Balcony locks?

[samtesla]

No, I'm not paranoid about Spiderman 3 coming in the room and stealing the wife's 5 carat diamond necklace :)

 

When one travels with young children, and the ocean is only a chair climb away from the balcony :eek: when a parent steps into the bathroom or falls asleep is there anything resembling a lock? childproof? bring your own paddle-lock ?? arc welder kit? superglue?

 

I grew up in a high rise and we were conditioned to be aware of balconies, but my kids are growing up in Suburbia, where a balcony is a novelty.

[cruznliz]

The balconies do have locks. In fact DH and I were inadvertently locked out by our room steward on one cruise. :eek: BUT they aren't childproof locks by any means. I think they were just the vertical slide type locks. You might be able to talk to your room steward about getting something better.

[SPI_Rick]

The type of locking mechanism on the balcony door may vary depending on the ship you are aboard, but what I remember are just locks that prevent someone who to on the balcony from getting into the room. I don't recall anything that would prevent someone in the cabin from getting onto the balcony. And in the case of the Star Princess, what I remember is that the door would be locked or unlocked based on the position of the door handle.

[Lisa63]

I had the same concerns when we traveled on Diamond Princess last month. In our case, we were on a deck that overlooked the balconies of the cabins one deck below, which made me feel just a tad better. On Diamond Princess, the doors locked by positioning the handle a certain way. That turned out to be good enough for us. I suppose there are other ways of blocking the door along its track -- perhaps cabin stewards can provide something that does this. I'm sure there are people who have asked.

 

Good luck to you,.... and enjoy your cruise!

[Princesa]

My whole family traveled on the Diamond in September. There were 10 adults and 4 children. The children are two sets of twins the ages of 3 and 5. I was also very concerned with this issue because I organized the family cruise. The deck we were all on was Baja Deck and this one deck was directly above another deck, therefore, eliminating the concern of the children falling "over-board". As for the rails in the public areas, you will be glad to read that I took personal note that most rails are I believe strategically built child-safe. It may be possible to go over-board, but I noted that unless one goes to extreme measures it is quite possibly hard to actually go over-board without first getting injury by hitting some part of the ship.

 

I suggest you ask your travel agent to check this issue for you or simply call the (800) number yourself and pretend to be interested in booking another trip so as to get the info first-hand.

 

Good luck.

[GloriaF]

The front to the balcony "rails" are solid transparent plexiglass tinted blue, so your kids could see through it and wouldn't be as tempted to climb to see over the top possibly. Also, the balcony doors are big sliding glass doors, so a broom stick the correct size laid in the channel of the non-opening door would prevent it from opening. Of course this isn't child-proof, but it would be a delay. If you could find room in your luggage, a spring loaded curtain rod would work. They come in different lengths, have rubber tips, and can be twisted to expand to stay in place inside a window (also between the opening door and the frame of the sliding balcony door) and they could be put up higher than your child could reach. The problem is that you would need one that reached about 4 feet at it's longest, I think, and that will be hard to travel with.