ARandomTraveler

I'm on a quantum class ship right now, and I was surprised to find that even my 8th floor balcony is somewhat obstructed. When sitting on the chairs on the balcony, you can see the top of the lifeboats. I was kind of annoyed by it, but it's not terrible. I would be really upset if I was on deck 7, and definitely would not pay money for any kind of balcony on deck 6. There aren't a lot of places on board with a view of the ocean except the deck above the pool deck, your balcony, or 270 (when they aren't doing a show or playing bingo etc in there). Many of the restaurants on board have windows that are obstructed by either the life boats, or the ship signs. Chops and Wonderland windows look out directly at the life boats, Teppanyaki windows are instructed by the "Spectrum of the Seas" sign, Izumi doesn't have windows. So if you're paying money to have a view of the ocean and you get a room on deck 6, I'd be very unhappy. Deck 7 view has to be more obstructed than mine on deck 8 so I assume it's bad. I'd go deck 8 and above only.

We watched "Showgirls" last night, it was a really excellent show! I'm surprised that this isn't their headlining show instead of "Silk Road." I'm really glad we didn't miss this. Get a seat in the theater early because it fills up, and there are a lot of obstructed views. Probably the best show I've seen on a cruise ship. Great costumes, great singing and dancing talent, upbeat music that had people dancing in their seats pretty much the whole show. We have not yet tried the main dining room. I keep intending to do that so I can comment on the food there, but we've been getting really good use of our dining package (and eating way too much food). The food in the specialty restaurants has been excellent. We've gone to every restaurant at least once. We made reservations on boarding day for each day of the cruise. We've changed a couple on a whim based on what we felt like eating. The only place we couldn't make a change at was Chops. Every other restaurant has been easy to walk up to and get a table pretty much every time, so I don't know if they actually had as many packages sold as they said. There seems to be a lot of people eating in the dining room. I haven't heard much feedback about the food other than one person who said their meatball portion was too small. The windjammer has had excellent food the whole trip. I've eaten in there for most breakfasts and some lunches. There's so much variety and the food always seems flavorful and fresh. They use a lot more spices in the food on this ship which is nice, it's not bland like it can often be on other ships. We've gotten "ok" use of our refreshment drink package, but we would have been totally fine without one. There's a lack of soft drinks to choose from (Coke, Diet Coke, sprite, ginger ale, Fanta and tonic water). And they all taste like diet. They have free water, tea, orange juice, lemonade and coffee, and the free lemonade tastes better (has more flavor) than the specialty lemonade you get at Jamie's. We've had fresh squeezed juice every morning and that's been delicious every time, but again, we could have lived without it (or paid out of pocket). The specialty coffee is not very good, but maybe I'm spoiled by having my own espresso machine at home. I've tried getting specialty coffee at La Patisserie, the Leaf and Bean and in the windjammer, and it just tasted like hot milk every time. I've reverted to drinking the free coffee, but there is no cream on board for the pleabs (there may be some for the upper class folks in the suites). I've asked at multiple venues (La Patisserie, Leaf & Bean, windjammer, the dining room at breakfast and chops at dinner). They only put out containers of milk (and they are labeled as milk). They have almond and soy milk at La Patisserie for specialty coffees and they'll pour almond milk into your free coffee for you if you ask. Frozen drinks are always good on a hot day, but there's only so many of them that we can drink, and we tired out on them days ago. We paid $24.99/day ($29.49 with the 18%), so just over $700 for the 2 of us. Not a big deal and I'm not sorry I bought it, but I doubt we've broken even, and if we have it's been by force. The cost of non-alcoholic drinks on board is pretty cheap. Soda is $3 at restaurants. It's $3 for specialty teas (these are actually pretty good and are unique to this ship at the Leaf and Bean). $4.50 for specialty coffees. $11 (with the 18%) for a non-alcoholic piña colada (the alcoholic drink special each day is only $8). I don't know what they're charging for bottled water but half the time when I ask for one they don't even ask for my card. Sometimes they ask if I have a drink package and when I say yes they just give them to me. Other times they don't even ask, they just hand them over. Overall, I'm very happy with this trip. I expected to dislike the Quantum Class ship but I like it a lot. Plenty of room and lots of stuff to do, and everything is also easy to get to. I didn't even notice until today (day 10) that we can't access the front of the ship (that must be where they're housing the suite folks), so it's not like you try to go somewhere on the ship and are suddenly denied entry if you're not in a suite. You just simply feel like you've reached the end of the ship, and don't even notice that there's more to it. Another unique thing on this ship is the private karaoke rooms that you can rent for $25/hr (plus 18%). They're a blast. I was expecting the passengers to be rude and pushy (based on prior reviews and trip reports of Asian cruises) but I've found it to be the opposite. It's possible that because this is a longer cruise that it attracts a different type of clientele, or maybe it's cultural, but I've found everyone to be extremely polite. Kids are well behaved. It's just such a classy ship with a classy group of people on it and I've really enjoyed meeting all of the people from different countries and hearing all the different languages. I'm really grateful we had the opportunity to do this trip.

Rough day at sea today (day 10), we're navigating around a typhoon and the boat is rockin' and rollin'. Pool and flow rider are still open, but a lot of the deck chairs have been tied up. They gave back our passports today, we were required to pick them up at a designated location between 2:30pm-4:30pm. They were stamped by Vietnam, and Taiwan, but not Hong Kong. We also received customs and immigration forms to fill out. Everyone must attend the immigration tomorrow morning at 8:30am, regardless of whether you plan to get off the ship. They also won't let people back onto the ship until everyone has done the immigration. They gave us a ticket with our designated group # on it today when we picked up our passports. I guess they'll call everyone in groups to go through the process. If you have an excursion, you'll do the immigration screening in the Royal theater, deck 4 instead of with your group, before going ashore for the excursion. Here are some photos of the forms: Left on the bed the night of day 9 Instructions for picking up your passport on day 10 (sea day before we enter Japan) and information about where to report tomorrow morning (day 11) to go through the immigration process. Instructions for filling out the forms Front of customs card (only 1 card to be filled out for all members of your family) Back of customs card Immigration Card (everyone needs to fill out their own)

@bonsai3s has access to better photos than me, but I took these photos earlier today when walking by the ultimate family suite and the suite lounge entrance (they're next to eachother on floor 13). I also have a photo of the entrance to the pinnacle club (inside the solarium). And my 4th photo is the inside of the solarium. You are correct that there aren't as many sun worshippers on this trip, but there are some. There's plenty of seating everywhere. I've even seen empty loungers around the pool a few times.

I'm currently on a 12-night cruise and our formal nights have been night 4 and night 9 (today is night 9 so not sure if there will be another one).

Beautiful photos @bonsai3s! I'm not getting many photos because I'm too distracted trying to walk through crowds and carry all the food we kept eating 😂. Ship internet is working today, now that we're away from Chinese air space. The Voom desk is still offering refunds only to people who stop by the desk. I wrote my name down on the list for a second time today. No refund has been applied to my account yet. Seas are a bit choppy today, I think we're sailing around a storm of some sort, but they assure us it's a safe passage. Puke bags are attached to the railings of all the stair cases. We have 2 sea days before reaching our first Japanese port stop.

We're in Taiwan today and back to being "somewhat" connected to Internet, only because I can access an LTE signal through T-Mobile. The ship's wifi has been completely 100% not working since we arrived in Hong Kong 4 days ago (and part of the sea day prior). We've been told we likely won't have Internet again until we leave China. They'll be refunding the cost of the Internet package for the days that the internet hasn't worked (so far officially 4 days), but they're only refunding people who have made a visit to the Zoom Internet desk on the ship and written their names and room numbers down on a list. They should give the refund automatically, but as of now, they're not giving refunds unless people request one. The ocean leaving Hong Kong was a bit choppy and I was worried I'd get seasick, but it leveled off the next day and I was fine. The sail away from that port was really gorgeous, such a beautiful and bright skyline. Our room is on the starboard side of the ship and so far we've docked on the starboard side at all the ports (which really just means we're looking at industrial buildings or the cruise terminal, but the sail away at night ends up being pretty). Taiwan has been another great port. Extremely well organized ship tours. We did the half-day Chiuffen tour which took us to a marketplace on the side of a mountain with tons of shopping and food. It's listed as a "strenuous" excursion which didn't make sense until we got there and found that you have to climb a LOT of stairs to get to the village. If you're not mobile and can't do stairs, do not sign up for this tour. You'll definitely need Taiwanese money here, as there are only a handful of stores that take credit cards out of the hundreds of shops available. There's a place to exchange money in the cruise terminal, but you won't have time to use it if you're headed off for a tour. We found a post office in the Chiuffen village that was able to exchange money for us (it looked like they could exchange all kinds of foreign money, not just US dollars). For every $1 USD we got about $31 Taiwanese dollars. Most of the foods and drinks cost around $40-$90 Taiwanese dollars ($1-$3 USD) so it's very cheap. The non-food shops sell trinkets, most of it is the same kind of touristy souvenir stuff you'd get anywhere, but there was some unique stuff (tea sets and leather goods and clothing), and it was all very cheap. The ATM we found only takes cards from local banks. Theres a night market here somewhere, but it requires a bus ride, and nobody is entirely sure which bus to take or where to catch it. I'm sure someone will have it figured out by evening and spread the word. This is the first time this ship has stopped at these ports so nobody really knows anything about them yet. They say it rains here 360 days a year. Our tour guide said they had a big Typhoon 3 days ago. We've had clear skies and no rain so far. To get off the ship you have to bring a copy of your passport that the ship made on our behalf and left in our room with an immigration stamp on it. You also have to show it to get back on the ship. I think they're also stamping our actual passports but we won't know until we get them back at the end of the cruise. They are very serious about making sure you don't take any food off the ship.

I saw this shirt at the Stanley marketplace yesterday and thought it was pretty funny (but I didn't buy it)

Here are the results of the Internet speed test I did with the ship's wi-fi today. It doesn't appear that they're using Starlink right now, but instead have access to something local (shown in photo #2), which is at least making it so the internet kiiiiiind of works, vs not working at all yesterday, or the day before (sea day on our way into Hong Kong).

Today is Saturday. I've been having a helluva time accessing the Internet for the last 2 days. I'm currently using T-Mobile LTE. Guest services said they've been trying to get the internet working but they don't think it will work until we leave Hong Kong. Apparently our "location" is causing some issues with accessing the satellites 👀. We did a ship tour yesterday; "Hong Kong Highlights." It was a half day tour, and it was excellent. This port is very well organized and well set-up for tourists and cruise ships. The tours are very organized, and there's signage everywhere to help people figure out how to get to the excursion buses, local taxis and local buses. As @bonsai3s mentioned, the signage of how to actually use the bus system isn't necessarily as easy to figure out, but this port is night and day from Vietnam, much MUCH better. The Hong Kong tourism board handed out little gifts as we walked off the ship, and there was a little dancing welcoming committee on the port side. Our tour took us to the top of Victoria Peak (pretty picture taking spot and some shopping and lots of food), then to Stanley Marketplace (a seaside area with lots of shopping stalls and some food places), and then on a quick sampan ride (traditional water taxi). Our guide gave us tons of information about the life and inner workings of Hong Kong. She was really personable and a great guide. Today we wanted to venture downtown for shopping on our own. Our guide yesterday recommended taking Uber instead of a taxi because you don't have to have cash and it's easier to tell the app where you want to to go without any language barrier issues. However, it didn't look like there was a specific spot for Ubers to do pick-up in the cruise terminal, I think they only let taxis inside. So I walked about 3/4 mile down the road before I gave up and came back. It was a nice walk, but it's hot out and I lost my enthusiasm for shopping. They're doing a ton of building around the terminal. High rises are going up one after the other. Our guide yesterday explained that the wealthiest people in Hong Kong are the developers and she described an intricate system of middle-men and bartering with the government for leases of land on which you can then build these gigantic skyscraper buildings and make profit off the exploitation of labor (basically). A lot of new buildings are going up on what they're calling "reclaimed land," which is essentially man-made coastline made from landfill. Being able to walk directly beneath these huge cranes with no safety equipment myself makes me wonder how much oversight is really done with these buildings, and I'd be hesitant to live in any of them. I did find it interesting that they use bamboo scaffolding, and also that they build new buildings with a fire barrier between lower floors and upper floors to give firemen time to reach fires in upper floors where their trucks can't reach. We may venture out again after lunch, but for now we're just planning a restful day on a quiet ship. If I can get the internet working, I might even get some work done.

No free lobster on the 12-night asia cruise either. Formal night was last night (night 4) and lobster was not on the MDR menu for free (the $16.99 upcharge lobster was on the menu).

I don't think we'll be able to. Our tour guide today said that if we wanted to see the light show, we needed to get to the Peninsula Hotel, and Google Maps says it's 5.6miles away. The light show happens every night at 8pm and lasts for 12 minutes, and she said it's only good if you can also hear the music that goes with it. There's also some sort of night market that happens from 6pm - midnight with 4 blocks of stalls selling trinkets and food. It's called the Temple Street Market. We're gonna try and stay awake long enough to have dinner and then go there. We haven't made it much past 9pm yet 😂

You probably should, just in case. I've had a hard time logging into my bank from here (in fact I haven't been able to log into either of my banks), and I'm wondering if the login website is blocked from being accessed from this part of the world as a security measure. We're currently in Hong Kong and found that it would have been nice to have some Hong Kong dollars here as well. Smaller trinket type stores don't take credit cards, only cash, and most of them (so far) only take Hong Kong dollars. We haven't been to any of the more modern places downtown yet, those probably take credit cards. Not having local currency has at least saved me money because I've bought way less stuff than I would have otherwise.

You can look on the app, go to "account" and see every time you ordered a drink. There will be a $0 charge next to the name of the bar you ordered from. It will not tell you the name of the drink, or what the cost would have been if you didn't have the drink package.

With some planning ahead, people can probably do a better job than we did at getting around. My plan was to walk to the local beach, which was supposedly 5 min from the port (according to both google and the girl at the shore excursion desk), and possibly take a water taxi to Vinpearl beach. With the delay in getting off the ship, taking the water taxi to Vinpearl became an option that could have put us in a time crunch (I'm not really sure how we would have gotten over to the water taxi area anyway, but we would have tried to walk there with more time). The rickshaw seemed fun, and it was for the most part (just for the experience of it), but it was really dangerous, and ended up poorly with the man hitting my daughter. There are probably more honest people there, we just didn't happen to hire them 😂. An $8 massage sounds heavenly. I wouldn't have known where to find it, but wish I did.

Hopefully they'll have the kinks worked out. I think this was the first time this crew has ported in Vietnam. I did hear some families trying to get help with making phone calls to their tour companies, but I'm not sure how it worked out. When we got off the ship there were no taxis. It's not that kind of a port. It was literally an industrial space with a couple rickshaw drivers and one golf cart tour. Maybe the people who got off the ship earlier had more options, but when we got off there was virtually nothing. It didn't seem like a town set up for tourism. Most of the locals were traveling by moped, sometimes 4 people to a moped, including children and babies.

Looks like you guys went to the same places we did. But we weren't able to get into the one in your second pictures (the ancient looking building). First we couldn't get in because we didn't have Vietnamese money. And then once we got some Vietnamese money, they wouldn't let us in because we had shorts on, which seems odd since so many other people were wearing shorts.

The tender situation took a long time to resolve yesterday. They were supposed to start tendering at 8:30am, and said they'd be done shuttling all of the people with tender tickets by 9:30am. But by the time 9:30 rolled around, they hadn't even made it to tender ticket #5 out of 48. It took until 12:15pm before they called for open tendering. Once getting in line, it took a half hour to get to shore. The last tender back to the ship was going to be at 5:15pm. They used the ship's life boats for tendering, and they said there was an issue with getting them docked at the port. One of the employees told me they were supposed to be using a maximum of 7 life boats, but they were using 10 to try and make the process go faster. This port is not set up for tourists. It's a very bare bones, industrial looking space. Some sort of town is somewhat walking distance if you're mobile and willing to walk for about a half hour until you get to a public beach and an area with some hotels, but it's hard to tell that from the port. There's no signs telling anyone which direction to go, or how long it will take to get anywhere, and even if there were signs, you wouldn't be able to read them unless you can read Vietnamese. Asking the dock workers how to get to a beach or a shopping area was met with blank stares (nobody spoke English). Some bicycle rickshaw drivers approached us with laminated pieces of paper that had photos of landmarks, and they spoke enough English to let us know it would cost $10, so we hopped on the rickshaws and set off for a harrowing ride through the Vietnamese streets; dodging motorized traffic, sometimes going both directions on the same side of the street. They kept taking us to places that required Vietnamese cash to get into, and they didn't understand our requests to take us to an ATM to get Vietnamese money. There were trinket sellers at each landmark, selling things like Japanese fans and bracelets etc. They were happy to take American money and sold fans from anywhere from $2/each, to $10/each, depending on how much money they saw come out of your wallet. If they told you a low price and then saw you had American money, the price automatically changed to something much higher. They also had a hard time understanding that a $10 bill plus 5 $1's was the same as a $20 bill and 5 $1's in change back from them. We eventually used a translator app to ask them to take us back to the ship, which they did, but then proceeded to try and get $50 out of us for a ride they originally told us cost $10. We kept handing them money and they'd hand it back and yell at us on Vietnamese. We finally handed them $20 and walked away, but one of them followed us to the port entry, hitting my daughter and yelling at us the whole time. A port policeman was at the port entrance and so the rickshaw guy turned around and left. We jumped on the lifeboat back to the ship. We later spoke to a woman who had taken a ship excursion (a landmark highlights tour) and she described a very lackluster tour that didn't go any further than 10 minutes out from the port, took them to an ocean museum that you could have walked to from port, only showed them one landmark and then brought them back to the ship. It sounded very disappointing. I will say that as precarious as our "excursion" was, it made for a much better and funnier story in the end, however, I have no desire to ever visit Vietnam again. For those of you who will be on this ship in the coming months, I would suggest booking the ship tour to "Vinpearl beach" which was on the opposite side of the tender port, but looked like a developed resort with a Ferris wheel, some sort of small amusement park and a pretty beach. It will be sold out if you wait until you're on the ship. We went to see the Silk Road in 270. It was entertaining enough to kill 45 minutes, but nothing to write home about. It was more of an interpretive dance set to American music (Beyoncé and Katy Perry). You can tell they worked hard on the choreography, but it was a little silly. Today is now Thursday, a sea day. The time was set forward 1 hour but our phones aren't updating so we have to remember to check the app for the time. We woke up to a notice on the app about having "heightened covid precautions," and there's a noticeably high number of people coughing and sniffling throughout the ship. We went to a sushi making class at Izumi which was fun, but the family of 3 sitting next to us was visibly sick. Coughing and sniffling and talking with very stuffed-up voices. Only one was wearing a mask. I thought it quite rude that they came to the class. Despite our adventure in Vietnam and missing out on the beach day we had hoped for, we're still having a good time and really enjoying the trip. There's no lack of seating outside but that's mostly because the temperature is a level of hot that I never knew existed. You walk outside and are immediately drenched in sweat. I'm enjoying it because I like the heat, but my daughter prefers to sit in the solarium where it's air conditioned.

Yes absolutely! We had quite an interesting day ourselves (I'll share later, after I have breakfast).

Another update - Spectrum DOES in fact have the Wow bands. After asking multiple people I finally found someone who knew what they were and found them in the back office somewhere. They're super convenient, totally worth the $10 in my opinion.

Wow bands DO exist, I just had to keep asking until I found someone who knew what they were. There's 4 colors; white, black, blue and yellow. They cost about $10 each. Tendering today in Vietnam is a little bit of a mess. They told us to get tender tickets before 9:30am only if we were ready to leave the ship right away, and that after 9:30am it would be open-tendering, no tickets needed. By 9:35am they still hadn't called ticket #5 (out of 48), so everyone with an independent excursion booked is in a bit of a panic downstairs. Apparently there was a problem with the dock where the tender boats land. We're just doing this port on our own, so in no rush ourselves, though it would be nice to get off the ship before noon. They told us to turn our watches back 1 hour today, so at least we gained an hour. We'll be setting them ahead again once we leave. As long as you have the proper visa to leave the ship, you received a "Landing Card" in your stateroom that you have to take with you off the ship. They'll stamp the card when you leave, and stamp them again when you return. You also have to bring your seapass card (the wow bands won't get you on and off the ship). The pre-cruise instructions told us we'd also need to bring a printed copy of our visa and passports with us, and I see some people walking around with them, but it doesn't sound like they're actually checking them, and they haven't told us we need them to leave the ship. I've got mine just in case. It's now 10:17am and they're up to tender ticket #13 of 48 👀.

Got the numbers: Total Passengers: 4,563 Total US Passengers: 1,060 Total UK Passengers: either 301 or 310 Total Crown & Anchor: 1,941 Pinnacle: 92 Diamond Plus: 228 Diamond: 310 Emerald: 149 Platinum: 314 Gold: 848

I'm on a quantum class ship right now and I was expecting not to like it, but it's actually a really nice ship with lots of places to explore. The only 2 things I've made note of so far that aren't the best, is that it's primarily an indoor ship. I don't like air conditioning and when I'm sailing to the beach, I want to be outside in the sunshine and feeling the warmth. On this ship I feel cold most of the day, but I may be an outlier with that "complaint." The other thing I was surprised about was how obstructed my balcony view is on the 8th floor. I knew to avoid balconies on the 6th floor because of the life boats, but didn't realize that they also semi-obstruct the view from balconies above. If I'm sitting in the chair on my balcony and take a photo, there's a big yellow lifeboat in the photo. I imagine they can be seen all the way up to the 10th floor at least. They seem to be only located in the center of the ship though, so forward and aft balconies seem safer.

That was a really thoughtful gift from your friend. I'm sure that took a long time to make and it's a nice way to keep all those shirts that you probably never wear but didn't want to throw away.

Yes it's definitely the kind of trip you have to be very diligent about planning and keeping track of everything. And the travel part alone can end up very stressful. I guess that's why there aren't very many people from the US side of the world on this cruise. So far we've only met 2 people from Canada and 2 people from Boston. Everyone else has been from Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The woman who gave me my massage said there are 1,000 US citizens on board, but we have yet to find them. The people we met last night from Boston had an even worse travel experience than we did. Their connecting flight was delayed and they actually missed their flight to Singapore, and because there were no other flights to get them there for 2 days, they had to be Re-routed. They had to fly to Qatar and stay overnight, then fly to Malaysia, then to Singapore, and they arrived a day late. Their airline also gave them nothing for the hassle (Qatar airlines). It's a very expensive and difficult trip to plan, but so far, now that we've made it, we're very happy to be having this experience. It's very unique and interesting. Our ship is beautiful. And the seas are surprisingly calm so far. I tend to get sea sick and assumed that being in the South China Sea would make for a rough sailing, but it feels like we've been sailing on glass the whole time.