Quantum of the Seas in Icy Strait Point

On every cruise there are always things to like and dislike about any ship. Of course these things are all a matter of opinion where one person’s biggest dislike could be another person’s favorite thing. Some things are generally liked or disliked by most people onboard. While we have enjoyed every cruise we’ve taken, every ship does have its high points and low points. These are entirely my opinion of the things I liked and disliked about Quantum of the Seas.

Hits

North Star nearly up

The North Star is a unique feature of Royal Caribbean’s Quantum Class ships. This pod reminiscent of one pod of a giant Ferris Wheel provides the best views at sea. Reservations are required, but the cost is pretty low. Only a small group of people go up at any one time. The length of time spent above the ship varies with different booking options. During the course of the ride the pod extends over each side of the ship as well as straight up to the top of the giant metal arm that supports it so you get a variety of different views looking down on the ship as well as at the surrounding area.

bumper cars at the SeaPlex

The SeaPlex is another unique feature of the Quantum Class ships. So much more than a standard sports court, this area can be transformed for quite a variety of activities varying from sports tournaments to lasar tag to bumper cars. When not in use, the bumper cars park along the edge of the area alongside the SeaPlex court, but when it is bumper car time they move into the sports court, which has more room to drive them around than often found in bumper cars at carnival rides. It’s lots of fun.

solarium pools

Our favorite hangout on any Royal Caribbean or Celebrity ship is always the solarium. On Quantum the solarium had three levels with cascading pools going from one to the next. The top level had the most area with deck chairs lining both sides as well as the bow area. This level also had the Solarium Bistro and the solarium’s bar. The lower levels went down the bow area with deck chairs next to the pool on a couple levels and hot tubs on either side of the bottom pool. Below that deck chairs lined a floor to ceiling window at the front of the ship with the top of the window going all the way up from the top level of the solarium. Those were the favorite chairs of most people.

No saving deck chairs!

Deck chairs both in the solarium and on the outside decks had no seat saving signs right on the chairs every few chairs or so, which worked a whole lot better than just a sign as you enter the area as found on most ships. This meant there were actually chairs available for use rather than mostly occupied by towels with no people anywhere in the vicinity as is often found on ships where a lot of selfish people stake out chairs all day long in case they might want to use them at some point, but spend very little time actually in them.

gluten free section at the buffet

Quantum had a gluten free section in the buffet, which was nice to see. Wonder of the Seas did not so we were glad to see that it had just been that one ship and not that Royal Caribbean had gotten rid of the gluten free section in the buffet entirely.

boarding photo

After a couple not so good boarding experiences on previous Royal Caribbean cruises, we were quite pleased with the easy boarding on Quantum. We actually haven’t ever had a bad boarding experience in Seattle, but have had several at various ports in Florida. We got right inside without having to wait in line outside at all, and right through the check-in process without a hitch. The ship hadn’t quite started boarding yet once we were in, but there were plenty of chairs for anyone who wanted to sit and the line that had formed by the door in anticipation of boarding starting soon moved along quickly once the door opened.

Royal’s App is better organized and easier to use than what some of the other cruise lines have. Both pre-cruise and onboard it has a lot of useful features.

Bionic Bar with robot bartenders

Like all cruise ships, Quantum has lots of bars. It’s always fun to watch the robots at Royal’s Bionic Bar even if you don’t buy anything. The solarium bar is pretty handy for people lounging there. (As are all the other bars for people in other areas of the ship.)

iFLY

Besides Royal’s standard fun things like flowriders, rock climbing walls, and ice skating arenas, the Quantum class ships have several unique things of their own. In addition to the ones mentioned earlier, it also has an iFLY skydiving simulator. Reservations are of course required and there is a nominal fee for it, but the price is a whole lot less than going to an iFLY on land. The groups for this activity are very small and each person gets a couple individual sessions with an instructor in the iFLY wind tunnel.

two70

The other unique venue on Quantum class ships is two70, so named for the 270° view from its floor to ceiling windows. The ship’s featured show is held there and the space is used for other things as well. When not in use it’s a good place to get a view from the back of the ship in the daytime.

owl in an elevator

The elevators on Quantum were a bit of a source of entertainment in themselves. There were some glass elevators, though their view was to the inside rather than outside of the ship, but the ones that didn’t have glass at the back each had a different animal.

SeaPlex Dog House hot dog stand

Besides the dining room and buffet, Quantum had lots of other complimentary food options. There were some pay-extra places too, but with so many free options that really wasn’t a necessity unless someone wanted to go to one of the specialty places. Free options included pizza, a couple cafes, hot dogs, the solarium bistro, and sometimes a pop-up ice cream stand or hamburger grill on the pool deck.

teapot in the cabin

Even though we had 4 people in one cabin, there was a lot to like about it. It was decent sized. It had lots of storage space and several outlets and USB ports. There was a teapot in the cabin, something I’d only previously seen on a British ship (P&O Arcadia). The crew was friendly and helpful. Our steward went above and beyond the call of duty by making the extra bed back into a couch in the morning and setting it up as a bed at night even though corporate wanted to cut corners by not allowing stewards into the cabins a second time in the day since they have cut cleanings to once daily. Having that bed out all day would have rendered half of the cabin unusable so we greatly appreciated our steward.

Misses

stairway from the casino to the promenade

In spite of both the app and their daily newsletter stating that there was no indoor smoking on that ship, they allowed smoking in the casino. Besides being open on both ends, it had a stairway directly onto the promenade deck. When it was too busy for the ventilation system to keep up with it smoke spewed out into other areas of the ship in several directions. While it would be best if they lived up to what they advertised, at the very least they should add only when sailing in Australia to the bit that says no inside smoking so people wouldn’t think they are booking a non-smoking ship when they’re not.

disgusting smoke trail

The casino wasn’t the only thing spewing smoke on this ship. One day the smokestack left a trail of thick brown smoke for miles behind it, making it look as if there was a huge forest fire where it hit shore. I’d never seen a cruise ship smoke like that before. Sometimes there’s thin wisps of black smoke that quickly dissipates, but that thick brown smoke trail was not normal. At the time I was hoping it wasn’t normal for this ship, but it seems to be an issue with this ship class sometimes. One time my husband was driving through Port Angeles when Quantum’s sister ship Ovation of the Seas was in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was spewing so much brown smoke he could hardly see the road. Another time when I was hiking on the bluff on the Washington side of the strait while Ovation was in the area I could see across the strait that the entire south end of Vancouver Island was engulfed in a toxic-looking brown cloud of smoke. These ships don’t smoke like that all the time, but often enough that they should be pulled from service and sent somewhere for repairs or pollution controls. Nobody should be allowed to pollute like that no matter who they are. Royal Caribbean definitely deserves a fine for that amount of pollution, especially since it was not a one time or even one ship thing. Smoke was definitely the biggest miss on this ship, both from people smoking in the casino and from the ship’s smokestack.

Sumdum Glacier

We’ve been on a couple cruises that were scheduled for Tracy Arm and went down Endicott Arm instead, both of which made it down to Dawes Glacier at the end. This one was scheduled for Endicott arm, but turned around long before reaching the glacier, yet made no announcements of any sort to let people know that. Everyone missed out on Dawes Glacier since the ship turned early. We were quite lucky that we just happened to be looking out on the right side at the right time to see the far less impressive Sumdum Glacier because they didn’t say anything about sailing past that one either. Most people probably didn’t see a glacier at all since there aren’t any others in Endicott Arm. We thought we were heading into Endicott Arm rather than out until we saw Sumdum Glacier on the wrong side of the ship for where it would be if we were heading in, after which Mel said she’d been walking on the outside deck early that morning and the ship did a 180. Being a newbie to cruising she didn’t realize at the time that meant we were not going to the glacier so she hadn’t said anything before we saw Sumdum glacier on the wrong side. It would have been nice if someone from the ship had bothered to clue people in so they weren’t waiting to see a glacier they were never going to get to.

Parliament buildings by Victoria’s inner harbor – where cruise ships never go

Dawes Glacier wasn’t the only thing we missed on this cruise. It didn’t make it to port in Victoria either. I’d never heard of a ship not going to Victoria before. That’s their foreign port requirement for complying with the Jones Act for ships sailing to Alaska from Seattle. Granted there were waves splashing over top of the pilot boat when he came aboard, but he managed to make it onto the ship. Right at the time people were gathering at the meeting places for excursions they announced that the captain and pilot had decided it wasn’t safe to dock- just as we sailed past Victoria for the second time looking at a Norwegian ship already docked there. Perhaps this ship is just too big for Alaska cruises.

ships in Sitka (Quantum of the Seas and Westerdam)

On most cruises there’s at least one photographer outside of the ship at each port stop – preferably out of the way of the gangway. There were no port photos from outside of the ship at any of the ports on this cruise. We did see one on the dock in Sitka, but they were from the Westerdam which was docked next to us and not from our ship. The closest we came to a port photo on this cruise was someone in a bear suit by the buffet at Icy Strait Point.

it’s sort of a trundle bed except both sides are the same height

Corporate is going a bit too far on cost cutting by not wanting stewards to put the extra bed up and down when more than 2 people are in a room. Having that bed out all day would make the room unlivable with barely any access to some of the drawers, the fridge, and the desk. It’s not possible to fully open any of them with the bed out, or to sit at the desk or get the chair out from under it. The amount of space left with the bed out all day would be crowded with just one or two people in the room, let alone 4. Whoever made the decision that stewards can’t go into the cabins more than once per day should try sailing in one of those rooms with 4 people and the bed out all day and see how they like it. They will likely lose dollars to save pennies with the lack of re-bookings by anyone whose steward didn’t take a minute to put the bed up and down for them regardless of what corporate says. (It takes less than a minute to fold the bed up and put it away so if you add time for coming into the room and going back out it might take 2-3 minutes tops of a steward’s time each evening to make the difference between a miserable crowded room and a nice one.) Luckily our steward did put the bed up for us in the morning and back out at night even though he wasn’t supposed to. The first time it was left out we couldn’t find him and another steward showed us how to stow the bed out of the way so we would have done it ourselves if he hadn’t. The trick to it was that there is no trick to it – you just manually push the trundle part of the bed down.

There was also no clothesline in the cabin shower, which is crazy on a cruise ship because even if people never wash a thing they are most likely going to have wet swimming suits that need to hang up somewhere to dry. Even when cruising to cold places where you won’t be swimming from shore, people still use the pools and hot tubs on the ship.

view from the ZipRider on the way down

The shore excursions department did a horrible job on organizing the first zipline group of the day at Icy Strait Point. Instead of getting us out the gangway first so we could get up the mountain before the crowd and check in on time, they had us meet onboard and didn’t let us out until the time we were supposed to be already on the zipline, after which we had to make our own way to the top of the mountain in the crowd of people who had already gotten off the ship. Obviously we were very late and the people onshore who exchanged tickets for wristbands were not pleased when we came in to exchange ours for a time slot long since passed. Luckily the people at the top of the mountain running the ZipRider were not upset about it and let us go even though our time slot was long gone.

solarium bar

I only looked for a drink once during the cruise and couldn’t find a bar that could make a mango daiquiri. I’ve had them on Royal before, but maybe they only stock mango on Caribbean cruises. They had strawberry daquiris, but that wasn’t what I wanted. The solarium bar couldn’t even manage a pina colada as they’d run out of the ingredients for that. The pool bar, which is the next-closest to the solarium, made a pina colada for me, but they didn’t have the ingredients for a mango daiquiri either.

Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas

The one thing I look for at the gift shop on every cruise is a Christmas tree ornament ship model of whatever ship I’m on. There were no ship model Christmas tree ornaments available on this cruise. That’s not all that surprising since they generally only stock them at Christmastime, but stupid on their part since anyone who collects those would buy one regardless of the time of year.

wall magnets

Normally there’s a door sign – or on Royal the smarter choice of a magnet – that has whatever their version of do not disturb is on one side and room available for cleaning on the other. People can leave that on the door when they either don’t want to be bothered or to let the steward know they are out and about and want the room cleaned. This room had a door magnet, but it was one-sided for do not disturb only. I think it said something like sleeping off the adventure. There was nothing to let the steward know when the room was available for cleaning. We’d all leave for breakfast and whatever else people had to do in the morning, but with 4 people someone often would duck into the room for something or other, and if the steward saw them go in, but they came out while he was in a different room he wouldn’t know ours was open for cleaning. With 4 people coming and going at various times even a brief duck into the room might prevent it from getting cleaned. Some days it wasn’t even done by lunchtime until I got the bright idea to write my own note and hang it on the door with one of the magnets I always bring for keeping paperwork organized on the cabin wall. Once I thought of that the room was always clean by the time we got back from breakfast which it never had been before, making the need for the two-sided magnet quite obvious.

standard poses

When sailing with my sisters we always get a photo package. There were lots of photo stands around the ship each evening, but all of the photographers always wanted people to do the same few poses over and over and over again. After a few days that gets really boring, plus you don’t want all the photos to be the same thing with a different background. They’re probably all told to do those poses, but allowing them a bit more creativity would certainly make for far better photo packages. If asked for other poses some of them looked delighted like they were just as bored of the standard poses as we were and came up with all sorts of creative things, but others act like it’s a huge imposition to deviate at all.

While Royal’s app is a lot better than some other cruise lines, it did have one major fault. There was no alert for incoming messages on phones. We didn’t all have the same brand of phone either so that seemed to be all phones. Melissa had an apple watch and she got alerts for new messages, but she was the only one. Some of us have iPhones so that didn’t hold true for all apple devices, just the watch. If you happened to look for messages in the app there would be a red dot for anything new, but unless they were waiting for a reply or something had just happened that everyone would be trying to contact each other about nobody was constantly looking for messages so some things got missed for not finding someone else’s message until it was too late and the activity they were asking about was already over.

Sorrentos and the promenade cafe

While it was nice to see a gluten free section in the buffet, there were no gluten free options at the promenade café and only plain cheese gluten free pizza available at Sorrento’s. This was a bit of a disappointment since some of the other Royal ships we’ve been on did have gluten free snacks at the cafe and any toppings you want on the gluten free pizza.

Quantum’s painted line top-deck track

The outside promenade deck did not go all the way around the ship which is always a disappointment to me. Promenade decks that circle the entire ship are a great place to walk or run, but the ridiculous top deck tracks that are really just a painted line in a high-traffic area are in my opinion useless. Besides being less crowded, the promenade deck has some shade and a bit of protection from sun, wind, and weather while the top deck has none of that – just a bunch of people trying to get from one place to another in the way of anyone trying to use that painted line track.

Smoke aside, the biggest drawback of all is always the post-cruise survey. Apparently if you don’t mark everything a 10 they act as if it’s a 0, which means they are just looking to tick boxes and don’t really care what people think. That’s definitely accented by the fact that you get very few comment boxes. Having comment boxes for every section would be the only way for them to know what people really think – if they could be bothered to read the comments, which they must not want to judging by the scarcity of opportunities to leave any. Sometimes it takes so long to get a comment box that by the time you get one you forgot what you wanted to comment about. Putting a low number in one of the boxes will sometimes get you a comment box, but not always. When you do finally get one it always asks about one specific thing, which isn’t usually what I wanted to say anything about so they get a whole lot about whatever I remember by then that I wanted to say anything about instead of what they asked for. Who knows if anyone actually reads it.

Reasons to book with Royal Caribbean include all the fun things to do on their ships and the solarium. Reasons to book elsewhere include Royal’s stupid cost-cutting decisions and that there are other lines that actually have ships with no indoor smoking.

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