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Consider bringing an inflatable camping pad on your cruise

All credit for this hack goes to my late husband, who was a survivor of multiple back surgeries. When we met, I was 35 and he was 55. I had a lot of experience traveling the world — but not a lot of experience with the aches and pains that come with middle age. (I miss those days….)

It was Allan’s idea to buy an inflatable camping pad to put underneath the mattress pad on the cruise ship bed, to make it more comfortable but still firm enough. We bought two Klymit Static V sleeping pads, and they served us well for many years. They packed up small and didn’t take up much space in the suitcase, and when inflated, they really made the beds more comfortable. (All of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no cost to you if you click through and purchase.)

When Allan died, I stopped using the camping pads for one specific reason: I have asthma, and it was hard for me to blow up the Klymit pads we’d been using. But as the beds got harder (or at least, that’s how it felt), I realized I was going to need to come up with an alternative.

I searched on Amazon and settled on this sleeping pad that has a foot pump for inflating it. When it arrived, I noticed that it rolled up slightly larger than the old ones we’d used, due to the foot pump.

When I packed in May 2025 for nearly a month of cruising, I decided that I was going to bring the pad with me on this trip and try to save myself the pain of sleeping on hard beds for all those nights. When I arrived at my first cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, I was glad I had done so — the bed was pretty hard.

With the camping pad, though, I slept great and didn’t get the usual back and hip pain that a hard bed gives me. I let my cabin steward know about the inflatable pad and thanked him for his patience working with it (it does make the bed a little harder to make).

So if you’re having trouble with hard cruise ship beds, consider giving an inflatable camping pad a try. I definitely recommend doing a “test run” with the pad before you leave home to make sure that it’s functioning correctly and doesn’t have any leaks. Testing it at home also reduces the possibility of user error, too.