Royal Princess sideways inside cabins

When we first booked our Royal Princess cruises for next year, we pretty quickly figured out that that Lido Deck was the right deck for us to be on (and, now that we've stayed on it, we know it was a good choice). We never took a midship elevator and didn't miss the midship stairs that aren't there. Most of the time, we move vertically on the ship using the front elevators and stairs. 

What we were less sure about was whether to book a "sideways" inside or not. In the end, we obviously didn't, but today we had a chance to check out one of those cabins during turnaround. 

We made the right choice (for us) on that point too. 

We like to have our beds configured as twins, which in a typical inside forms a T-shaped open area, between the beds and at the foot of them by the vanity. In the sideways insides, the beds, when configured as twins, are (from one wall) nightstand, bed, nightstand, bed. No large open area between the beds to work with (and I assume it's because one nightstand is affixed to a wall and not moveable). 

There is more storage space in the sideways cabins...a whole other set of open cubbies, and they don't lose the topmost shelf above the safe as we did in our cabin. However, the closet is shorter (not as long) and is divided with a floor...we needed our closet to store suitcases, and we couldn't do that in a sideways cabin. 

We appreciate the greater privacy we had in our perpendicular inside cabin, and how quiet it was because the beds were further from the hallway. But that was the whole purpose of this five day cruise...to see if we had made the right decisions about next winter. I can't tell you what that's been worth to us, and now we can't wait to return to the Royal Princess!

Beds configured as twins in a sideways inside cabin:

Extra cubbies in a sideways inside cabin:

Same 4 drawers that don't exist in an Emerald Princess inside (yay!):

Throwing this in here...token machines in a laundry room.