Rhapsody of the Seas: Inside Cabin Review
You may have already read my review of my other recent Royal Caribbean cruise cabin: the Outside cabin onboard Symphony of the Seas. If you have, you’ll know that I really enjoyed staying in that room, but there were a few drawbacks. Spoiler alert - that’s going to be a general theme here in this post, as we’re moving to look at a totally different type of cabin, on a totally different ship, but there’s still a few drawbacks to consider!
Let me set the scene - I chose to cruise out of Israel in June 2023 (yes, Israel - more on this in another post in due course), and I chose to do this onboard one of the oldest cruise ships from Royal Caribbean: Rhapsody of the Seas. This was going to be one of the oldest cruise ships I’d ever been on, so I wasn’t really too sure what to expect, but I was really quite nervous about one thing - the cabin. Having previously cruised with Royal Caribbean on an Oasis class ship, I was also a little concerned about trying a ship with such a smaller number of passenger facilities - would I get bored, or would it be okay? Time would tell, I guess…
Anyway, the room. Let’s look at this cabin ‘on paper’, and then move to look at the room in the flesh. Below is a deck plan showing the back section of Rhapsody of the Seas, and my cabin (7153) is highlighted in red. That’s right - this cabin is SO close to the back of the ship - more on this in a second…
We’re going to talk about the issues with this cabin ‘on paper’ but, before we do that, let me explain one thing to those of you reading this post who might not be seasoned cruisers. When you book almost any cruise, you can choose to pay a basic fare, or pay a slightly higher amount to then be able to do things like choose your cabin location, or sometimes even pay to select your exact cabin! Being totally honest, I usually don’t opt to choose a specific cabin as I cruise quite a lot, so £50-£100 extra per cruise just to pick the cabin really does add up! Instead, I do really enjoy seeing where I end up - it very rarely ends in disaster (famous last words, I know…).
So, location - this room is right at the back of the ship - the only rooms that are further back are those on the right side of your screen, and they’re the fancy aft-facing cabins that look out over the wake of the ship (in other words, the water at the back). I’ve been in rooms near the back before, but never on a ship of this age. What I can confirm for you is that you REALLY feel the motion of the ship back here - I’m not sure if it’s to do with the age of the ship, or that’s just a coincidence, but that’s what I’m putting it down to - we never had terrible seas at all during my cruise, but it was ROCKY so often in this cabin. Being on the inside of the ship with no view outside, this feeling really can be quite disorientating, as you don’t have any reference of outside to stabilise yourself…
Next up, let’s talk about what’s around this cabin. On Deck 7 itself, you can see from the image above that we’re right at the back, with very few rooms beyond. This would mean that passing traffic would be minimal - in theory, only a few cabins of passengers would walk past, meaning that it should(!) be nice and quiet. Upstairs were other cabins - Deck 8’s deck plan is a direct mirror image of this one, so that shouldn’t have presented any issues (unless there was an elephant staying upstairs, but that could happen anywhere). The potential issue with this cabin is what’s below…
When I first saw that I had been allocated cabin 7153, I assumed it was a high deck and would therefore be surrounded by cabins (this is always my advice for noise-sensitive cruisers - make sure your room is surrounded by other passenger cabins, as these will usually be much quieter than most venues onboard the ship), but Deck 6 on Rhapsody of the Seas is actually full of public areas! The venue directly underneath my room was the ‘Shall We Dance Lounge’, which I knew featured live entertainment well into the night.
That’ll mean a night of restlessness then, huh? Luckily, this ended up being totally fine - the great thing about this class of ship (this is Vision class, by the way) is that they have a designated onboard nightclub that’s actually pretty far away from any passenger cabins. If you’re looking at the pool deck of this ship, the nightclub is the venue with all the glass overlooking the pool deck, so it’s really high up! This means that venues like the ‘Shall We Dance Lounge’ tend to finish up no later than 11.30pm or so, and the real ‘nightlife’ then moves upstairs - phew!
So, enough of this ‘on paper’ talk - let me show you the actual cabin to get your bearings and familiarise yourself - welcome to cabin 7153, at the back of Deck 7 of Rhapsody of the Seas…
Before I talk about anything else, can we discuss the placement of mirrors in this room? I have NEVER, on land or at sea, been in a room with so many mirrors. What made this even stranger was the placement positions - what benefit are those thin mirrors behind the bed, or the mirrors on the vanity unit that then face directly into the full-length mirror behind? I’ve never been in a cruise ship cabin where I kept thinking there was someone else in there at night, as I’d walk across the room to go to bed and suddenly see the silhouette of someone else looking at me, ha!
Other than the mirrors, there was only one other key drawback to this cabin in the flesh - the lighting. It’s rare on a modern cruise ship for it to ever feel dark, as ships tend to now be fitted with really efficient and bright LED lighting. However, this isn’t the case on here - the bulbs are still the much more old-fashioned and dated predecessors, which don’t give off anywhere near as much light. This resulted in the cabin feeling pretty dimly lit quite a lot of the time and, very unusually for a cruise ship cabin, it was full of shadows as you walked around the room.
Dodgy mirror placement and dim lighting aside, this was actually a really decent room. You need to remember with this one that you’re on such an old cruise ship - Rhapsody of the Seas had her inaugural (first) cruise back in 1997, so this ship’s almost as old as I am! For that reason, you do need to excuse slightly the fact that the room is looking tired in some areas. For example, the green material on that sofa and also stuck to the wall of the room on those padded sections is pretty old-fashioned, I know, but at least it’s a flat-screen TV (which, by the way, is on a bracket that you can move. Fancy, I know…!)
One big ‘win’ in this cabin is that the previous issue of storage that I mentioned in my Symphony of the Seas cabin review was totally resolved - look at the size of that wardrobe over by the door leaving the cabin - it was enormous!
A lovely touch with this room is that I often find the cheapest rooms on modern cruise ships nowadays only offer one seating option - the bed. Some do offer a tiny (and really uncomfortable) stool that slides under the vanity/desk area, but in here there’s plenty to choose from! You could either sit on the bed, lounge on the sofa, or use the chair (with a back on it - yes!) at the desk - such a luxury for such a ‘good value’ room!
Next up on the list of positives, here’s the bathroom of this cabin:
I know what you’re thinking - hopefully he’s not about to mention the shower curtain. If you follow me over on YouTube, you’ll already know that I love a shower enclosure on a cruise ship, and I hate the fact that there’s so many shower curtains still at sea (nobody needs that sticking to them while they shower!). Yes, the shower curtain was making a home for itself in here, but that’s not what we need to talk about - my point in here is a positive! For a ship that was launched back in 1997, this cabin bathroom felt so much more modern than I thought the cabin itself did. It’s obvious that the bathrooms have been refurbished at some point, although I don’t know exactly when. Whenever this happened, well done Royal Caribbean - I don’t think this was much different at all to my cabin on Symphony - I’m impressed!
The final highlight of this room to mention is the price. At the point of booking this cruise, I did pay essentially the full double fare for 2 passengers (I was in here solo, but Royal Caribbean don’t have the most generous solo traveller position, to be honest), but it would’ve cost me about double again to upgrade to a room with a balcony - no, thank you!
To close, if you’re looking at cruising on one of these older ships from Royal Caribbean and you’d be happy ‘on the inside’, I’d recommend you consider giving this one a try. However, it’s REALLY important that you take note of the point re: ship movement - if you think that could be an issue for you, please stay away from this cabin type and aim more ‘mid ship’, where you should feel less rocking - you can thank me later…!
If you did enjoy this post and would like to learn more about life onboard Rhapsody of the Seas, you can click the link below to watch my full ship tour. I also have a full vlog series on my YouTube channel from this ship too - there’s a link to Episode 1 below too. Thanks so much for being here today - if you’d like to stay updated with everything on ‘Fraser at Sea’, then please think about subscribing to my newsletter (you can do this via the link at the top of the page! Also, come over to YouTube and click ‘Subscribe’ - see you there!