Royal Caribbean's much hyped Quantum of the Seas is billed as a giant leap forward in cruising. We and all the passengers we spoke with would say, rather it's a big step backward. A huge disappointment was the overall experience of so many passengers, including us and our friends. Let's begin at the beginning.

As we attempted to check in my process was held up as RC didn't have my credit information on file. My wife's was on file, though this was peculiar as I was the financially responsible party. To their credit RC cleared this up fairly quickly. Friends who had been unable to print out their set sail pass despite all the help RC could offer at home had their boarding also delayed. Again, RC was able to clear this at the terminal fairly quickly.

Boarding the ship we were immediately taken back. We were expecting the Grand Promenade we had so enjoyed on RC's other ships. There is no Grand Promenade; rather RC calls their main gathering floor a "Grand ESPLANADE." More on this later. We were told we could get to our stateroom by 12:00 pm. On the other ships we've sailed on we usually were able to get to our stateroom before the declared time. On the Quantum we were unable to get to it until closer to 1 pm. No big deal you would think. We would find out this would be the norm. RC has cut back on the number of crew members it has on the Quantum to assist the passengers. A supervisor admitted as much to me. This means we often wouldn't have a crew member take our drink orders at their bars. We often had to clear a table on the "Grand Esplanade" by the coffee bar in order to sit. This may sound trivial and in fact in the big picture it is. However, having sailed on 7 RC ships before the Quantum we had come to experience excellent service and cleanliness. The crew works hard and they are cheerful. They are also overworked. The captain was almost non-existent. We were never given an announcement when we could disembark at the ports of call. People just began to walk off after waiting for the announcement. This included the last day. No announcement was made when to leave the ship. People just began to walk off. We never heard the captain and rarely saw him. When he did come to speak with the people on the Wednesday before disembarking he told all he was exhausted. At one of the ports of call we were docked next to another RC ship, the Adventure of the Seas. As they were getting ready to leave the port the captain of this ship was heard over their speakers giving his passengers all types of information about the next leg of their trip. This would have been nice to hear from our captain. Read more