Are there any options if your cruise ship cabin neighbor is loud and noisy?
In my 20 years of cruising, I've been lucky enough to avoid neighbors that are too loud, but there was one cruise that a friend had this problem.
She was booked in an inside cabin and her neighbor thought it was okay to blast their music every day as they were getting ready for their evening festivities. It was an ongoing issue that not only was annoying to hear through the walls, but prevented her from going to sleep.
While you could certainly try to ask them to quiet down, there are a few things to try if a noisy neighbor is a problem on your cruise.
You can call security, but you need to catch them in the act
One of the first lessons is Royal Caribbean won't get involved in a "he said, she said" situation.
This means you can call security about someone being too loud, but they need to be present to witness it themselves. So if you spend all night unable to sleep and complain in the morning, it's too late.
What you want to do is call security the moment your neighbor starts up acting inconsiderately and hope security can get there fast enough to see or hear the disturbance.
Your stateroom attendant is another option, so if they're nearby, point out the issue to them and ask them to get their supervisor involved.
You could certainly video it as evidence, but it's my experience that security needs to be present to witness it so they can document it. To be fair, I wouldn't want to get in trouble just because someone else claims I did something wrong.
Usually, they'll give the person a warning and ask them to turn it down and be more considerate. Subsequent incidents could lead to more stern discipline. Your cruise contract leaves a lot of discretion to the ship as to how to deal with obnoxious passengers, so there isn't a firm list of steps or rules related to punishing this.
You could ask for a different cabin, but it's unlikely to be granted
Because Royal Caribbean cruise ships sail full almost every sailing, the chances of being moved to a different room is an option but I wouldn't bet on it.
It's rare to have any spare cabins on a cruise, especially in the same room category as you are booked. There are sometimes no-shows and rarely unsold rooms, but they're few and far between.
You could ask Guest Services to simply be moved so you're not bothered by this person, but there's only so much the Hotel Director can do if there aren't any free cabins.
My advice is don't get involved trying to police the situation
A friendly, "hey, would you mind turning down the volume?" when seeing your neighbor in the hall is fine, but you really don't want to get involved beyond that.
If your neighbors are fighting or yelling at each other, you should call security and let them deal with it.
There's no telling how quickly a heated argument will escalate, and ultimately it's not your role or job either.
Avoid booking connecting rooms if you don't know the person in the other cabin
Whenever possible, I don't recommend booking a connecting cabin unless you book both rooms.
The connecting door between the two rooms is quite flimsy, and noise will more easily travel between the rooms than it would with a standard cabin wall between them.
Before you book a cruise, check the deck plans to make sure you aren't picking that sort of a room. Truthfully, most people end up in a connecting room because they opt for a guarantee cabin.
Guarantee rooms are staterooms that cost less because you let the cruise line pick the room. The cabin assigned is an unsold cabin, and often these are leftover connecting rooms.
It's far from a lock that any guarantee room will be a connecting room, but it seems to be fairly common.
