Our Quantum Experience

[TravelinGert]

Quantum of the Seas was my first ever cruise and my husband's first cruise as an adult. I suppose a true report of our experience has to start with the adventures we had getting to the ship. Our trip from London was via private hire car and included stops at the Roman Baths at Bath and Stonehenge.

 

We spent the night before the cruise at the Holiday Inn just about a block from the cruise dock. The hotel itself was sufficient but not fancy.

 

There was one issue we wished we'd heard about prior to our stay. The hotel has very limited elevator space, in the form of 2 very tiny elevators. You will be glad if you get up early, pack up, and take your luggage down to breakfast with you. Those of us unaware of this issue had to make the choice either to wait and wait for a chance to get on an elevator heading up to go down, or walk down however many flights of stairs. Quite a choice when you're on the sixth floor!

 

On the other hand, the walk from the hotel to the cruise port is very short. Although our sea pass had a time listed for boarding, I had seen a blog report on the new Royal boarding experience which said they were letting people start the boarding process early. With us being complete newbies, it seemed like a good idea to at least get our luggage checked in early so we'd have time to figure out where we should be before our appointed time.

 

When we got over to the cruise terminal around 11:10 am, we found they were already experiencing glitches. Our luggage was checked in by a luggage handler who'd been roped in as a luggage check agent. It seemed rather inefficient. They'd roped in three of the handlers and luggage was piling up as a result of the shortage of handlers.

 

The handlers had been given handfuls of luggage tags with the RFID to place on luggage without pre-supplied RFID tagging. This appeared to apply to most everyone. During our time in line waiting to turn in luggage, we never saw any with pre-supplied tags. We waited in line to hand in our luggage about ten minutes, a wait which got much longer behind us because we arrived just before the Royal coaches full of passengers.

 

We weren't surprised when we were told the luggage tracking wasn't working as the manual RFID tags were not recorded into the system anywhere. In fact, our luggage handler was the only one to immediately grasp the use of the mini tags with matching information to the tags placed on luggage. The other two handlers walked over as he was sticking the matching stickers to our boarding passes and said "Are we supposed to be doing that?" as each displayed a fistful they hadn't given to bag owners. Oops!

 

After we'd turned in our luggage, we entered the terminal and joined a line forming immediately within the main doors. Two gentlemen were showing their boarding documents to a RCI agent with an iPad who was furiously attempting to bring up anything on the pad. Eventually she was joined by a manager and an IT specialist. With their help, she eventually re-took their pictures and the gentlemen were directed to the security line.

 

When it was our turn, she was luckily able to immediately bring up everything but our pre-supplied pictures. The IT specialist said the problem was the spotty WiFi constantly dropping and suggested retakes. I was a tad disappointed. I had been told our pictures would be on our on board passes, so had taken great pains with my appearance in my original shots. The ship was calling, though, so we quickly lined up for photos. So much for a white background, though, as the agent snapped our shots against a background of other passengers lined up for security. After that our sea passes were stamped and we were directed to security.

 

From there we joined the security line just as things got moving. We were told by others waiting ahead of us they'd had some sort of trouble getting one of the units started up. I can only say it was one of the fastest shuffles through security I've ever experienced.

 

Within minutes of joining the line, we were inside a huge room filled with confused people. There were no signs of any helpful sort anywhere. No one was directing passengers that we could see. We could see doors presumably for people to go through to mount escalators up to boarding level with no one going though.

 

Some people were getting yellow cards with the number 15 from a woman in an RCI blue suit while we were getting ourselves back in order aftergoing through security, but she squeezed into a gap between people lined up to speak to agents with iPads and disappeared just before we could go speak with her.

 

I looked around and spotted a group of managerial types lurking in a little alcove out of sight of those entering the area made by some sort of beam wall. One of them looked tall enough to spot number chick if necessary, so I determined to speak with him. I showed him our stamped passes and asked did we need a number from the chick who had disappeared and if so did we need to chase her down through the crowd. He said no, and directed us to follow him. We were escorted straight to the escalators through the doors at the far end.

 

From there we pretty much walked right on the ship, barely even stopping for them to scan the bar code on our sea passes. The guy who scanned our passes told us our floor was delayed and we should wait until 1 pm to go to our rooms. By 11:45 am we were seated in Vintages with a glass of celebratory wine.

[TravelinGert]

I hope that first posting wasn't too long. I really tend to over-explain because that's expected of me at work. I apologize if it was overly verbose. I will be adding on at least one adventure per day as I have time until I've told the story of our Quantum of the Seas Nov 2 transatlantic sailing.

Edited December 7, 2014 by TravelinGert

[maureencruiser]

Long, but not overly so. You used paragraphs, not one giant wall of text, so, you are way ahead of a lot of posters here. I hope you had a wonderful cruise.

[retire2cruise55]

Following....Thank you for sharing.

[drarill]

Great start... looking forward to the rest of your report.:)

[TravelinGert]

Vintages turned out to be pretty nice. We got to taste test some of the wines on the first day, since it was the inaugural. They've got a white wine I wish I had gotten the name of. I will try to figure out how to post some of our pictures from the first day in my next posting.

 

After we got glasses of wine at Vintages, we walked around trying to take picture of AllTheThings! Quantum is just an amazingly beautiful ship with all sorts of awesome touches everywhere you look. We were able to tiptoe into each of the restaurants, except Wonderland, and take a few pictures. They may have allowed us into Wonderland, but we never made it up there that day.

 

Eventually they started calling us to Muster Drill. We hustled down and they checked us in by scanning our cards. Our Muster Station was sort of in the middle of the shopping area of the ship and we were able to get pizza to eat while we listened. The pizza in Sorentos was pretty tasty that day. On one of the other days I wasn't as happy with it, but maybe that was due to the water being so rough causing the ship to rock heavily.

 

After Muster Drill we were supposed to join the Cruise Critic Sail Away party, so we went up to the top deck looking for it. I saw the pictures later and I have no idea how we missed it, but we didn't find it. I think we must have walked through the area where they gathered too early. Instead, we went to the Solarium and had seats as far forward on the ship as passengers can get. We had a great view of the ship casting off and leaving the pier.

 

Speaking of the Solarium, we were really impressed with how pretty it was. It has pools cascading down and a little bar at the back where you enter. It was getting fairly late by cast off and we got to see the lights in the harbor so that was pretty. I doubt this will be the case on other cruises, but on our cruise the bar by the pool was often really empty. The bartenders seemed happy to actually have someone visit a couple of times we were in there, and gave us lots of fruit flourishes after we admitted we really enjoy that.

 

Eventually it was time to go see the show in Two70. The show we saw was called Starwater. It was beyond amazing! Beautiful costumes, amazing feats of acrobatics, and wow! Can they sing!

 

We were so happy we'd booked the first night because there were plenty of seats and it was very comfortable. After they had to cancel a few shows due to the weather making the boat rock so much, the later shows were pretty crowded. I would say book stuff in Two70 because it is a smaller venue. That was the advice we'd gotten from GS the first day we called in to book entertainment and it was really good advice!

 

After the show in Two70 we had dinner at the American Icon Grill. I don't know what they were thinking, but our waiter had a group of tables on one side of a sort of part wall, and us in the very corner pretty much hidden from sight by the part wall. All the other table back there had another staff member waiting on them working from a server station with a good vantage point and seemed to get waited on fine.

 

We had to search for our waiter every time we wanted a refill or the next course. We later heard they also had computer troubles which also caused some of the delays. A lot of people were pretty displeased with American Icon that night.

 

By the time dinner was over, we were pretty tired. We flew over two weeks early and spent the time in Paris and London. By the time we got to Southampton, we had to do laundry. We didn't get to the Holiday Inn until our roll call's pre-cruise party was in full swing. That meant we had to get up early the morning of the cruise to be at the laundry mat when it opened at 7am. We didn't know how many others would be trying to do laundry.

 

By the way, if anyone wants to know, Foyes Corner Laundrette in Southampton was nice and clean. It was raining when we left the hotel, so we used a cab that happened to be outside. I think we paid 4 pounds out and the driver offered to stop back by if he passed again. He ended up pulling up just as we were leaving so it worked out well. The washers are the larger front loaders mainly and I think we paid 3 pounds each for three washers and then the dryers took around a pound to dry each of them.

 

Our cabin was an Oceanview and it was just gorgeous. We had the beds pushed to form a king, and there was still plenty of room to walk around it. The sofa was very comfortable with a nice view of the TV or out the window.

 

I really couldn't believe the room was so generously sized with so much storage space we ran out of stuff before we ran out of places to put it. I was so happy I had read to store luggage under the bed here on CC. If we'd had smaller carry on bags, they would have fit in the cabinet over the bed with ease.

 

As it was, we just stored all the towel animals up there and brought them out for a flourish at the finale, so to speak. We lined them on the bed and took pictures, and left them holding the tip envelope for our room steward. The first night he made us a sleeping bunny and it was waiting when we got back to the room after dinner.

[TravelinGert]

Almost forgot to say we had a quick tour of the spa on our first day before muster drill. The spa is really pretty with big windows for a great view. There are also awesome views out the windows in the gym, and they have it set up so you can look out as you work out, for the most part. Makes it awfully nice.

 

If you have any nail services done, ask for the pretty woman from Jamaica. I wish I had remembered to record her name so I would remember it, but she was just the sweetest thing, and she told me all sorts of wonderful hints about stuff to do and see on the ship while she did my nails.

[kftw]

Enjoying your review. Looking forward to more.

[kmurph22]

Hi Gertie!

 

We were on the cruise with you! (Kathy & Scott)

 

Loving your review, keep going! I hope you took advantage of the $0 wine machines in Vintages on the first day - and actually throughout the cruise if you could find one that was full!

 

I think we arrived at the port a little before you - and we were one of the people who didn't have our tags correctly matched - because my suitcase didn't come until noon on Day 2 :O

Edited December 11, 2014 by kmurph22

[DanceGrandma]

Interesting review. Subscribing

[TravelinGert]

Hi Gertie!

 

We were on the cruise with you! (Kathy & Scott)

 

Loving your review, keep going! I hope you took advantage of the $0 wine machines in Vintages on the first day - and actually throughout the cruise if you could find one that was full!

 

I think we arrived at the port a little before you - and we were one of the people who didn't have our tags correctly matched - because my suitcase didn't come until noon on Day 2 :O

 

Wow day 2? I'd have been freaking out! Our bags showed up around 1:30 in the afternoon.

 

We loved the $0 wine at Vintages! That first day we'd explore until we had another empty glass emergency requiring another pass by Vintages. Probably why we didn't make it up to Wonderland that day. :o :D

[TravelinGert]

These are the best hints we can think of for future Quantum Cruisers:

 

Line up early for the bumper cars. If you ask politely, staff will tell you which opening to line up at.

 

Be sure to go to the stairway that turns back toward the atrium with the butterflies up on the top interior deck (I think it was the 16th) and check out that first landing! ;)

[wolfcathorse]

funny, RCI sold me the 11-23 sailing as the inaugural sailing. You were on the maiden voyage. At the captains corner both Capt Ban and the Hotel Director said the 11-23 sailing was the official inaugural because we actually had ports of call after the naming ceremony. I have a certificate that says so.

Edited December 12, 2014 by wolfcathorse

[Elizanessie]

funny, RCI sold me the 11-23 sailing as the inaugural sailing. You were on the maiden voyage. At the captains corner both Capt Ban and the Hotel Director said the 11-23 sailing was the official inaugural because we actually had ports of call after the naming ceremony. I have a certificate that says so.

 

Gertie was Quantum's first cruise so she probably wouldn't be aware really of how Maiden and Inaugural are different...actually a lot of people at RCCL don't even know the difference.

Our certificates say Maiden Transatlantic Voyage :D

 

Great review Gertie, it is great to see things through a newbie's very excited eyes :D

 

You are such a bundle of fun and I can't wait to cruise with you again next year :D

[Elizanessie]

Gertie was Quantum's first cruise so she probably wouldn't be aware really of how Maiden and Inaugural are different...actually a lot of people at RCCL don't even know the difference.

Our certificates say Maiden Transatlantic Voyage :D

 

Great review Gertie, it is great to see things through a newbie's very excited eyes :D

 

You are such a bundle of fun and I can't wait to cruise with you again next year :D

 

LOL ok I so need a lemon drop :o

 

I meant to say Quantum was Gertie's first cruise LOL

[cruiselife4me]

Great start!!!

[cookmg40]

Great review so far! Looking forward to more.

 

How exciting for your first cruise to be a maiden voyage! ;)