mom & Barbara by the Quantum in Juneau
When my sister casually mentioned that my mother had once sadly said she thought she’d never go on another cruise I decided that a cruise would make the perfect Christmas gift. Sailing along with my sisters as well made 4 of us for the cruise. While two cabins for two would have been nice, the price of the cruise drops for extra people beyond 2 in the same cabin, plus at the time of booking I wasn’t sure whether one of the sisters would be able to come or not so it had to be a cabin for 3 or 4. The other advantage of having everyone in the same cabin is that if you buy a photo package it will cover everyone in the cabin in one package. When sailing with my husband we avoid photographers like the plague, but when sailing with my sisters we’ve always bought a digital photo package. As it turned out the sister I wasn’t sure would come ended up inviting her two daughters as well, but the nieces had their own cabin that they booked for themselves long after the booking for this one was done.
cabin on Quantum of the Seas
There weren’t a whole lot of options for a 4-person ocean view cabin and the balcony cabins were a bit too pricey so I went with the best location available from the couple options we had. Four person cabins on the Quantum of the Seas are scarce to begin with and of course our choices were limited to any that weren’t already booked. We went with one fairly close to a public restroom, which was likely to be a necessity when booking 4 people into a one-bathroom cabin. It was a major reason for choosing that particular cabin. Looking at the deck plan pre-cruise it looked like that bathroom was just a short distance down the hallway from our room.
casino on Quantum
Unfortunately that particular public restroom turned out not to be in a hallway near the elevators like nearly every public restroom on nearly every cruise ship – including this one. No, that restroom was in the casino. A casino which according to both the app and the daily newsletter onboard should have been smoke-free as both proclaimed smoking was not allowed in any indoor areas of the ship, yet in reality that only applied to sailings out of Australia. Unlike Explorer of the Seas, the first Royal Caribbean ship I ever sailed on, which actually was totally smoke-free inside and had been for a couple years when we sailed on it. Luckily the next two decks above us both had normal restrooms near the stairways and elevators which were not too far away so there were still pretty convenient restrooms nearby – and the one in the casino was OK for early mornings when there was nobody in there and the ventilation system had had all night to clear the air.
2 of 4 storage cubbies
The room did have lots of storage space with 4 large cubbies above the beds and couch (which was also a bed). It also had 2 closets and lots of drawers. There was extra bedding stored under the beds even when the couch bed was made up, but we still found room under there for all our luggage. The bathroom had the usual 3 shelves above the counter so space in there was a bit tight for 4 women and nobody had room to store all their products there. Luckily we had all brought our own shampoo and conditioner because there was just that awful all-in-on garbage in the shower. The shower also lacked the usual clothesline that you can pull across so it was a good thing I brought some or we would have had nowhere to hang wet swimsuits. The usual line across the shower never would have held 4, but it would certainly have helped make the extra line less crowded.
it’s sort of a trundle bed except both sides are the same height
Pre-cruise we wondered if the 4-person room would have 2 beds and 2 bunks or 2 beds, 1 bunk, and 1 couch bed, but neither were right. It just had an extra flap that pulled out of the couch turning it into a small double bed. They did at least put 2 separate quilts folded in half something like a sleeping bag for a bit of separation between people, but definitely not what we expected at all. According to our steward that ship did not have any bunks so a different cabin would not have changed that. We decided pre-cruise that mom and Linda got the beds and Barbara and I would have whatever the alternative sleeping places were so we shared the couch bed. She had the couch part and I had the pull-out. Which worked out well because she managed to get in and out without crawling over me even though there wasn’t much space for her to do that. It looked like it might be crowded, but it really wasn’t. Unlike my bedhog dog at home, we each stayed on our own side. It was actually quite comfortable.
teapot with added cups
A teapot in the cabin was a nice surprise, though we had to find our own tea for it from other places like the buffet and promenade café. Like the rest of the things in the room, it was only set for 2 and we had to bring in cups from elsewhere to get any more. Not sure if our steward was new and poorly trained, overworked without enough time to do a thorough job, or just had a hard time finding supplies, but it was difficult to get much more of anything. He did bring bath towels enough for 4, but never enough washcloths, hand towels, or cups. He brought lots of hangers when we asked for extra, but it took a few days to get bathrobes. At least tea and spare cups were easy to find elsewhere on the ship.
Returning to the cabin after it had been cleaned following our first night there we were surprised to see the couch bed had not been folded back up. We initially thought it was because the steward was lazy, or perhaps Barbara said she hadn’t understood something he’d asked her and said it was OK to leave it, but that turned out not to be the case.
the steward left us a different towel animal every day
Apparently now that Royal has gone to one daily cleaning some idiot in corporate in all their “wisdom” thinks it is a good idea to make their guests live in cramped quarters with the bed folded out all the time leaving less than a foot of space between that and the drawers, no real access to the window, and no couch to sit on because the stewards aren’t supposed to go into the cabin a second time that day. So really throwing away dollars to save pennies because people aren’t so likely to book another cruise on that line if their living arrangement is that cramped just because corporate doesn’t want a steward to take a couple minutes to make them comfortable. Obviously whoever made that decision has never stayed in one of those cabins with more than two people. You can’t even fully open the refrigerator or drawers in the desk or use the desk or the chair under it with the bed out. Not to mention if people don’t know it’s a corporate thing they will just think their steward is lazy and the poor stewards will lose the all the tips they might have otherwise gotten from people with more than two in a cabin.
we left the steward a towel owl along with his tip
Luckily our steward did make the extra effort to put the bed up in the morning and down at night after that first day even though he wasn’t supposed to. We tipped him well for it. People in those cabins may not dish out the big bucks that suite guests pay, but still should get to enjoy the maximum space the cabin they did pay for allows. Hopefully corporate has gotten a significant enough number of complaints in the post-cruise surveys to come to their senses by now.
formal night photo of the 4 of us
Sometimes 3 of the 4 people had somewhere to go and something to do while the 4th one didn’t. Which always resulted in putting that 4th person into WOO-HOO I can take a shower without bothering anyone else mode rather than them feeling left out of whatever the others were doing. Regardless of who the 4th person was we all felt that way and we all took advantage of the empty room whenever the chance arrived.
Other than not wanting to hog the bathroom for showers when others were in the room when that could be avoided we didn’t feel too crowded with the four of us in there, but if the bed had been pulled out all day we sure would have. Even if there was only one or two people in the room it would be crowded with the couch bed set up the whole time.
mirror over the desk
If we all needed to get ready to go to dinner or out into a port or something at the same time we managed without getting into each other’s way too much, though sometimes one person had to move aside for another to go by or to get something from a drawer or closet. Mostly mom & Linda since the closets were in their area as were their drawers, while other than our closet stuff Barbara & I had everything in the drawers by the couch bed or the cubbies above the couch and none of mom or Linda’s things were in our area. It definitely helped for everyone getting ready at once that there were a couple of mirrors out in the room as well as the one in the bathroom.
it never hurts to have extra space to plug stuff in
Some of the older cruise ships just had one outlet and no USB ports, but now they tend to have more. Some definitely have more than others. It still doesn’t hurt to bring something along that gives you more options for charging things, especially when there are multiple people in the room. Quantum had 2 outlets by the desk, which was increased with the addition of my 3-outlet plug, of which one was used to plug in a clock that has 2 USB ports.
The bathroom had a shelf under the sink that didn’t have anything stored on it, which comes in handy for stashing clothes and whatever else might be needed for a quick getaway in the morning without disturbing anyone else too much if you’re the sort of person who tends to wake up earlier than the others and want to go prowl around the ship for awhile. Early mornings are a good time to take ship photos with nobody in them, or to explore the ship undisturbed, or just go out for an early morning walk.
4 happy cruisers
If we had spent the whole cruise in the cabin it might have felt crowded sometimes, but since we were mostly out and about in the daytime and just in there at night or in between doing other things it all worked out fine. Unless we all needed to get ready to go somewhere together at the same time we were rarely all in there at once during the daytime. Even when we all went out to the ports together we didn’t all return at once. Linda and sometimes Barbara liked to browse the shops after we were done with whatever else we did in port, where mom and I didn’t really care to spend a long time shopping.
Cruise Stories 