Boardwalk
I’ve had inside cabins, oceanview cabins, and balcony cabins – once even a mini-suite- on past cruises, but on Wonder of the Seas we had something completely different. An interior cabin with a balcony. These unique cabins are found on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis class ships. Ships of this class have two inside areas that are open to the sky from one of the lower decks all the way up – Central Park and the Boardwalk.
Central Park
The Boardwalk is at the back of the ship on deck 6. The boardwalk itself is home to a carousel, the landing area for the 10-deck ultimate abyss slides, the aquatheater, and some shops and eateries. As well as the skyward opening, there is also open area at the stern around the aquatheater so cabins in this area may get a peek at the sea as well as overlooking the boardwalk.
view of the inside of the cabin from the balcony
Our cabin was above central park, the other open area, located at the center of the ship. Central Park is on deck 8, with open area to the sky above. Rooms line either side like apartments rising above a city. The bottom row on deck 9 have windows, the rest have balconies overlooking the park. Central Park has real plants in gardens along deck 8, with shops and eateries all around the edges. The center has some structures that somewhat resemble greenhouses. They’re skylights to the promenade on deck 5, but one of them is also home to the Rising Tide Bar – sometimes. The Rising Tide is a bar on an elevator that is sometimes located in the Royal Promenade on deck 5, and other times up in Central Park on deck 8. Occasionally it stops somewhere in between at which time nobody can get on or off.
balcony above Central Park
We weren’t sure what having a balcony that’s not on the ocean side of the ship would be like, but booked it because on this particular cruise it was a whole lot cheaper than the ocean view balconies. It was also something different that we’d never had before and it’s always fun to try new things. As it turned out, we loved it. There are some drawbacks, like needing to close the curtains before changing clothes, which isn’t a problem when there’s nothing but open water outside your window, but it had its advantages too.
there’s actually a whole couch between these two closets
While an oceanside balcony is sometimes too sunny or too windy to use, since this one was in an area with walls all around it was sheltered with more protection from wind and weather. Even when the plants out in the garden were blowing around in a wind tunnel effect the balcony itself stayed sheltered. Rain never reached much beyond the railing either, nor was the furniture ever covered in morning dew. I actually sat out on this balcony more than I usually do with normal cruise ship balconies. It had 2 chairs and a table and was fairly close in size to a regular balcony, bigger than some. The cabin next to us had a double sized balcony so they really lucked out. The first few days we thought this balcony always stayed shady and would never be too sunny to use, but it must have been due to the direction of travel because in the ports it did sometimes get flooded in sunshine. It had some sun during travel later in the cruise too, but often still had a shady corner.
some of the cabin’s furnishings
Our view included the garden, the sky, the outdoor movie screen, and the rooms across from us. Music from the pool deck could easily be heard out on the balcony, but in the room with the sliding door shut we didn’t hear it at all. The garden area is pretty quiet at night, but since the outside noise didn’t carry to the inside it may not have mattered. People in the boardwalk area would know better since the aqua show is quite loud. We could hear that from an oceanside cabin near the stern on Symphony of the Seas. I don’t know if the inside cabins have better sound blocking than the outside ones, or if the Wonder has better sound blocking than Symphony, or if the boardwalk cabins are as noisy inside as we thought they’d be when we went for the garden area instead since the boardwalk is a lot louder in the evening than the garden.
cabin from the door
The cabin itself was about the same size as outside balcony cabins rather than small like a lot of inside cabins are. Bigger even than balcony cabins on many ships as it had space enough for a full-sized couch and two separate closets. It seemed slightly wider than the average cruise ship cabin as well with a bit more room between the foot of the bed and the wall than often found in cruise ship cabins. The large-screen TV hung across from the bed with a row of pegs underneath to hang things on. The cabin included a mini-fridge surrounded by drawers so it had quite a lot of storage area. There was a desk with a mirror and a separate full-length wall mirror. While some older ships have just one outlet and no USB ports, being a new ship this one had 3 outlets and 2 USB ports above the desk as well as 1 outlet and 1 USB port on the lamp on each of the two small nightstands.
bathroom
The bathroom was a pretty standard cruise ship bathroom. The shower had the usual clothesline you can pull across like we thought all cruise ships had until coming across one that didn’t. It looks like they’ve cut back on the toiletries though.
good thing I brought my own shampoo & conditioner
Instead of separate shampoo, conditioner, and body wash there was just a shampoo/body wash combo in the shower and no conditioner at all.
magnetic hooks and clothesline
While the clothesline is enough to hang a swimsuit or two, if you do any handwashed laundry in the cabin you need more. Magnetic hooks came in quite useful for something to tie the line to as this shower had structure on only one side. Things did not dry well in that shower though, even with the bathroom door left open so most had to be moved elsewhere to finish drying. Once things were just damp rather than wet I could use those same hooks to zig zag a line along the wall where things could finish drying. Magnetic hooks are also useful out in the cabin for hanging sweatshirts or hats. Other than some really old cruise ships the walls are always magnetic so having some magnets to hang any paperwork you want to keep organized is useful too.
wall magnets
Overall we really liked the inside balcony cabin and I wouldn’t hesitate to book one again.
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