Margaritaville at Sea's 'Exclusive Junior Suite': my honest review
Margaritaville at Sea, one of the newest cruise lines to the market, launched their first ship '- Paradise - as a specialist in shorter cruises. You can climb aboard in Florida for 2-3 night cruises out of Palm Beach to head across to the Bahamas, and that’s exactly what I did recently! Today, I’m going to share with you my thoughts on one of the Suite-grade cabins onboard this cruise ship, which might just help you decide if this is a room you’d like to try in the future. There are two different types of Suite that you could opt to stay in on Islander, and I’ve been in them both! To check out my review of a Grand Terrace Suite, click here.
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If you would like to see my reviews of other cabins onboard this cruise ship, just click here to head to the Margaritaville at Sea section of this website, where you can find all of my reviews! There’s Interior (also called ‘inside’) cabins, Oceanview cabins, and a range of Suite options - you won’t be short for choice on this little ship!
I’m about to show you around the room that I actually stayed in while onboard the ship. I was incredibly lucky to have been upgraded into this cabin - I had booked elsewhere on the ship. I’ll tell you more on my YouTube channel in the vlogs from this cruise, so head over there and stay tuned! So, here’s a Junior Suite onboard Paradise:
In the spirit of transparency, I took these photos using my iPhone - there’s been no ‘touching up’ of the images - this is exactly what the room looked like when I arrived for my short cruise. My thoughts on this cabin type are very much aligned with my thoughts from the other cabins that I’ve reviewed on this ship for you - very fresh, very nicely updated, and the room felt much more ‘premium’ than I’d have expected for a low-cost cruise line.
Junior Suites onboard Paradise are only available on Deck 5, and they accommodate up to 4 guests. To help you get your bearings, that means that you’re going to be on the same deck as Guest Services, but not much else - if you check out the deck plans for this ship, you’ll see that most of the nightlife is much higher, with the main lounges, theatre, casino and buffet being found between Decks 8-10. From what I can see on the deck plan diagrams, there are only actually 2 Junior Suites available to book on the ship, so if you like what I’m showing you here, you might need to be quick!
In terms of location, it’s worth keeping this in mind. What you can see outside my window (in the photo with the living area) is actually the Palm Beach Terminal gangway, meaning that you’ll hear a fair amount of noise from the embarkation and disembarkation process, as it takes place directly outside your door. Note: there is one Junior suite on each side of the ship, so you’re in a 50/50 lottery with this one! That said, we didn’t use a Gangway at Grand Bahama Island (we just used a low-level gangway onto the dock), and the process at Palm Beach was quiet enough on disembarkation morning that I slept through it, if that’s any reassurance for you!
Size-wise, these rooms are 406.8 Sq Ft, so a really healthy size for a short cruise - I actually felt that, if anything, the room was a bit too big for me as a solo traveller! I really did enjoy having two rooms for this cruise - it felt like such a luxury to be able to spend time relaxing in the sitting room, before heading out to face the ship, or before retiring to bed for the evening. If I were cruising with friends or family, this could be a fantastic social space!
Let’s talk amenities. Margaritaville at Sea explains on their website that each of these Junior Suites come equipped with the following as standard:
2 large portholes
Separate shower
Living room with pull-out sofa bed
2 TVs
2 Desks plus vanity seating
Multiple closets
Hair dryer
Storage space
Ok, we have a few points to unpack here from this list. First up, let’s talk about storage. In both the living room and bedroom parts of this cabin, you’re going to find large closets, the same that you’d find in a standard room elsewhere on the ship. This got me thinking - I suppose this cabin was probably 2 different rooms before one of the refits that she’s undergone over the years - that would certainly explain why it’s so huge!
The second thing to unpack is desk space. You can see in the above picture that there’s a desk space in the living room, but look at what’s also in the bedroom…!
I’m not sure about you, but I was really surprised to find an additional desk in here! This serves as a good little workstation (although I preferred to use the desk in the other room, in order to avoid looking at the wall), but the primary use of this (I’d imagine) would be as a vanity station. Now, that would make sense if the mirror was directly above the table, right? The placement of the mirror seemed really unusual in here, as it seemed like either a complete oversight, or something to cover-up something going on behind, ha! Hopefully just an oversight…
Next, time for the bathroom. This one’s interesting…
If you’ve read my other cabin reviews from this ship, you’ll know that I really like the wooden floors. However, the floor that I showed you in the Oceanview cabin review is very different to this one. This one is obviously much older, and it looks as though the one in the other cabin is a significantly more upgraded version of this. To be really honest, the floor in here didn’t feel overly clean, and I felt as though the lighting was pretty dark (probably not helped by how dark the floor was). Personally, if you could exchange this bathroom for what I showed you in the look around the Oceanview cabin, I’d have been delighted!
I can only assume that this bathroom is on a future renovation plan for this ship. If it is, it’s so surprising that the ‘standard rooms’ would be addressed prior to the higher-grossing Suites, especially if there are only two of this cabin type on the whole ship…
So, would I recommend this cabin type to you? For the right price, yes. I wouldn’t recommend paying top-dollar for this cabin, mostly due to the sub-par bathroom. If you’re looking to cruise on here, there are lots of lovely cabins onboard, and I’m not overly convinced this one’s fully worth the added cost if the ‘lesser’ rooms have better bathrooms. This could be an unfair conclusion though, as I appreciate you’re getting a LOT of floor space for your money with this cabin grade.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed having a look around a Junior Suite onboard Paradise, and reading what I’ve got to say about this room. If you have, please do support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel, where I’ll be showing you so many more from my time onboard this cruise ship.