We were in 8259 in November, and again in the same cabin this time, only it had the addition of the bacony.
The Aft cabins were quite nice and a nice improvement for our group of 4 on since we last had the cabin in Nov.
There were reports that the rooms were made smaller by the addition of the door, but I can say with out any question that the size of the room actually increased by a definative 12 -18 inches in length. The back sofa is now gone and replaced with two small table chairs, but in addition to the extra space created by the removal of the sofa, the wall where the window used to be is now 12-18 inches further out in the room. The balconies are a nice size, a bit bigger than a 2A, but not covered in any way. They are not as windy as the 2a cabin that my MIL had ,because of the aft location. We had a nice time on the balcony as we were leaving the Hubbard Glacier. Really great pictures then,and later that night at Sunset.
You will defintely, as before feel the motion of the thrusters any time the ship make a hard turn or when entering or leaving port. The good thing about this cruise is that we often docked at 1:00 or later.
The room was configured as a FOV: a double bed pushed up against the wall in the front room, and a day bedstyle sofa/bed with a pull down bunk above. It used to have the 5th bed/back sofa,but now has that space open and a sliding door to the balcony.
The double bed was much improved with the dry dock and very comfortable. We kind of took turns in that bed, so I had the single bed that is a sofa during the day. It is not a sofa bed, but more like a day bed so the mattress is harder, like a sofa cushion. I requested an "egg crate" and it was fine after that addition. I never slept in the bunk bed so I'm not sure if it was very comfy, but the kids said it wasfine.
As far as appearance they still had the same cabinets, drawers, fixtures ect. DD even noted that the picture on the wall was the same.
Also, on our last cruise we taped underneath the bottom of the drawer a note saying "Welcome to the Mercury and Alaska" with all our names on it the day before we left in Nov. When we got there, the note was the first thing we looked for. Sure enough, there it was taped under the drawer , where no one would look.
I appologize for all my typo's, I'm on my parents lap top and the key board is weird to me and their browser isn't set up to spell check.