My cabin location almost ruined my cruise — here’s how I salvaged the trip

The pounding of the music's bass on the floor of our Disney Wish cabin, 6558, was getting under my skin like nails on a chalkboard. It was 11:30 p.m., and we had to be awake at 6:30 a.m. the following day. When could we sleep like thousands of other passengers on Wish were doing at that very moment?

Earlier that night, we had enjoyed dinner and live music at Nightingale's piano bar on Deck 3. We headed to our cabin three decks up around 10:30 p.m. to get ready for a restful night of sleep. As soon as we entered our room, however, we heard the loud noise reverberating. Determined not to let it ruin our plans to sleep, we got into bed and closed our eyes.

But instead of counting sheep, I was counting the minutes until the pounding would potentially stop.

The beat goes on

As 11:30 turned into 11:45 p.m., the music was still going strong. I put in ear plugs I always travel with "just in case" for moments like this. They didn't do the trick. "This has to end at midnight," I thought. There was no way such disruptive music could continue past that hour on a Disney Cruise Line ship, right? Wrong.

The beats we heard in our room were like a watch's second hand ticking away. Though I gave the cruise line the benefit of the doubt, I told myself — and my husband — that when the clock struck midnight, if there was no fairy godmother shutting down the party, I was going to do something about it. As the annoyance continued, I looked at the ship map in my DCL Navigator app and realized our room was right above Luna.

Luna is an onboard venue that, unbeknownst to us, turns into a nightclub some evenings. As bad luck would have it, this was one such night. We yearned for an evening when it was a silent disco party. Alas, wishes (no pun intended) are not changes.

Late-night laments

Midnight came, and I looked toward my husband, whose head was on the pillow next to mine, and whispered to him to see if he was awake. He was. I flipped on the night-light, and with just one glance at each other, I knew we agreed it was time to take action. I said, "This is crazy, I'm calling Guest Services."

A friendly woman answered the phone. I calmly explained how the noise was affecting our evening, making it impossible to sleep. I shared that on a normal night, this would be annoying, but on this particular evening, the frustration was magnified due to the early time we had to be up the next day, in just a few hours. I also told her that I realized we were located above Luna, and the schedule showed there was an adults-only dance party taking place.

To my shock, she didn't offer to change our room until I suggested it as a resolution. Not that changing rooms — including packing all our belongings to make the switch and changing out of our pajamas into hall-ready clothes — at that hour was our preference. It was well past midnight. But we thought it was our best option because the music was scheduled to continue for at least another 45 minutes.

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She found another stateroom for us to move to but not without pointing out that it was their "pleasure" to upgrade us.

We packed our things, and a team member came upstairs with a cart to help us relocate. When we arrived at our new location — this time not above any of the ship's public venues — we couldn't get into bed fast enough to go for attempt No. 2 at that evening's slumber.

There was nothing noticeably upgraded about the room other than it being on a higher deck, which isn't the preference of every cruiser, including us, for various reasons. Guest Services sent bagged popcorn and a sweet treat to our new room the following day as an olive branch, which we appreciated; we opted to let the experience be a teachable moment and make us better travelers, not bitter ones.

Lessons learned

We began the cruise less wise than we were after the mishap. As two adults traveling without kids — and certainly without teenagers — we found ourselves wondering if the ship should have a curfew or, at the very least, quiet hours after 11 p.m.

Though we were not well rested the next morning like we had planned, we were still relieved. Thanks to the room switch, our bedtime routine for the rest of the cruise was far less eventful than the night before our excursion.

It was our first time on Disney Wish, though certainly not our first time on a cruise. We had also sailed on almost every other Disney Cruise Line ship before Wish's debut. However, you would never think that a nightclub's pounding beats would be such an issue on arguably the most kid-friendly cruise line around. That is, until we were in a room above a nightclub and realized we would never make that mistake when selecting our cabin again.

We never want to ruin anyone's vacation fun or be the travelers who complain; that's not us. I'm sure that the passengers partying in Luna that night were having a great time, as they should during their DCL trip.

We're generally jovial cruisers and make lemonade from lemons whenever travel mishaps occur, which does happen with travel. Yet we were very surprised at the situation during this particular cruise. We simply wanted to be able to sleep in the comfort of our cabin at our desired (and relatively late!) bedtime, but better to learn a hard lesson and grow from it. From now on, we'll do our due diligence about our cabins' locations and nearby entertainment venues a bit better and let it inform our cabin choice.

Bottom line

Now we avoid this conundrum altogether. Whenever we choose a cabin on a cruise ship, we always check the deck plan above our preferred room and the deck plan below to ensure only other staterooms sandwich it above and below. We learned this lesson the hard way so you don't have to — because, ultimately, sleep time and dance time should remain separate, especially when you're not the one doing the dancing.

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