We have stayed in cat 8A (deck 5 fwd) and 8B (deck 9 fwd).
The cat 8A was one of the "sideways" rooms. It had more functional open floorspace, two large portholes you could sit in, no split bath (but it had a rectangular tub), and a wall that separated the queen bed area from the couch. It only sleeps 3 because there is just the queen bed and the sofa bed. We really like the room and its layout, and the location wasn't too bad.
However, my sister was the one on the sofa bed and found it uncomfortable. We tried a second cruise same room (but different ship) and she found the same, so we decided no more sofa bed we needed the murphy bed.
Our last cruise (B2B on dream) we were in the 8B. Our location was deck 9 almost all the way forward. The murphy bed worked out great for my sister: we had the stateroom host just leave it down the entire time, which allowed my sister to nap or relax on it whenever she wanted. This worked very well for us. The large porthole was still accessible over the bed. Not as much open floor space as the 8A, but the murphy bed was a necessary trade-off.
We liked the 9 forward location: it was a quick walk up to Senses (rainforest room
and access to the pool deck. A bit of a walk back along the ship to the drink station, but we figured it was good exercise, even in the wee hours of the morning
Getting to anywhere on the ship really was not a big deal: if we wanted aft there were multiple option on getting there, including just walking the length of deck 9 (or any other deck) and taking stairs or elevator down or up.
We found we used the stairs a lot: going up was easy since it was just 2 floors. Going down was easy, since it was going down. A few times we tried walking the stairs all the way up to deck 9 and decided we should be in better shape for doing that
So, if we were say in one of the MDRs, we would often walk up after to deck 5, walk all the way forward and then catch the forward elevator up (or stairs, at that point only 4 floors!). This allowed us to miss the crowds at the aft or midship elevator and gave some exercise. Breaking multiple flights into two chunks made it doable vs trying 6 or 7 flights at once
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Laundry room location was also a factor for us, as we always do laundry during the cruise. Deck 9 forward has a laundry room, and it was across the other side and around the corner from us, which was a perfect location -- easy access without laundry "traffic" being around our room. When we were on deck 5 I had been planning on using the deck 6 laundry, but our stateroom host pointed out the deck 2 was closer since it was a straightshot down the elevator. He was right and that worked well for us too, thogh a bit further away than deck 9's when we stayed there. So, if you are going to be doing laundry, you may want to factor laundry room location into your decision.
As for ship noise and movement: deck 5 we certainly felt and heard the ship hitting waves more than on deck 9. but the room on deck 9 was much creakier. I had motion sickness the entire cruise wherever I was, so don't know if being aft or mid ship would have made a difference. It didn't when I visited those areas, but maybe it would have staying in those areas.
We found a lot of information online about the different categories, including pictures and videos people have posted of various specific rooms. This helped us get a really good idea of what the rooms would be like. For the 8A in particular it was what "sold" us on that category in the first place. Even though you may not find pics or video of the exact room you are contemplating, you may find them for a nearby room in the same category.
Note: one thing we learned researching the 8A and 8B category is that even within a category there can be differences in room layout and such. For example, the specific configurations of the 8A vary -- some have that wall, others have a pole, etc. For 8B, most have the murphy bed but not all do, so we did research online on this site and others to help us make a list of which ones did and did not so we knew what to choose when it came time to select a stateroom.
SW
