You are listening to this is Cruise Radio Rewind. Real reviews from real cruisers.

Welcome to this weekend's episode of Cruise Radio Rewind. My name is Doug Parker.

Today we're going to talk about cruise ship staterooms or cabins, whatever you want to call them.

Seems to be 50-50 there, split right down the middle.

How to pick them, what to look for in decisions we may have to make looking forward. Let's do this thing. Joining me is Tommy Casavona, host of the Always Be Booked Cruise Podcast, and Richard Sims, staff writer at CruiseRadio.net. Hey there. Well, hey. Hey, Doug. What's going on? So what kind of state room you book is really going to depend on what type of person you are? Yeah, for me personally, I always, always, always go with a balcony. If possible, an after balcony, I'm one of those people who really takes a lot of time to pick the right state room. I want to be situated between, I want state rooms below me, state rooms above me. I, you know, I'm very, very picky about that. I want, I need the open air, I need the view. So I am definitely someone who knows exactly what he wants and tends to pick his own stateroom. Like I don't like to leave it up to anybody else, but that's me. Tommy, what about you?

I'll be honest. I'm a little all over the map. I am definitely what you might call the shop around guy.

Listen, I'm a cruise guy. I like my ships. I like my itineraries. I like to have a nice room, but most

importantly, I want to be on the ship. So I do also happen to be a great deal guy. So if I can get away with

spending my cruise money on one cruise, I'll do that if I get a nice room. But if I can maybe cut

that cost a little bit, guess what that means? That means another cruise. Once I'm booked,

I'll play it like the stock market, actually. There'll be a lot of variables. It'll be like, how much money do I have in my bank account at that time? You know, you're basically, you're on the ship now. So I'll figure out how much money do I have coming in, are things going good at work? Also, I'll look into how well that particular cruise is selling, and how will that affect the pricing should I want to upgrade. Now, if the numbers

are at all close to being feasible, I usually break down by the end and get a balcony, but I will

not have any issues if the price is right with sticking with an inside cabin. See, for me,

I'm really big on what it is. So like the Caribbean, got to have a balcony, right? I mean,

you got to check out that sail away from San Juan, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Antigua. But on a transatlantic

cruise, I like to do those like every other year or so, typically between 14 and 16 nights.

Definitely an inside state room. I don't get to sleep in that often, thanks to all those years

and morning radio waking up at 345. So I take advantage of my sleep, and plus on a transatlantic,

very few ports, like maybe four of them on 16 nights. So chances are you're not going to sleep

through much except breakfast. That's so funny to me because I'm just the opposite.

Like I've never done a transatlantic yet. I can't wait to. But I imagine that that's the situation where I would definitely want a balcony as opposed to. Like if I had to, I could do an inside room for like a four-day trip to the Bermuda or the Bahamas or something like that. but a transatlantic with 14 days, I'd be like, yeah, no, I'm going to need some fresh air every step of the way here.

I think one of the things that's important for people to recognize is so often people just book a room by category.

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