Space often comes at a premium on a cruise ship.
In cabins, space is very limited but carefully designed layouts and thoughtful amenities make the staterooms functional for passengers.
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Maximizing space is crucial, so most cabins include smart storage solutions and multipurpose features like convertible furniture to keep things comfortable as well as purposeful.
Although most cabin features are well planned and super compact, there may still be space to enhance one mini-sized stateroom amenity.
One Carnival Cruise Line passenger recently wrote to the cruise line’s brand ambassador, John Heald, to suggest a way to improve it. The idea drew a notably strong response from other cruisers.
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Carnival cruise passenger demands stocked cabin mini bar
“The mini refrigerators and mini bars are useless,” the unidentified passenger wrote. “What’s the point of having them if they’re not going to be stocked with soda, beer and miniatures. And snacks. This needs to happen.”
Heald included the passenger’s request in a poll on his popular Facebook page to gauge whether other passengers agreed that the cruise line should stock cabin mini bars.
Surprisingly, more than 27,000 Carnival cruise fans rejected the idea while less than 1,000 indicated that they want the cabin mini bar to be stocked with drinks and snacks.
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What makes this most noteworthy may be the fact that Carnival cruise passengers often write to the brand ambassador to complain that the cruise line doesn’t make enough alcoholic drinks available to them.
Passengers don’t like to be limited and Carnival refuses to budge on its controversial rule that prevents passengers from ordering more than 15 alcoholic drinks per 24-hour period.
But although passengers want the freedom and convenience of ordering as many alcoholic beverages as they want on a cruise, they surprisingly don’t want more drinks (of any kind) to be made available in this very convenient place inside their cabin.
Carnival cruise passengers have uses for the cabin mini bar
For most passengers, the reason for rejecting the stocked mini bar idea comes down to using the cabin amenity for their own storage needs.
“Please do not preload the mini fridge with anything. Many people do order water, or bring pop onboard, or may have to use it to keep their medicine in,” Randy Hettenbaugh explained in a comment on the poll.
Carnival Cruise Line allows passengers to bring a small quantity of non-alcoholic beverages packaged in cans or cartons on board its ships. Passengers are also permitted to bring one standard bottle of wine or champagne, per person.
Most passengers prefer that the cabin mini fridge remains empty so they can use it to store the drinks they brought with them or bottled water they purchase on board.
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“I like the empty refrigerator, I bring a bottle of wine and sodas for every cruise. That is less expensive than purchasing them on the ship,” Robert E Tyer noted.
Some passengers say the cruise line could improve the mini bars by making them colder, however.
“The mini bars need to get colder. I realize they’re not designed as refrigerators, but I’d think going forward they could be replaced over time to serve that purpose,” Mike Seaton commented.
It’s important to note that these non-stocked cabin mini bars are comparable to coolers. They’re specifically designed to maintain the temperature of beverages, not medications.
Carnival instructs passengers not to use these units to store medications that have specific temperature requirements. For passengers who need to store medicine that needs proper refrigeration, medi-coolers are available on board in limited quantities.
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