I nearly jumped out of my skin recently when I saw a GREAT price for a 7-day cruise that several of my buddies were already booked on. By “great”, I mean about 1/3 of the lowest price I’d seen previously. (Interior cabin, $300 pp for a 7-day on Carnival Mardi Gras). So that’s a no-brainer, right?
Wellllll, not so fast. Turns out, that was for a GUARANTEED cabin. For those not familiar with this innocent-sounding cruise line marketing term, it actually guarantees…very little. Yes, you’ll get at least the category of stateroom you’ve booked or better (can’t really get worse since it’s interior!), but the cruise line decides where. You have no idea where you’ll be, sometimes right up until the sail date (although you’ll typically find out at least a few days prior).
So now I’m a curious mixture of excited and petrified. In all likelihood, it’ll be fine (I’ve sailed suite, balcony, oceanview and interior before and have been perfectly ok with all of them – although something tells me I mayyyyyy not be getting assigned a suite in this case). Of course, I’m now having visions of being stuck at the far aft of the ship (I can be a little queasy) or directly under the rowdiest of nightclubs that stays open til 5 am.
Please feel free to share your guaranteed stateroom stories with me – successes or disasters, I’m all ears! Being a bit of a control freak, this is the first time I’ve ever left it in the hands of fate, and I have NO idea what to expect. I’ll be reporting back here as soon as I get any inkling of what room they’ve given me. Until then, feel free to calm my nerves (or scare me even more!) with your tales of stateroom victory or remorse…
Deen on Deck. It's a travel blog. 
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