QUANTUM is EPIC FAILURE—2½ STARS!!!

[Hoopster95]

Have you bothered to read the official passenger reviews, posted on this site?

 

The ship has a 44% Cruise Critic Member approval rating!!!

 

Pretty obvious this would be the case with only 12 reviews so far of an obviously problematic sailing. From what I have seen and read from start to finish of the "live" thread, the English "family" thread now in New York, and others it was extremely obvious there were issues occurring... of course you keep in mind there's complaints by long time CC'ers here of every ship in the fleet it seems every week on Cruise Critic!!!! Doesn't matter whether the ship is brand new or 20 years old.... bad bar service on Vision, horrible steak in Chops on Adventure, disgusting attitude of guest services personnel on Oasis, the list goes on and on and on.

 

You have posted the absolute worst case scenario out of any poster who had anything negative to say regarding Q, and highly dramatized so much of it that it holds very little credibility to me. And then to have other long time cruisers come on this thread who were also on this ship alongside you saying the exact opposite is confusing to me.

 

So, if other long time experienced cruisers who were on the sailing are coming here to both support you and contradict you, what really happened on this sailing?

[eroller]

 

So, if other long time experienced cruisers who were on the sailing are coming here to both support you and contradict you, what really happened on this sailing?

 

 

Ships today are massive enough that people on the exact same ship and sailing date can have very different experiences. My experience was quite different than the OP's which I pointed out but I'm not discounting his opinions.

 

At the end of the day on Cruise Critic, take everything with a grain of salt and realize not everything is all doom & gloom or all rainbows either. Usually the reality is somewhere in between.

 

Were there problems on the QUANTUM maiden? Absolutely, but everyone is different in how they react to problems and to what extent they impact them. Also some people may have experienced more isolated issues than others (such as being stuck in an elevator for instance … which BTW can happen on any ship and does). Speaking for myself, I found the issues I experienced to be minor and they certainly didn't impact my cruise on QUANTUM in a negative way. In fact I was intrigued by many of them and felt it was so cool being part of something so new and untested. I know not everyone feels that way nor does everyone handle what they perceive as adversity the same way. To each his own.

 

What I consider an "epic failure" would be a ship losing all power and plumbing and drifting for days in the open seas … aka CARNIVAL TRIUMPH!

[AtlantaCruiser72]

I feel it is completely unfair to brand a ship a "failure" after only one sailing. RCCL is completely reinventing their cruise experience with the Quantum class ships. The integration of new dining concepts, technology platforms and onboard amenities will take some time to fine tune. Unfortunately the ship did not have a significant series of shake-down cruises with non revenue passengers prior to a full, and lengthy, revenue sailing. Add in a rough seas and less than ideal weather and it only compounds issues. Four to six months from now the Quantum will be a fine-tuned product.

 

Look at the fiasco that BAA had with the opening of T5 at Heathrow for an example. It is now one of the best and most efficient airports in all of Europe, yet it was lambasted as an utter failure when opened.......

 

I'm sorry that the OP was upset over their cruise experience. However as secretive as RCCL was with details on the ship, I cannot say that I think anyone was lied to or swindled. They promoted this ship as revolutionary from day 1. Also anyone who knows anything about cruising would expect a brand new ship, fresh from the yard, with boundary pushing technology and product changes to have issues in product delivery and service. I would never recommend a brand new ship to anyone who expects near perfection, nor would I reccommend a brand new hotel or restaurant to the same type of person. Every new business has a shake-down period of 2-6 months before settling in.

[DEIx15x8]

The one thing that this seems to all come back to is what we've been questioning for a year, why does this new executive team want to do everything different? It seems like if you look at all of the issues and then compare them to what the old team would do this would not have happened. The most obvious is don't have paying guests on the transatlantic. This seems like a big duh item. Royal Caribbean was one of the few lines to not do this (every other line has had tons of bad press from these types of sailings, as Royal now does as well). They've always claimed the time allowed the crew to familiarize themselves with the ship and finalize everything. The crew got to experience the venues so they could explain them to guests once onboard but also give the crew in those areas extra practice. They would then have the free sailings so that as Royal Caribbean has said in the past, all the problems should have been figured out so that once the first paying guests step onboard everything is perfect. Hopefully this will be the case once we get onboard for the inaugural, but the second big point they no longer follow is still a factor. They are not trying to cover up their mistakes and issues. When I sailed the Oasis I was impressed by how perfect everything was. The only complaint I had was that the food in the MDR was below my expectations (worst I've had on a ship). During the Captain's Corner though I was amazed at just how much was not ready though. They didn't give everyone hush money for dealing with their mistakes and just call it acceptable though. They worked extra hard to ensure no guest would ever know they were not ready. They invested the money in making sure the experience was still perfect, rather than making up for it. The three biggest fixes they implemented rather than ignoring were:

1) The Internet was not working properly. The entire ship had wireless but guests were also supposed to be able to access the Internet on their TV if they did not have a laptop (yes, this was pre iPad and smart phones were still not big). For this reason no Royal Connect computer area was built onboard. Instead of accepting the fact that it was not ready, they converted several crew areas within the passenger sections of the ship into small computer rooms with 2-3 desktops and a printer each.

2) The interactive ship info app on the TV was not ready. Rather than leaving everyone with nothing, at the last minute they installed an entire instance of the legacy system found on the other ships in the fleet in order to offer a ship info channel. The only noticeable difference was that the last minute installation lacked a bridge cam.

3) The ship was supposed to offer a next generation phone system. This was not ready so they ordered a complete set of traditional phones and installed them in every cabin until they could ensure the new system was working properly. This was noticeable as the phone really did not feel like it belonged in the room, it was a rather dated design but completely functional.

 

These were not major issues that would have halted the ships ability to operate, these were minor guest experiences that would have been negatively impacted by their inability to be ready on time. Instead of just going for it though and hoping they could work through the bugs, they installed entire redundant legacy systems to ensure the proper experience until the new ones were ready. This is what should be happening with Quantum but for what ever reason they are opting to just pay people off rather than using that money to fix the experience. The check in problem seems to have been a result of the ship using it's own Internet system to check everyone in using servers in Miami. The executives should have known that their was not "boat loads" of bandwidth in Southampton which would result in a complete failure of this system. The easiest fix would have been to simply have the terminal operate as usual with the legacy check in process. This wouldn't have even cost them anything. They wouldn't have even had to accept bad press as they could simply claim it to be a function built into the new Cape Liberty terminal. The fact that they opted to not prevent such a mess is simply astounding but speaks to their ideology. They know what they want and that is all they will work toward no matter what the effects of that decision is.

 

We'll see if they are ready next week as that will really be the date things should be 100% operational by, but I'm still a bit worried about some of these systems after how the Dynamic Dining roll out went and several months later is still not working properly. The most you can do though is to hope for the best, everything else is out of our control.

Edited November 15, 2014 by DEIx15x8

[boscobeans]

 

We'll see if they are ready next week as that will really be the date things should be 100% operational by, but I'm still a bit worried about some of these systems after how the Dynamic Dining roll out went and several months later is still not working properly. The most you can do though is to hope for the best, everything else is out of our control.

 

Jacques Pépin always says no chef should ever send out a dish without tasting it first.

 

bosco

[NyreeClaire]

I was on this cruise and haven't read all posts yet but had to put my two pennies in so I apologise if someone already has said this to put some facts right.

 

There was an ice cream place on the top deck. Self serve soft scoop. Not Ben and Jerry's admitted but there was ice cream available.

 

There were also lectures almost daily in the music hall. My husband and I heard two of them. Very interesting and very well attended.

 

Now my opinion

 

Stateroom attendant amazing from day one. They obviously aren't all bad.

Service in all dining areas excellent but in Jamie's Italian, silk and devinly decadence it was particularly outstanding and above average.

 

Bar tenders remembered us well. 98% staff always smiling and the ship was kept spotless. Weather played havoc with shows but what we saw was great.

 

Just to note...

Internet package was refunded to everyone, everyone got more than generous credit for poor embarkation which incidentally only took us 40 minutes. Refund back on 1st day drinks package as technology failure again and everyone got free drinks. So they did try to make things up to passengers very well... Almost $700 in onboard for some!! As well as 25% of the cost of your cruise going to another one.

 

There were little turn down gifts most nights.

 

Food was good although my only criticism would be it wasn't hot enough.

 

I also agree the beverage woman was a royal pain who was more interested in how do I look than whether the guests actually had been waiting for ten minutes for a drink from the bionic bar. When they then throw your drink away because they don't know what they are doing and she shrugs her shoulders proving she doesn't really give a rats my opinion of her disappeared and I never visited again. She was also the only manager to walk around looking very rough in the mornings!!

 

Other than that after 6 days of handover I thought they did well. Cabins were fab. Ship is beautiful and not overwhelming. I fly is fantastic. North Star line was too long but weather meant it wasn't open for as long as it could have been.

 

So come on give them some credit... They took a chance and paid a price out, a big one. You didn't have to sail maiden.....change can be good and we didn't cruise for the old ways but now will for this way.

 

 

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[ChipLondon]

Whilst i do accept that there were some issues for some guests on the first sailing, I simply have to say that I had a great time. I enjoyed many aspects of the ship, and found the crew to be excellent, and the food definately better than on other recent sailings.

 

Therefore I cannot wait until I reboard this amazing ship in 2 days time.:D

[iheartbda]

Pretty obvious this would be the case with only 12 reviews so far of an obviously problematic sailing. From what I have seen and read from start to finish of the "live" thread, the English "family" thread now in New York, and others it was extremely obvious there were issues occurring... of course you keep in mind there's complaints by long time CC'ers here of every ship in the fleet it seems every week on Cruise Critic!!!! Doesn't matter whether the ship is brand new or 20 years old.... bad bar service on Vision, horrible steak in Chops on Adventure, disgusting attitude of guest services personnel on Oasis, the list goes on and on and on.

 

 

Yes, they had problems but the father was not overly dramatic nor did he use any hyperbole. He stated what he felt the problems were in a very calm manner and added that they weren't ruining his cruise. I have no doubt that he has not sworn off Royal Caribbean to never sail with them again.

 

Just a friendly suggestion to long posters, not you, Hoopster. Please use paragraphs.:) I'm sure your posts have good information but it becomes very difficult to read. Also, long paragraphs are also difficult to read.

Edited November 15, 2014 by iheartbda

[zeridan]

Lol! Pure hyperbole. Get rekt.

[Biker19]

The check in problem seems to have been a result of the ship using it's own Internet system to check everyone in using servers in Miami. .

The check-in problem had little to do with Internet - it had to do with volume of customers, lack of organization and expectations (the promised 10 min curb to ship).

 

The check-in itself (once you found how to do it and an available rep) was about 2 min. The longest wait was to actually board the ship. For us, the curb-ship was about 40 min.

[jennywren46]

I think its a bit harsh to call it an EPIC FAILURE I've noticed that there are some people on up and coming cruises who in the past have given good reviews ,lets wait and see what they have to say.

It will take time to iron the niggles out you cant except everything to be perfect on the first sailing that's asking too much.

[little britain]

I also agree that there may have been some technology issues on board in the first few days but RCI bent over backwards, in my opinion, to make everyone on board as happy as possible with their over generous OBC and FCC refunds.

IMO some people then saw this as a way to see what else they could get out of RCI by complaining about everything and behaving in the most atrocious manner. I was ashamed of the behaviour and manners of some of those on board. People were looking for faults, and in some cases making them up. One man was screaming at guest relations that there "were no shops on board" (doh) and he couldn't buy toothpaste. He had obviously not bothered going into the General Store which sold items like this...as does every other General Store on every other RCI ship. And the OP who claims that there was "no ice cream" obviously didn't bother going out to the pool which has the self serve ice cream machines ....as they do on other RCI ships...

 

The ship was beautiful, the service excellent, the food good - and the sun shone (most of the time). I have nothing to complain about.

I am also trying to write a balanced review to counteract all the tosh that is being written at the moment.

Edited November 15, 2014 by little britain

[gkbiiii]

There was NO ice cream at the buffet, as well as being without a Ben & Jerry's. This is the third-largest ship in the world, yet it is the ONLY ship in the fleet not to have one???

 

The fact is to me, that the 13 year+ Adventure of the Seas has 10X the WOW factor of this new build. I had the same feeling about the NCL Epic after sailing her (Maiden Voyage) a month after my very first transatlantic, on Adventure (Official Maiden Transatlantic Crossing), from San Juan.

 

The ship does not has the Royal sparkle and sense of wonderment, that other ships in the Navigator/Freedom/Oasis Class have. It is very bland inside (like the Epic) with odd adornments on deck (think Epic).

 

In fact this is the only ship in the RCCL fleet, other than Majesty, to have single story dining rooms. Gone is the grandeur of the two & three story Grand Dining rooms, that set Royal apart.

 

For a company know for Mega-Liners, this ship is a complete disappointment, inside & out!!!

[cot427]

There was NO ice cream at the buffet, as well as being without a Ben & Jerry's. This is the third-largest ship in the world, yet it is the ONLY ship in the fleet not to have one???

 

The fact is to me, that the 13 year+ Adventure of the Seas has 10X the WOW factor of this new build. I had the same feeling about the NCL Epic after sailing her (Maiden Voyage) a month after my very first transatlantic, on Adventure (Official Maiden Transatlantic Crossing), from San Juan.

 

The ship does not has the Royal sparkle and sense of wonderment, that other ships in the Navigator/Freedom/Oasis Class have. It is very bland inside (like the Epic) with odd adornments on deck (think Epic).

 

In fact this is the only ship in the RCCL fleet, other than Majesty, to have single story dining rooms. Gone is the grandeur of the two & three story Grand Dining rooms, that set Royal apart.

 

For a company know for Mega-Liners, this ship is a complete disappointment, inside & out!!!

 

Perhaps RCI was taking a look at what sells and what doesn't, as far as ice cream goes. When I was on the Explorer last, every time I walked past the Ben and Jerry's stand at Cafe Promenade, I didn't see many people at all, and many times none. Now I know they kept the ice cream stand on Oasis and changed the name, however it fits the boardwalk theme. Or, it could be a complete oversight, which I can see based on some of the experiences people have had.

 

Again, about the dining rooms, I just don't think those were working anymore, for passengers or the crew. My past several cruises on RCI, I've had subpar experiences in the main dining room, both food and service. Yes, they look nice and grand, but my group someone always gets shoved into a corner or something. Being a diamond member and more than 20 RCI cruises, I don't appreciate that. It seems like they decreased the number of waiters and they are running the entire time. I really hope the smaller, more intimate dining rooms work for them. People can eat where and when they want. If they don't like that, they shouldn't go.

 

I understand a lot of things were circumstance and they should have had a lot of the kinks worked out, but some of the things you mentioned were in deck plans and if you didn't like it (no royal promenade or grand dining room), why go and disappoint yourself further?

[Biker19]

 

In fact this is the only ship in the RCCL fleet, other than Majesty, to have single story dining rooms. Gone is the grandeur of the two & three story Grand Dining rooms, that set Royal apart.

 

For a company know for Mega-Liners, this ship is a complete disappointment, inside & out!!!

...and it doesn't have a VCL and many other things that traditional ships have had....some people forgot to note what the marketing line says: "This changes everything" - it doesn't say "''everyone will like the changes";)

[cruisenfever]

There was NO ice cream at the buffet, as well as being without a Ben & Jerry's. This is the third-largest ship in the world, yet it is the ONLY ship in the fleet not to have one???

 

With all due respect, but I have never seen ice cream being served in the WJ (buffet) except in the evenings at dinner. There is a self serve soft serve machine outside the WJ on most RCI ships as well as on Quantum as has been reported.

 

If memory serves me correctly, there is no Ben & Jerry's on any Radiance class ship.

[hallasm]

Well, Well - not everything worked as well as expected.

Despite of the experienced problems I did have an enjoyable cruise and I can also see a future for dynamic dining once RCL has learned from the experiences.

I'm booked at the Quantum cruise January 10, 2015 is is really looking forward to that cruise.

By then I will report my findings/expertness compared with the TA maiden voyage.

[dfishner]

Wow there is quite a bit of back and forth on this thread. I have to admit I am not a fan of Quantum while watching it being built the bumper cars, northstar and the air thing did not excite me like Oasis or Allure. I do like the idea of dynamic dining and 270 other than that not much else.

 

Calling a ship an epic failure after one cruise is a bit much there is just to much that can go wrong. We waited a year after Oasis came out and glad we did it was flawless cruise. I believe what the OP wrote even though it was all negative but you take your chances on a new built ship especially one that has so much new tech on it. It does not surprise me that so many things did happened but as I said it is a new ship, first cruise and that can always be a bit of a problem this one seemed to have more than usual.

 

Judging Quantum will take time after all the kinks are worked out to see if this ship works or not all I can say is sorry for those who had mishaps with the first cruise.

[NyreeClaire]

I am sure some people think these companies are here just to please them and only them rather than catering for the masses. They all count.

 

There is a saying. 'You can please some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time'.

 

That's the beauty of the general public. The most ecclectic group all in one place. If we were all the same we would be boring. So this ship didn't suit your needs? Shame there are others it did. It's a shame that I heard countless guests being exceptionally rude on this voyage, manners of a gnat. So it's not just staff who get it wrong. I almost felt I wanted to apologise on their behalf a couple of times it was cringe worthy. Uncalled and unnecessary.

 

Maybe like others I am easily pleased although I have travelled the world and stay nothing less than 5 star so I know what to expect and what it should offer. I am also aware than apart from bed and board the rest of the fun and what to do with it was up to me.

 

 

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[rt1092]

I'm defending the OP. They stated what their opinion was.

We were on the Allure (not the maiden voyage) And didn't enjoy it at all. Posted on here. And was attacked viciously by quite a few posters.

We are loyal royals, but don't have to like or praise everything they do.

I looked at reviews of the Oasis tried it and had a wonderful time.

Going on the Quantum next May hope the bugs are worked out by then. Not a big fan of the dynamic dining (I think). Hated it on ncl. But if needed the windjammer will suffice.

[cruisenfever]

I'm defending the OP. They stated what their opinion was.

We were on the Allure (not the maiden voyage) And didn't enjoy it at all. Posted on here. And was attacked viciously by quite a few posters.

We are loyal royals, but don't have to like or praise everything they do.

I looked at reviews of the Oasis tried it and had a wonderful time.

Going on the Quantum next May hope the bugs are worked out by then. Not a big fan of the dynamic dining (I think). Hated it on ncl. But if needed the windjammer will suffice.

IMHO, some of the OP's credibility was lost when he posted "The ship seems cheaply built inside, while costing a staggering 6.5 billion Dollars".

 

[eroller]

IMHO, some of the OP's credibility was lost when he posted "The ship seems cheaply built inside, while costing a staggering 6.5 billion Dollars".

 

 

 

Not only is the price tag ridiculous and so far off from the truth, but the fact is Meyer Werft in German who built QUANTUM, is renowned for their quality and attention to detail. Most in the industry consider them to be the best passenger ship builders in the world. They also constructed RCI's Radiance Class. Quite a different story from their Italian competitor Fincantieri whom lets just say doesn't enjoy the same reputation.

[PhilNDebbieAtSea]

IMHO, some of the OP's credibility was lost when he posted "The ship seems cheaply built inside, while costing a staggering 6.5 billion Dollars".

 

 

 

Excellent point!

 

 

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[rt1092]

Can any of you tell me what difference the cost of the ship makes?

If the OP typed "close to a billion" Would you have accepted the review with open arms?

[Elizanessie]

There was quite a bit of construction repairs happening during our sailing.

 

For example part of the Windjammer ceiling came down and part of the ceiling along from the Bionic Bar had to be repaired. Also in the WJ there were men working with sheets of metal working on pipes just above the bread area (they didn't even cover up the food underneath).

 

Did anyone here get the letter from Guest Services that had the word Insidious on it above Dear Guest? What a shame they did not proof read the letter after printing it out.