Let me preface this article by saying we enjoyed our cruise – a lot – but we felt this was worthy of some discussion since it’s something that has never happened to us before.
We generally try to pick out good cabins. We google the ship maps to make sure we’re not right under the dance club, under the pool deck when they rearrange the chairs in the early morning, extremely close to the elevators, etc. We thought we had done a good job on this last cruise aboard Carnival Magic: A cove balcony cabin #2298, in the center of the ship. For the most part, it was pretty quiet except for a screaming infant next door (it happens). However, one night, on our return through the Gulf of Mexico, there was loud knocking in our room and then an even more powerful booming noise every 20-30 seconds that would shake entire aft wall of our cabin.
The noise continued until about 2:30am, keeping everyone awake despite being tired from 3 straight port days. To give you an idea of how much the wall was shaking, our camera that was on the counter eventually worked its way over the edge and fell to the floor. The camera isn’t a lightweight either – it’s just over four pounds (Nikon D800 + 24-70 lens; if you’re a camera nerd like us).
The camera cracked and Nikon repair services called it a complete loss. Insurance will help, but there’s still significant out-of-pocket cost. I expected it to be damaged when we were horseback riding in Belize or swimming with the dolphins in Roatan, but I was surprised when it survived all that and was damaged due to our cabin shaking and vibrating so much that night.
We had never experienced this nor even heard of it happening, so we thought we’d at least pass it along as a cautionary tale. I figured the only way I could accurately describe it was by recording the sound – and since I wasn’t sleeping after sadly feeling around the dark floor for the fallen camera – I was able to grab this sound clip of the noise-
Take a listen for yourself
My wife and I had our honeymoon in that room. It’s been our only cruise and everything was all right except for the noise. I wish I had read this before we booked the room. It happened all night every night,and i barely slept the whole trip. Just when I would start to dose off it would shake the whole room. They sent a mechanic to see what the problem was and he seemed a little shocked like he had never heard it before. They called me the next day and said it was just the waves. Did you ever contact anyone about a refund. It really ruined our honeymoon to be honest.
Did you contact Carnival about this? We just got back from a Cruise on the Magic and it was terrible! We were on deck 6 room 6201, 6202, 6203, 6304 & 6305. We heard and flew the same booming. It was so bad for 3 straight days that we couldn’t enjoy our excursions or the nightly entertainment. I was just curious if they were notified of this problem from you.
Had the same room Dec 2014. It was under the dining room kitchen. Extreme noise all day and night never again that deck.
I know this is an old post, but we just got off in room 2302 and this is the exact experience we had. The last two days were the worst, but the entire room shook about every minute for several minutes and then it would stop for a while and then start again. I even walked to the deck below us and you could feel it in the hallway there as well. We did not notice it on our quick trips between ports and we did not report it on the ship because we assumed there’s little they could do about it anyway. We asked one of the room stewards if they noticed it and they said it was waves hitting the side of the ship but this was much worst than that. Our vacation was great with the exception of this noise which was enough to make my wife miserable.