After tons of snow and freezing cold weather my family and I were more then ready to warm up in the Bahamas sunshine. Our group consisted of 10 people ranging in ages from 9 to 70 years old. Were we celebrating my parents 45th anniversary, so my bother and I treated my parents to their first cruise.

EMBARKATION: Was a complete mess. I was prepared for it from reading other cruise critic reviews but you don't understand the full chaos until you're stuck in the cruise traffic jam. (Think I95 during rush hour in a major city then add a major accident into the mix...yeah it was that bad) They say they are building up the terminal for Quantum of the Seas....where??? ... I didn't see any construction going on. Instead after waiting in line for an eternity you drop off your luggage and passengers at this oversized army tent like structure. (Not to mention there are passengers that are still getting off the ship waiting to be picked up in the same area and cars and taxis cutting across lanes to get to them) Where the rest of your traveling party wait in the cold for you to squeeze your way back into traffic, drive in between two decrypted buildings to park at the on site lot at $19 a day. Then you walk back to the tent building and cross through all the traffic where you then begin to hunt for the rest of your traveling party. From there you move to a building where you go through security. Then wait on a different line to check in. Being that we had priority boarding the check in line went fairly smoothly. This is where our real troubles begin. We had 5 staterooms all crossed reference with each other all in a row. Only 2 of the seas pass cards had the dining information printed on it. Both were children, one had traditional 6pm seating (ok great that's what we had requested) his 9yr old sister had late seating 8:30pm. Obviously someone made a mistake but no worries we thought well have it corrected at the dining room when we board. (more of that later) After taking our first family photo of the cruise we waited in a large holding room waiting to board the shuttle bus. The PA system wasn't loud enough to really power over the mass of people talking so I had to really focus to hear what boarding numbers we're bring called. After about 45 minutes of standing we were able to board the bus. The ride over was less then 5 minutes. We could have walked over to the ship faster!

FIRST IMPRESSION OF THE SHIP: She is huge. I know other reviews have said she run down and outdated. Quite the contrary. She is modern sleek, clean and tastefully decorated. Lots of warm wood tones throughout the ship. You really have to look extra hard to find a stain on the carpet. Some staterooms have flat screens and others have tube TVs. But who goes on a cruise to watch the 5 channels of TV anyways? Read more