While not as big an upgrade as the
secret porthole staterooms, the secret verandah staterooms on Disney’s
Magic and
Wonder cruise ships give you a little more for your money. Basically these are Category 7 staterooms that have a regular verandah (a private, open-air deck accessed from your cabin), instead of the usual Category 7 “navigator’s verandah,” which is a fully enclosed deck with a large porthole.
The secret verandah staterooms were originally sold as Category 6, but were recategorized to Category 7 after Disney received complaints because they have a slight obstruction of view. The obstruction is due to their location at the very ends of the ship: an overhang curves around on one side of the verandah, obscuring the view in that direction.
- The cabins to request on the Magic and Wonder are 6134, 6634, 7120 and 7620.
A similar situation exists with 22 of the 24 category 7A rooms on Disney’s
Dream and
Fantasy. These rooms are the ends of rows of category 5’s and 6’s, and in fact were originally categorized as 5’s and 6’s. However, the outer white panels of the ship impinge on the view from the verandahs of these rooms, in some cases to an almost trivial degree. Mostly they have a view that most people would find nearly identical to the higher-category room next door, and almost always far less obstructed than the navigator’s verandahs or white-wall verandahs on the Magic and Wonder, in the sense that they all have Plexiglas railings and you can see the ocean clearly while seated (with the exception of 5024 and 5524, where the obstruction is mostly on the lower half). In a few cases, a category 7 has a connecting door to the category 5 or 6 stateroom next door, and if you want two connecting verandah staterooms getting this combo can save you some money, by getting (for example) a 5A and 7A instead of two 5A’s. Even if all the officially connecting rooms are booked, you can still book almost any 7A and the adjacent category 5 or 6, have the stateroom attendant open the verandah barrier between the rooms (see the next section for more) and essentially have the equivalent of two category 5 or 6 staterooms for less. Often these will book up fast, but ask a
travel agent to see if a suitable pair is available.
The two unusual rooms in the 7A category on the Dream/Fantasy are 5188 and 5688, which are mirror-image aft-facing rooms on deck 5 with no obstructions, but very small triangular verandahs. Their verandahs are too small to fit a chair, but do have a built-in bench that two thin people could fit on. They each connect to a handicapped-accessible 9A stateroom next door (5186/5686), but their verandahs do not connect on either side.
