray for room service breakfast in bed.
While I admit it looked nice, made the bathroom appear bigger, and kept water from leaking out of the shower onto the floor, the glass enclosure meant I could see myself in the mirror while showering. And I’m sorry, but I can do without hard (more like soft and jiggly) evidence of the number of desserts I’ve consumed since embarkation.
That is NOT what you want to see on your phone as you head out on a solo hike in the wilderness of Alaska!
But seriously, a card must be inserted into the slot near the door for the lights in the room to work. AND for the outlets and USB ports to work! So if you leave your items charging as you exit the room, pulling out the card from the slot, none of your items will, in fact, charge. My advice? Leave a non-essential card (an old hotel key card works great) in there at all times and just remember to turn out the lights when you aren’t in the room.
I’m a minimalist in all areas of my life. Why? Because it allows me to financially prioritize experiences and travel over possessions. And not having many “things” makes me feel free and untethered. This carries over to cruising too. I hate being weighed down with a bunch of bulky, cumbersome luggage and loathe clutter in tiny cruise cabins. After years of trial and error, I finally feel like I have cruise packing down to a science and even wrote an article about cruise packing for minimalists:
I mention all of this because I almost put “storage” on the list of things I loved about my cabin on the Bliss before coming to my senses and acknowledging that I’d lose all remaining credibility with my readers if I said that. Because for average-sized (I should also mention that I’m shorter than a garden gnome further reduced by the undiscerning blade of a riding mower, so all my clothes are tiny) over-packers (know that I consider anyone who packs more than two pairs of underwear an over-packer), there was deficient closet and other storage space.
So, the hair dryer attached to the side of the desk via a short (short!) cord. Now, I could be wrong about this (I 100% am), but I’m pretty sure they removed all of these and replaced them with normal hair dryers with adequate cord lengths during Covid times. Why? Because the ship medical center was already doing a healthy business treating seriously sick Covid patients. Now that Covid is mostly a thing of the past, the medical center needs to drum up business again. What better way than 300 near strangulations a day from the hair dryer? DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT even attempt to use the hair dryer unless you have good cruise insurance!
After tracking towel data on my past 5 NCL cruises (you can’t tell me my PhD is wasted), I now feel confident in asserting that NCL has a one bath towel per guest rule. I complained in my last cabin review (onboard the Star) about only two towels being provided per day in a cabin I shared with my mom. This time I cruised solo and there was only one towel provided per day. That coupled with no turn-down service (where wet towels are normally replaced), means if you shower more than once per day (like in the morning and after a visit to the pool/hot tub), you won’t have a dry towel. Also, some people use two towels per shower, one for the body and one to wrap around their hair. If you’re sharing a cabin, be sure to get to the shower first or be greeted with zero dry towels when it’s your turn. Note that you can request extra towels from your cabin steward on embarkation day (I did that and received two bath towels each day).
Would I book this cabin again? Absolutely! While it was small and lacked much storage, it suited my needs just fine and I’d book it again and again if that meant I could cruise more often.
And with that…
Class Dismissed!
Homework (10 points): Are you booked on the Bliss? Ask any questions you may have to the comments and be sure to check out my complete Bliss trip report, review, and ship tour here:
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View Comments
Thank you for your always informative review. It spurred me on to read your minimalist packing article - We enjoyed it, just can't do it.
That led me to the article on sea sick remedies. Much appreciated. Going to order the herbal patches with bobine and some mystery medicine from a pharmacy in Barbados as backup.