spa balcony cabin
On the Luminosa, we had a spa balcony cabin, which is similar to a standard balcony cabin only it comes with extra perks including use of the thermal suite and is listed as having nicer amenities. Pictures show the interior décor of Carnival’s spa cabins in a green and blue color scheme, but ours was red and yellow so apparently they did not redecorate the spa cabins on the Luminosa when it switched from Costa to Carnival.
towel turkey
Spa cabins are supposed to come with upgraded amenities, but the shower still had conditioning shampoo instead of separate shampoo and conditioner so it was a good thing I brought some from home. It did have body wash separately so it wasn’t quite an all in one. There was bar soap for the sink rather than liquid hand soap. The bathrobes said cloud 9 on them and the provided beach towels were soft yellow ones that said serenity so they were serenity deck towels rather than the main pool deck towels standard cabins receive.
wall hooks and magnetic hooks
The cabin had ample storage space with 3 closets, 2 of which have hanging bars and one with shelves. As is usual on most any cruise we had to ask the steward for extra hangers. There were 3 empty drawers in the desk as well as 2 that had some stuff in them – like a hairdryer and laundry bags and forms. There were 2 built in wall hooks, and with magnetic hooks we added more places to hang things. The refrigerator came empty so we did not have to ask the steward to clear out mini-bar items, but there were two water bottles on the desk with price tags on them. Because we are returning guests the steward took the pay tags off and said we were entitled to have them for free. That perk may change in the near future though since Carnival’s overhaul of their loyalty program will soon take the earned status away from everyone who has not made diamond by the end of the summer and base it on money spent in a 2-year period rather than points accumulated from all past cruises.
balcony
The room had a cupboard with two fairly good-sized shelves and and two open small shelves next to it. The nightstands were quite small, but did have a tiny cupboard with 2 shelves inside each one. The framework of the couch under the seat has a couple loops sticking out of it and pulling on them I found 2 large drawers, empty and available for storing stuff. One of them could probably hold nearly as much as all of the drawers in the desk combined.
cabin 8224
The room has a king bed that can be separated into two, a chair at the desk, a full-sized couch, and a larger than average balcony with two chairs and a small table. Since this was a spa cabin we expected a very comfortable mattress. but this one almost felt like sleeping on the sort of carpeted floor with some kind of matting under the rug. Cruise ship beds are usually a lot more comfortable than that. The floor felt like its flat carpet was directly over a hard surface with no matting under it at all so the bed was somewhat softer than the floor in this room, but a softer mattress definitely would have been nice.
bathroom has 2 sets of shelves on the mirror
The bathroom is standard cruise ship size – small with a small shower. It does have a fairly long counter and a set of 3 shelves on each side of the mirror above the bathroom counter for a total of 6 rather than the standard only 3 on one side found on many ships. There is not any storage space under the counter. Some ships do have a shelf there, but this one did not. The center area underneath the sink is closed off with just a trash can at one end and a small shelf area filled with spare supplies like Kleen-x and toilet paper at the other.
magnets are useful for keeping paperwork organized
Most of the cabin walls are magnetic. The door can hold a strong magnet, but not a weak one. Door décor on week magnets hung just fine on the walls around the door, but not on the door itself. Of the magnets I had only the strong hook magnets could hold things up on the door.
wall art
The room has a pretty big mirror over the desk and a small TV hanging on the wall next to the mirror. There are a variety of different lights around the room. Wall art in our cabin was 3 pictures that looked like watercolor to me, though I’m no art expert. One was a tulip, one a vase, and the other the sort of abstract design that you can find to look like something if you stare at it long enough. It also had a little oval table by the couch.
using an adaptor to increase the available outlets
The biggest drawback of the room was that it had only one American and one Australian outlet and those so close to each other that even a small plug going into the American one was crowded by a smaller than average adapter in the Australian one – of which I plugged a plug extender into, though the 3 are spaced close enough that with most items you can only actually use the outer 2. This gave us 3 outlets to plug into rather than just one. Luckily electronics are OK on different power. My clock is not so it got the one American outlet. There were also some USB ports on one of the nightstands.
We were in cabin number 8224 which is located right at the opening for the stairway and elevators. We thought it might be noisy there when we saw where it was, but we didn’t hear the elevators from inside the room at all. Occasionally there was a group of people with loud voices waiting for the elevator and we did hear them.
cabin door
The location of our cabin door was pretty handy for duck mailboxes since anyone going up or down the stairs could see it. The spa was just above us and the gym one more floor up. The entrance into the Lido pool area was also on the deck above us so it was an area where people would go. We got a lot of ducks traded in our duck mailboxes, but sometimes people took them without leaving one. Sometimes people left a duck without taking the one that was there and one day somebody put a ship on a stick (Carnival’s version of a trophy) on top of mine, which I figured was an award for having the best duck mailbox since mine was homemade.
ship on a stick on the duck mailbox
The only other duck mailbox on the ship was just a few doors down from ours. It was the little yellow sort you buy online like what John had. (I would not recommend those, they break easily.) The people in that cabin took theirs down for much of the cruise due to a couple kids who constantly raided all of the duck mailboxes without ever leaving any ducks in trade. Those kids were probably somewhere between 10 and 14 so definitely old enough to know better, but since they often had a grandmother with them who not only allowed, but actually encouraged their bad behavior they aren’t likely to ever learn any respect for other people’s things. If they leave it empty then the next person who comes along to trade a duck won’t get one. One of the people in a nearby cabin caught them in the act and gave them a pretty good lecture so after that we got a lot more ducks in the mailbox rather than always finding it empty, and a lot of other people had fun trading them too. We even found one lady who just liked to look inside and see what was there. Duck mailboxes bring enjoyment to a lot of people.
ducks we either found or acquired in the mailbox
Our cabin steward was the friendliest one we’ve ever had. He was also a good steward. It was a 22-day cruise and we had a different towel animal every day. Overall it was a good cabin in a good location. The fact that cabins in our area stayed dry when a leaky pipe flooded some down the hall made our location that much better.
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