Once, the only objects you could count on to cling to the flanks of a cruise ship were barnacles. Nowadays, it’s balconies. And they’re increasingly alluring to passengers.
In fact, a close relative of ours recently turned down the chance for a cheap last-minute cruise in Alaska, despite the fact that she’s been penny-pinching for the dreamed-of destination for years. Her reason? The only cabins available didn’t have a balcony.
And passengers like Crymes Pittman, a Mississippi attorney who sails multiple times a year on luxury Silversea Cruises, wouldn’t dream of booking a cabin without balcony either. “It’s just like sitting on your back deck at home,” he says.
Pittman may perch on the other end of the economic spectrum from most passengers, but we all seem to be on the same side of the wish list when it comes to balconies. According to cruise lines, travel agents and industry observers, nearly every passenger these days wants one.
“Balconies are probably the single most in-demand feature today,” says Rick White of White Travel, in West Hartford, Conn. “Once passengers get a balcony, they’re hooked.”
“It’s a one-way street,” concurs Joseph Farcus, the marine architect who designed 17 Carnival ships and is working on eight more, including some for Costa Cruises.
So why exactly is a place that dangles off the edge of a ship so special?
Farcus believes it’s the romance of the sea. A balcony “gives you a window on the ocean,” he says. For a guy that cruises more often than most mortals, even Farcus was impressed when he watched whales from his balcony on a recent Alaska sailing.
The upsides of having an outside option are exhaustive, with virtually everyone we interviewed weighing in with numerous explanations for their appeal. We heard all manner of reasons, from bestowing sanctuary and romantic dinners by moonlight or breakfasts at sunrise, to having a convenient place to smoke. The latter, not coincidentally, permits lines to allocate more smoke-free cabins as balconies provide the means to do it elsewhere. Eddie Conrad, CEO of RiverBarge Excursions, whose small craft plies inland U.S. rivers, explains that his line’s 90-stateroom vessel can boast that it’s all non-smoking because 50 cabins have balconies.
Passengers also can gauge the weather outside without dialing the purser’s desk, enjoy drinks al fresco and privately entertain other guests they meet on board. Not to mention letting fresh air waft into your cabin.
Additionally, “as [cruise lines] go to places where people want to see where they are–Alaska and Europe, for example–passengers love sitting [outside] and sailing in and out of port versus wandering off to another deck,” says Mark Kammerer, Holland America’s vice president of marketing.
The line introduced balconies beginning with the Statendam in 1993 and on every new ship since then. Until now, though, the minimum category cabin you could book with a balcony on HAL ships was a mini-suite. In its new building boom, however, the line will increase balconies on its next five ships, beginning with Zuiderdam, which will have more balconies than any other Holland America ship–461 of them in a brand new stateroom category called “deluxe veranda outside.” Effectively, the category confers balconies to standard outside staterooms.
In sharp contrast to how things used to be, just 15 percent of the cabins on the new Holland America vessels will be inside and viewless.
Ironically, more passengers want a balcony to get away from it all–even as they take a cruise vacation to, well, get away from it all. Particularly since the advent of the megaship. As ships get bigger, truly private space becomes more precious, say many observers. Timothy Dacey, president of the Steamship Historical Society of America, headquartered in Providence, R.I., points out that having a balcony cabin on a behemoth vessel means you don’t have to mix with 2,000 other passengers at breakfast or worry about securing a deck chair to relax in.
“They want to be able to open their door and sleep with the sound of the ocean,” adds Brad Ball of Renaissance, a line whose seven 700-passenger R-class ships have at least 233 balcony staterooms apiece.
Paying a premium
The industry as a whole–including agents, cruise lines and passengers–views balconies as added value. And passengers are thus willing to pay a premium for them, says Bruce Good of Seabourn. “Essentially, balconies are just another denomination of currency used in the assessment of value by agents and consumers.”
Holland America’s Kammerer says a balcony moves you to the next–and consummate–level of cruising, and sums up its allure this way: “Do you want to see [the ocean] and feel it?”
But for some passengers, price could well be the spoiler. When asked where passengers are today in terms of balconies, agent White says, only half jokingly, “They want them, but they don’t want to pay for them.”
However, prices for balcony cabins range widely–from line to line and ship to ship (see chart). And you don’t have to hock the family heirlooms to nab one. Because of pricing oddities, there often are opportunities to get a balcony cabin for the price of a regular cabin, White says.
Nevertheless, some downsides do exist that you may want to keep in mind. For instance, you might not see your neighbors from your private balcony, but you are likely to not so privately overhear them. And vice versa.
Also, some balconies are so narrow as to be negligible, says historian Dacey, who describes those on Royal Caribbean’s Monarch and Majesty of the Seas as “basically a door with almost a clip-on veranda.”
Moreover, the vaunted solitude that a balcony confers has some observers blaming it for keeping passengers isolated from each other. Balconies reorganize the entire social structure of ships, Dacey says. “It limits the sociability of a ship. Once, passengers used to meet on boat deck for [sailaway] parties, meet friends when leaving port. Now everybody’s on their verandas, having their own separate social event.”
Dacey recalls sailing through the Panama Canal on the old Rotterdam as the Crystal Harmony–a luxury vessel with 260 balcony cabins–was transiting simultaneously. “Everybody on our ship was out on deck but everyone on Crystal was out on their own balconies in their bathrobes.”
`Too comfortable’
Similarly, not a few passengers who’ve sailed on Radisson Seven Seas’ newest luxury vessel, the 700-passenger Mariner–the world’s first all-suite all-balcony ship–lament that the ship’s spacious public spaces feel empty.
Perhaps that’s why another Silversea passenger, Jane King of Newport Beach, Calif., would never consider a balcony. “I cruise by myself and, if I’m too comfortable [in my cabin], I’m liable never to leave it and then I’ll stay cruising by myself.”
Nevertheless, most passengers eagerly seek balconies and, in response, cruise lines got bitten by the balcony bug. Even mainstream ships are virtually beating a path to the balcony door to include them. For instance, 80 percent of outside cabins on Carnival Spirit and Pride have balconies–682 of them per ship. Princess Cruises’ new Golden Princess, like its sister ship the Grand, has more than 700 balcony cabins. And when NCL’s Norwegian Star debuts in November, nearly half of its 1,100 cabins will have balconies.
As big a boom as balconies are now, this wasn’t always so. Even the luxe Titanic, which carried many of the world’s wealthiest passengers, like Vanderbilts and Astors, had no balconies. Nor did the QE2, when it entered service in 1969.
“The philosophy behind the old days of cruising was that your shipboard accommodations didn’t matter because you didn’t spend too much time in your cabin,” notes Brad Ball of Renaissance.
To the degree that balconies existed at all, they were mostly in lieu of a lack of air-conditioning and reserved for the wealthy. After WWII, public rooms were air-cooled and, by the 1950s, air-conditioning blew in, leaving a big lapse in balcony building.
Sporadically, a number of ships retrofitted balconies, adding them to an existing superstructure. On the QE2, for example, in the late 1970s, 10 balconied cabins were grafted onto the top deck forward of the funnel.
If there were a seminal moment in balcony building it was 1984. A watershed year, if you will, when Princess’ Royal Princess became the first “purpose-built” ship with balconies, according to Dacey. It sprouted 150 balcony cabins in all categories–standard, deluxe and suites.
The industry never looked back. Balconies are as de rigueur today as lap blankets on deck chairs once were.
Princess’ 10-ship fleet offers more than 3,000 cabins with private balconies. Not to mention nearly 4,000 new balconies that will be added on its next five ships (Star, Coral, Island, Diamond and Sapphire Princesses), with balconies available from standard accommodations up to suites with butlers.
Even ultra-luxury Seabourn, in an attempt to join the ranks of the balconied, recently retrofitted its Pride, Spirit and Legend with “French balconies”–sliding-glass doors that open onto a 20- to 24-inch deep sill, more like a terrace Juliet might have graced when Romeo wooed her.
If the balcony boom leaves no paucity of places to put your feet up, don’t look for them on small expedition ships (except for the Clipper Odyssey with nine balcony cabins) or on ships to, say, Antarctica. In open seas and on transatlantic liners, balconies are not nearly as convenient as, say, in the becalmed Caribbean.
If you think a balcony is a balcony is a balcony, think again. On any given ship, balconies fore and aft can differ considerably from those at the ship’s midsection. And, of course, suite balconies differ from those on standard cabins.
Aft cabins on Carnival’s Destiny-class ships, for instance, have sweeping balconies with both rear and side exposures. Similarly, on some Holland America ships, one category of balcony cabin includes two with hugely oversized balconies–for the same fare.
Designer Farcus also points out that, because Carnival Spirit’s superstructure zigs in and out, balconies at the narrowest part of the ship are actually wider–by approximately one foot–than other same-category balconies.
And since balconies on the line’s newer ships are not part of the superstructure their protective railings are of see-through glass rather than solid steel, so you can view the ocean when you recline in a lounge chair. That is, if there’s a lounge chair to recline on. Balconies vary so much in size that many have minimal furnishings, if at all.
The big and small
Seabourn’s French balconies, for example, are too narrow even to accommodate deck furniture, while balconies appended to some suites on Celebrity’s Galaxy feel like the size of Rhode Island.
Grand Princess’ balconies are step-laddered, with each ascending deck set back from the one below. The result: passengers in higher balcony cabins look onto lower-deck balconies. Ditto for a few balconies on Celebrity’s Century, where passengers strolling on Lido deck can spy down upon balconies at the rear of the ship.
On Royal Caribbean’s Radiance, some deck 7 and 8 balconies are partially obstructed by an overhang above and a big platform below.
According to Rick White, the hands-down most fabulous balcony will debut on Norwegian Star. The ship features a pair of garden villas–each with three bedrooms, large living room, dining room and luxury bath–that can be combined; and, together, will open onto a 4,446-square-foot private garden complex (a.k.a. the balcony). It comes complete with hot tub, lounge area and rooftop terrace.
As for pricing, one of those villas (with approximately half the balcony space) will set you back about $10,000 per person for a week’s cruise. But, hey, that includes port charges and taxes. And wait, there’s even this deal: third, fourth, fifth and sixth passengers in the suite can sail for as little as $179 per person.
Few passengers could opt for anything so lavish, of course. But maybe balconies boil down to simply this: Like some things in life, just having one is more fun.
