Last May, when we were booking a cabin for Winter 2014/15, Christmas 2014 was a long way off. But with the Royal Princess not yet launched, we had no idea how the ship reviews would be, nor what our lives would be like 18 months in the future. In addition to booking a Lido inside cabin on the Royal Princess for 155 days, we double booked the Royal for Christmas/New Years in the Mykonos Suite on Aloha Deck. Our thinking was that if something happened in our lives that allowed us only 20 days to cruise next winter, we'd want those to be 20 fantastic days and we thought a suite could provide that.
After all the negative reports about the aft suites on the Royal Princess, we couldn't wait to see the Mykonos Suite for ourselves, and we did that this morning during turnaround. Well, it's hard for us to comment on the interior of the suite, being frequent inside cabin cruisers as we are. The bathroom looks fabulous (OMG, I would LOVE that bathroom for a winter on a ship...we're still working out the choreography to use our tiny one), but the balcony, as reported, is rendered unusable by the soot from the smokestacks. The furniture out there is ruined, the cushions are ruined, and the cabin steward told us he cleans every morning. We loved that the balcony wrapped around, providing views of the wake and down the side of the ship, but, as G so correctly stated, "You and I would go nuts". He's right...we're usually pretty laid back, but if we had spent almost the equivalent of the cost of 100 inside cabin nights for 20 nights in the Mykonos Suite, we would be really disappointed.
The Mykonos Suite will soon be available for Christmas/New Years 2014/15. If you book it, pack lots of black clothing.
The soot collected in the balcony drain since yesterday.
Soot stained footstools- the steward said these don't get any cleaner.
