The Cruise Essential You Wouldn't Think Of: Magnetic Hooks
Nobody tells you before your first cruise that the cabin walls are steel. That one fact is behind the cheapest trick seasoned cruisers pack.
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Under the panelling, a cruise cabin is a steel box. The walls, the door and the ceiling all take a magnet the way a fridge door does.
That's why, in an r/onebag thread about weird but genius travel items, the cruise answer was a hook.
Magnetic hook. A friend gave me some for a cruise we were going on and complete game changer. Because the walls/doors are metal you can hang everything in really convenient places and they are strong so you just need a small one.
u/froggymail, in r/onebag
If you're packing for a first cruise, that's the whole trick. Whether you need them is a separate question, and cruisers argue about it.
What do people hang on them?
Lanyards, first. The ship's key card lives on one, and a hook by the door means you don't walk out without it. One r/royalcaribbean list starts with the hook near the door for the lanyard. Then hooks for hats, one for drying washing in front of the air conditioning, and a magnet on the inside of the door holding the bookings.
The one that comes up most is the wet swimsuit. The shower has a pull-out line, and in an interior cabin's tiny bathroom not much dries on it. One r/Cruise owner put hooks on the ceiling by the air-conditioning vent and the suit dried much better.
A thread recommending a magnetic paper-towel holder for the same job drew a run of replies saying plain hooks do it, one putting them at "95% smaller".
A plain pack is all this takes. The LOVIMAG 12-pack is the shape of the thing: a dozen small black hooks on magnetic bases, the set one r/Cruise owner keeps in metal tins between trips. The number on the label means less than you'd think.
Rain gear is the other case. On an Alaska cruise with two wet port days out of three, one cruiser hung hats, coats and gloves to dry in the cabin and now calls the hooks must-haves for Alaska.
Do you need magnetic hooks for a cruise?
Ask r/Cruise and you get both answers, and the split is mostly about headcount.
Two adults with the standard drawers and hooks usually don't need them. The most-upvoted reply in a thread asking whether the heavy-duty ones are worth it has never found a shortage of storage on any cruise. The advice there is to use the cupboard, use the drawers.
In r/royalcaribbean, the top answer to "Cruise magnet hooks a must?" is "I've never needed them".
More than one person there bought a pack for a first cruise and never opened it, and one calls it a waste of a pound of luggage. One r/Cruise reply bought them because they're recommended so often, got there and didn't find a use beyond lanyards by the door.
Three or four to a cabin, or a lot of wet gear, is when they earn their space. Space becomes an issue "when you have 4 people in the room", as one reply puts it.
A family of four in one cabin says they're mostly useful with kids or more than two people. A couple who overpack still had empty drawers on their own, and reckon the hooks probably come in handy from three adults up.
Newer ships may tilt it further toward skipping. On Royal Caribbean's Oasis and anything newer, one cruiser found plenty of hooks in the room already, by the door, by the bed and in the shower, and used the magnets mostly on the balcony to hang wet clothes.
One cruiser who took a small pack called them "useful, but not essential". Cruise vloggers, they say, make it sound as if you can't live in a cabin without a suitcase full of hacks. You can.
What strength magnetic hooks for a cruise?
Packs are labelled 30 lb, 80 lb and up. That number isn't what the hook holds on a wall. K&J Magnetics, a magnet maker, says so in its own guide to cruise hooks: in most hanging cases you won't get the listed pull force.
On a cabin wall there's a coating between the magnet and the steel, and the steel is thin. The hook levers the magnet's top edge away, and the load pulls down rather than out. Down is the direction that beats a magnet, because the hook only has to slide.
The owners say the same thing from the other end. Someone in r/Cruise finds theirs don't hold close to the advertised limit, and wonders whether that's because they bought cheap ones.
The person who started that thread has hooks rated for something like 30 lb and "exactly 0 chance" of holding anything close.
A reply from someone with 80 lb hooks says it all comes down to what you're hanging: theirs only ever carry hats, swimsuits and lanyards, so they're fine, and they'd never hold 80 lb.
Where you put it matters more than the rating. "It's less about the hanger and more about where you hang it", says an owner who hangs every organiser from the ceiling. On the ceiling the load pulls straight down against the magnet, so it holds more; on a wall the same hook tends to slide. Ceiling for the wet things, wall for hats and lanyards.
If you're choosing between finishes, K&J's tip is that a rubber coating adds friction, so a rubber-coated hook slides less on a wall than a bare metal one.
Will they scratch the cabin walls?
One r/Cruise reply slips a two-inch piece of cardboard behind each magnet to protect the wall finish, and says it makes the hook easier to pull off too. K&J agrees a thin paper or plastic layer protects paint, with one catch: it weakens the pull.
Another owner thinks the worry is overdone. The wall covering gets bumped by luggage, kids and wheelchairs all day and takes a beating without marks, and heavier hooks that don't slip leave nothing behind.
How to pack magnetic hooks for a cruise
Slide them apart, never pull. Strong ones snap back together hard. One r/Cruise poster pulled two apart, they closed on a fingertip before they could get a grip, and it "took a chunk of flesh out" of the finger that bothered them all week.
The thread's answers: slide them apart rather than pulling, keep a piece of cereal-box cardboard between each pair, or stick them to the sides of a metal tin. The poster ended up with an old metal eyeglass case and unpinched fingers. Keep the lot away from your bank cards and your phone.
Fly with them in the checked bag. The box may carry a "magnetized content, do not ship by air" sticker, which sent one buyer to r/Cruise asking whether they'd wasted their money. They hadn't. The top reply travels with ten little hooks in a checked bag on many flights, and others in two threads say the same.
A carry-on works too, but expect the bag to be opened once "the big hunk of irregularly-shaped metal" shows on the X-ray. Nobody in those threads reports losing one at security. The thread does split on whether the very strong ones are allowed at all, so if you've bought the enormous kind, check with your airline.
Count heads before you pack. Two of you, a cabin with drawers, a weekend's worth of clothes: leave the hooks at home and nobody will miss them. Three or more, kids, an Alaska itinerary or a swimsuit a day: put a dozen plain ones like the LOVIMAG 12-pack in the checked bag with cardboard between them. Claim the ceiling by the vent for the wet things first. The wall is for hats.
