Start Here

Looking at a specific ship?

Go to Cruise Ships. Everything is organized by cruise line, then by ship, so you can jump straight to the vessel you’re booked on.

Picking a cabin?

Two places to go, depending on where you are in the process.

• Cruise Ship Cabins to Avoid is the one to use if you already have a ship and a shortlist of cabin numbers. It’s the deepest part of this site.
• Cruise Ship Cabins is the broader starting point: categories, decks, noise, motion, views, privacy, suites, family and connecting rooms.

Comparing cruise lines?

Cruise Lines groups coverage by operator and explains what actually differs between them at the cabin level, which is more than most people expect.

Why these guides are different

Most “cabins to avoid” lists on the internet are the same four rules recycled: don’t book under the pool deck, don’t book above the nightclub, don’t book near the elevators, don’t book at the aft. Those rules are sometimes right and often wrong, because they’re applied to ships where the layout doesn’t work that way, or to configurations that changed in a dry dock five years ago.

Every guide here is built from a specific ship’s current setup:

• The cruise line’s current official deck plans, checked against the ship’s configuration today rather than at launch.
• Cabin category, dimensions, obstructed-view designations, connecting and accessible layouts, taken from official sources.
• Multiple independent passenger accounts, not one loud review repeated across ten websites.
• Cabin tours and firsthand write-ups where they add something a deck plan can’t show.
• Refurbishment and venue-relocation checks, so an old complaint isn’t presented as a current problem.

The evidence threshold and the correction process are written out in full on the Editorial Standards and Corrections Policy page.

A cabin that’s wrong for one person is fine for another

This matters more than any single rule. A cabin above a late-night venue is a genuine problem if you go to bed at ten. If you’re the last one off the dance floor anyway, it’s a short walk home. Motion, noise, foot traffic and privacy all land differently depending on who you are.

So instead of labeling cabins good or bad, the guides here try to tell you who’s likely to be bothered, how serious the issue looks, whether the reports conflict, and whether there’s a better cabin a few doors down.

This site is being built ship by ship

CruiseShipInsights is new, and the library grows one researched guide at a time rather than all at once. If the ship you’re sailing isn’t covered yet, tell me which one it is. Requests genuinely move ships up the list.

Planning the days ashore too?

That’s the other half of the trip, and it lives on my other site, CruisePorts.co. Same research approach, aimed at terminals, transportation and what’s actually worth doing in port.