hawks026

Excited to follow along, can you post menus for dining room any nights you go? Thanks

Can you post internet package prices?

Thanks!

Excited to follow along!

If possible can you post prices to buy internet packages onboard? Thanks!

Dinner last night in Wonderland. Really enjoyed the experience.

 

 

 

 

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Can you tell me more about what you ate at Wonderland? If anyone else has eaten there would appreciate your comments as well.

Not adventurous when it comes to food, but if there is beef/chicken/fish I would like to try it as the restaurant seems so pretty and like such a neat concept...just don't want to spend a lot of money and leave hungry. Thanks!

Personally I find the increase in drink package prices amusing. They had the old package price on offer for our cruise on Oasis a couple weeks go - $49 for the ultimate. We didn't bite.

 

We drank like *fish* this cruise. I drank more wine that one week than I usually drink in 6 months. But here's the rub: 10 of the glasses of wine were at Chef's Table (12 if you count the champagne), which came with the price of dinner so the package wouldn't have helped. 8 were at a wine tasting - same story. 5 were at a wine pairing at 150 that we split between us -- also same story. And 5 were from a bottle we brought to our second 150 evening that we got in Vintages using our BOGO perqs.

 

So, 30 glasses of wine (holy hell, I can't believe we had that much wine in one week) that would not have been covered by the beverage package.

 

The rest of the drinks we had were mostly pool-side pina coladas and lava flows, with a couple of bloodies and martinis mixed in that would have been covered by the package, but we probably had a max of 20 of those between us the whole trip, and since you have to average something like 6 per day to make the package pay for itself, it wouldn't have.

 

So, since the old package price was a bad deal for us and didn't tempt us, the new package price certainly isn't going to tempt us. I wonder which direction they'll go next: Lower the package price again, or make a pina colada $20. ;)

 

 

Hawaii697: About day 3 or 4 of your cruise, keep your eye out for 10-drink punch cards. They go for 80 bucks, which works out to 8 bucks a drink, which is a good deal because they apply to drinks up to 13 bucks a piece. That paid for the back half of our non-wine drinks, and a couple more glasses of wine in Vintages to boot.

Are you saying we can use Crown and Anchor B1G1 on bottles in Vintages or am I misunderstanding and it was just glasses you got?

So this was the only menu I could find at the Sunshine Bar in the Solarium. A smoothie menu? Otherwise I guess it's just the standard menu... But I'll ask the bartender when I go back for a refill :p

 

 

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thanks! When we sailed quantum they had healthy alcohol drinks at the "sunshine bar" like heart healthy sangria and margaritas made with blueberries, was hoping anthem might have the same thing but guess they may have gotten rid of them when the deal with Devin Alexander ended.

If you have a chance can you get a photo of the drink menu at the solarium bar? Thanks!

Thank you so much for your extremely helpful insight. When you are used to one type of cruise line...the transition is not always smooth.:( And just for the record.. [not you] but I NEVER said we wanted to NOT feed the kids or get rid of them or sit them in front of video games all day. However the more relaxed free style kids options on Disney are very inviting.. and you can plan your whole day around YOUR family's needs and wants VRS what the cruise line says you or your child MUST do in order to be allowed to participate. :confused: So we have pretty much determined that the 3 grand-kids will not be utilizing the kids club at all except maybe on one port day...which is fine, they enjoy more outdoor activities anyway... :). By the way which port days are they open?? Or is it everyday your in a port?

 

As for the nickel and dimming, I have read many reviews regarding this and I am preparing my self for this.. but thankfully I know before hand so I am ready...or else the shock factor would have be in full LOL

 

Am sad about no rotational dining but sounds like the WJ will be a godsend for the 3 year old and myself..because honestly 3 floors of BUSY/LOUD dinning isn't really my style either. :)

I wouldn't worry about the dining room being too loud, I think noise level in dining rooms on Disney wonder was comparable to noise in royal's main dining room. Enjoy your cruise! Nvm saw canceled

I heard Carnival is mostly a party ship. We want something in the middle of the road. We aren't obnoxious 20 year olds who just want to drink and party all the time but we want to have a fun time too without being annoyed. That's why we thought RC was kind of that happy medium.

 

 

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My husband and I are 30 & 29 respectively. We do not party all night but like to have options for things to do and Royal Caribbean has those options. Nightly game shows, karaoke, live music, DJs/dancing, dance lessons, wine tastings, cocktail mixing classes, piano bar, late night comedy, etc. Freedom is one of our favorite ships, like Allure too. I think you'd be happy with either. Also all the activities during the day are great- rock climbing, ice skating, mini golf, florider, etc.

Yes, you can book for one person it doesn't matter. It is 2 nights of specialty dining for $30/person, regardless how many people you have.

I think you'd have a great time on Liberty. The shows are incredible and not too long, so your child may enjoy as well. I don't have kids but know that on every sailing I see the kids club groups out and about doing activities and the kids seem very happy.

Also, it is nice to have skating, rock climbing, flow rider available depending how old your child is.

The specialty restaurants are nice and they now reduced the price to $8 for kids which I think is great if you want to eat together at one. Johnny Rocketts is great and entertaining and I think it's worth the $6 cover charge. But between the buffet, MDR and pizza place/cafe promenade you can also eat well all week without paying any extra if you choose.

I think the live music on royal is great, love Caribbean music by the pool and guitar player in the pub. And I know someone who cruises with their twins who both have autism and she praises RCL constantly for their understanding and making her vacation stress free, her kids are 6 years old. Also liberty will be receiving refurbishment soon so that's a nice bonus.

Hope you enjoy whatever you choose!

Our Liberty sailing is now $700 more than when we booked during BOGO 1/2 off back in the beginning of December.

Our Harmony sailing is now $350 more than when we booked which was the second day of the 30% off sale.

Our Anthem sailing is now $1242 more than when we booked which was when it was first released for sale a long while ago.

All of those increases add up to quite a bit of money that I could clearly use towards taking more cruises! Guess it pays to book early sometimes as last minute drops are never a guarantee. Unless of course you are very flexible with when/where you cruise, which unfortunately we are not since a lot of times that involves airfare to somewhere.

We feel most of the post-inaugural reviews have been way too kind. We're Diamond Plus and obviously love RCCL. It is well worth it for us to be loyal because of all the 'perks' we receive. We were on the inaugurals for Oasis and Allure and were blown away by the festivities, celebrations, daily goodies/gifts in our stateroom, etc (made you excited to go back to your stateroom to see what was there!).

Having said that...Quantum's inaugural was an absolute bomb! It was so underwhelming that it turned out to be the worst cruise we have ever had. The only thing we received that indicated 'inaugural' were 2 baseball caps and a paper certificate (on regular copy paper no less).

Apart from the crappy itinerary (although we picked the cruise for the ship, not ports) most all of the 'super smart' technology NEVER worked...even down to the elevators - waiting 4-5 minutes for an EMPTY elevator is unacceptable. The Royal IQ app was down the entire cruise. Only thing good were the RFID bands did work well.

We stood in some kind of line an average of 3 - 4.5 hours a day. There was a tremendous lack of communication, coordination and training; it seemed the entire crew were overworked and stressed because of this and it showed.

I have written to Crown and Anchor sharing our disappointment. Their response will determine whether we continue to sail with RCCL.

 

 

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I couldn't agree more, I feel bad for the staff, I think for the most part they are trying but didn't have enough time for training and to learn the new systems. Do you have the e-mail address to send a letter to crown and anchor? Thanks!

So we have cruised on Royal quite a few times on many different classes of their ships. This was the first time that we felt disappointed about wasting our money and vacation time to cruise.

We are a couple in our late 20's, we met on Enchantment of the Seas and got engaged last year on Allure, so cruising is very near and dear to our hearts. We really wanted to try out Quantum, as did my parents, so we decided on a Thanksgiving family cruise and were excited for the inaugural after hearing we would have special events, gifts, etc.

Boarding: We got there for our 10:45 slot and were checked in fairly efficiently, but the gangway wasn't open yet since cruisers from the prior ship had failed to get off on time or something. We got on about 11:30, so it wasn't the end of the world.

Cabin: We went to our cabin around 12:30 and it was ready. The cabin layout is very nice, we had the bed by the balcony, which seems like the better layout. There is plenty of storage and the bathroom seemed more spacious, I like the bar for shaving your legs they added in the shower. We had an obstructed balcony, which was perfect since the weather was cold and I think we spent about 20 minutes out there total.

Staff: It seems like they are friendly, but very tired and frustrated. Cosmo in Jamie's was great, as was our stateroom attendant Marta and Ritish who was our serve in the Grande.

Shows: We loved all the shows we saw (Mama Mia, Starwater, Sonic Odyssey) and thought they were as good as the shows on Allure and much better than the smaller ships with less of a show selection. The disappointing thing was that they advertised a bunch of other shows and parties that didn't exist on our voyage probably because they are still working on them; this includes the Mama Mia after party, Gatsby, and the adult cabaret night. We paid a premium to go on this sailing and are disappointed they didn't have these shows ready for us.

Ports: We did Disney and Atlantis, missed Coco-Cay because of the weather which isn't really RCCL's fault, so that was okay.

Onboard Activities: We did iFly, circus school trapeze, bumper cars, roller skating, the Quantum scavenger hunt, and the North Star- all activities were fun, didn't get to Flowrider because it was pretty chilly for the whole trip. The bionic bar is cool the first time you see it, but after that it just seems like a waste of space and never seemed crowded (usually 5-10 people there). I will say that if you don't like more active things, there wasn't much else offered to keep you occupied other than trivia and movies out by the pool (which again, it was freezing out, I don't want to be outside watching a movie at night when it's 40 degrees.)

Food: Dynamic Dining needs some improvement. On 3 out of 8 nights, we waited half an hour for a table even though we made reservations months ago. The food was very good, but not a lot of options on each menu, and they didn't have the simple taste alternative menus available yet. For specialty dining, we did Jamie's, Chops, & Devinly Decadence. All of these were very good, my favorite was probably Jamie's though- the homemade pasta is phenomenal, as are the risotto balls and meat plank. We also did Izumi for lunch which is very expensive for what you get, it cost us $13 for a shrimp roll and it wasn't that large. I feel like you are better off spending $15 and doing Jamie's for lunch. We did have some snacks at Michael's Genuine the first day and those were good, especially the potato chips and onion dip.

Issues Encountered:

We got onboard and immediately went to North Star which was opening at 12 pm. We got on after 20 minutes, only to then get stuck inside, they eventually had to manually pry open the doors. We then waited another 30 minutes while they had the mechanics looking at it, but nobody was giving us any information which was frustrating.

Later on in the cruise we went up at 8:30 am to get in line to get tickets for Northstar. This was the most ridiculous thing, it was about 45 degrees and windy and we were blocking the running track and had to wait there for over an hour just to get a ticket with a time to come back. If they are going to make people wait in line, it should really be inside somewhere and they should have more people giving out tickets so it doesn't take so long.

With the dining, we waited for tables even though we had reservations and at most of the venues, it took awhile to eat due to slow service and the time it takes for them to type everything into the tablet. The one waitress explained that any modification to an item, they have to type in word by word but each line only fits so many characters, so they have to keep adding new lines and such. It seems much slower with no assistant waiter and takes longer to get water, menus, bread, coffee, etc. It seemed like the restaurant that always had a line and was backed up was The Grande. The first night we were scheduled to eat there and it was so backed up that while waiting in line they offered for us to go to Coastal Kitchen or pay for us to go to Devinly Decadence, but we were all dressed up and didn't want to go somewhere else at that point. Also, they really need to make 2 lines, one for people who have reservations and one for people who don't.

Elevators were always an issue, it would randomly go on priority status and you couldn't get off and would end up on deck 2 when you were trying to go to deck 15, multiple elevators were always out of service. I don't mind walking, but we were on deck 6 and it was a long trek up to deck 14 for the solarium most mornings after waiting 10 minutes for an elevator and each one that stopped was already full.

There was no sailaway party when we left NJ and went under the bridge, very disappointed. I like when they have music and such and it seems to kick the cruise off with some energy. In general, there were no special activities or parties celebrating the inaugural, not even a glass of champagne. Some of the staff didn't even know and the one activity woman at trivia was arguing with people that it wasn't the inaugural and "I am always right, even when I am wrong, I am always right" I feel like that is a very poor attitude and not what you say to guests who were legitimately right and knew more than she did, but anyways...most of the staff was nice and she was an exception I guess.

There was a lack of activities during the day and night, there was hardly any game shows and the one or two that they did have had no participation because they were poorly advertised and nobody really knew they were happening. The Groovy Town disco party in the Music Hall was good. There was no Quest or Love & Marriage or Karaoke (there was Rock-A-Rokie one night but only 3 people showed up to sing). There were also no pool games like Belly Flop or Sexiest Man and the only time I saw the cruise director was on the TV.

The technology in general just doesn't work quite yet, they are still trying to work out kinks. Our TV account never worked, so we had to go to guest services to check on our account. The app worked sometimes, but never for messaging or calling people, just for viewing your calendar and even then, it was hit or miss with it working.

They were out of a lot of drinks, specifically wine. We paid for an ultimate package, but by day 3, they were out of the wines in the $12-$13 range, so I had to keep paying an extra $4/glass to get something decent, which is ridiculous after paying for the package. A few times we asked for bottled water the bar was out, so they said we had to "go find another bar that has it". I don't think I should spend my vacation tracking down a drink, you need to properly stock your bars.

I think the ice-cream station by the pool worked for an hour or two the whole cruise, so when it was working the line was crazy long, they need to add another one I guess. At one point, it actually caught on fire. I am not sure why there was such an issue with it, as I am pretty sure every other ship has them and usually there are no issues.

The ship is beautiful and elegant and as I have said, we did still enjoy our vacation (it's always better than being at work). But overall, we were disappointed given the amount of money we paid and the fact that so many things are not fully functional yet. Compared to all the other Royal cruises we have been on, it was our least favorite but cost us the most money. We have Anthem booked for a 10 night trip in April 2016 and will wait to see if reviews improve before making a choice of whether or not to keep our reservation.

I am curious what kind of snacks are available in diamond or concierge lounges. I know it can vary from ship to ship and wondered if it was anything unique on Quantum. I like when they have the chocolate covered strawberries!

Also, keep us updated on the nightly turndown gifts - please and thank you!

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Mission accomplished. Wonderful welcome at American icon and presented with this!

 

Now that's service!

That is great! Hope your wife and daughter are feeling better and the seas become smoother.

I'm sorry if this has been asked, has it been said how much the unlimited internet is per day?

It was $59.95 a day I believe. It was posted in a photo on social media site with info about other package options- I believe $30 for an hour, $189 for unlimited 1 device for length of cruise, $229 or $239 for 2 devices for unlimited for length of cruise

I loved the Mediterranean chicken salad.

The spinach and cheese dip is pretty good. We also sometimes order the fruit plate and cheese plate to enjoy with some wine while getting ready before dinner.

One time I was feeling a little cold coming on and ordered the chicken soup and that was pretty tasty as well.

38 days until Quantum, we booked so long ago, I can't believe it is almost here!

We booked cabin # 6305 on Liberty of the Seas for Dec. 2015. I have read and reread different threads about the Ben & Jerry's Suite. I even called RCI directly but they didn't have a clue. C&A rep told me there are no perks at all except for the "moo" motif throughout the cabin.

 

Some folks reported no Consierge Lounge Access on Liberty, others claimed they had access. Some claimed the noise from the crew service door was hardly annoying yet others claimed it was so loud it prevented them from sleeping and they would never book this cabin again.

 

So, my fellow Cruise Critic pals. If you've been in this cabin, besides the daily free ice cream, what's the real deal? I thought it would be beneficial to get all the info on one thread.

 

Thanking you in advance.

We had this cabin in February and neither of us slept the 5 nights we were onboard because of the service door. I guess I am somewhat of a light sleeper, but FI is not, and even he said it was hard to sleep with all the noise from the door banging. The skybridge didn't really matter to us, as it is not used late at night, just the pesky service door!

We did get 5 free Ben & Jerry ice creams each and access to the concierge lounge. Since we are diamond, the concierge lounge wasn't really a perk and didn't make up for the sleepless nights we endured. If you do keep the room, look for the Jamaica cow, we found him in a gift shop in Falmouth and added him to the collection of cow trinkets on the shelves in the room.

When we sailed on Allure in September, I upgraded to a W guarantee and no JS's were showing as available, we ended up getting assigned to a Grand Suite, so for us it turned out to be well worth it. Of course, we would have understood if we only ended up with a JS as that is the minimum guaranteed.

The following ships do not have Summer 2015 itineraries released:

Liberty, Mariner, Navigator, Voyager, Legend and Quantum

 

These need to cover the ports of Galveston and NOLA and they will need to cover the Canada/New England routes along with potentially Bermuda in addition to the Grandeur.

 

What are the most likely scenarios?

When we were on Liberty last month the captain and loyalty person both told us Liberty was moving to Galveston permanently; not sure if anyone already knew that or this has been previously mentioned.

I for one am thrilled! I wouldn't have minded Jersey Boys, but I've seen Mama Mia and love Abba so I'm happy with it.

Mama Mia! Yea!!!0

With my newly acquired Emerald discount the DO's are actually cheaper than the insides on a few of the 10-12 nighters... For $20 less I'll take an obstructed balcony... 25...50...75% actually I highly doubt the 75% unless the lifeboat is directly outside the door and you have to lay on the balcony to see under it ;)

 

We're "inside people" and just did 13 nights in one 2 wks ago without issue but for less $$ I'll take one for the team and go in a DO lol

 

 

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For the inaugural sailing that we booked, it was $100 cheaper with our diamond discount to do a balcony over an inside or oceanview. Since it was cheaper, we figured we don't mind if it is obstructed. And like someone else mentioned, I figured it's mostly if your looking down at the water, not in the distance. We mostly like it to get some photos of port while we are docked and to see the sunset, so I don't think the obstruction will prevent any of that.

I agree, if it was 75% overall, the lifeboat would pretty much have to be level next to your balcony, not below you!