This, at first, is going to sound like a negative review, but make no mistake, in spite of the numerous glitches, the Quantum of the Seas is an amazing ship and the much-hyped “WOW” is an understatement.

My wife and I are experienced cruisers, (this is cruise number 30) in our late 50’s who have been looking forward to this cruise for a year. I have followed its construction and we could hardly wait to get aboard. While writing this review in my head before actually putting pen to paper, I contemplated ignoring the numerous glitches that overwhelmed many of us. These glitches, however annoying and irritating, do not affect how future cruisers will sail. They are a product of a brand new ship with all sorts of never-before-seen technology. Bugs in the systems are to be expected. If I don’t mention them, perhaps my review would be trivialized as invalid, as though my head were in the sand. We experienced all sorts of problems; embarkation was a disaster. Nothing close to the scan and walk-on as touted. It took over an hour to get on-board. But when you get on this ship, it will not be out of Southampton, a terminal clearly unready to handle this.

Our luggage was missing for 11 hours. The Luggage tracking system didn’t work so well. The robot bartenders at the Bionic Bar didn’t work so well either, but they didn’t charge you for drinks. These will both be super-cool when the bugs are worked out, by the time you’re on board. The POS system on board was sometimes down, so if you went to buy something they sometimes could not and did not charge you. The heralded “wristbands” were not in the room like they were supposed to be, you had to get them from Guest Relations. Even getting a room key was a challenge! Ours wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The queue at the Guest Relations Desk was often outrageously long, certainly indicating even more problems that we did not personally experience. I admit that the first day on this ship was easily the most trying day on board any ship, any cruise line, any time, anywhere. I didn’t have my head in the sand. There were many issues, but I know RCCL very well and I am therefore certain that this is all very short-lived. Even before boarding, we had already booked a second voyage on this ship for February. We are certain that by then, the bugs will long be squashed and we will sail into beautiful Caribbean weather. On Day 2 , we received a very nice letter from RCCL apologizing for the catastrophes of the previous day as well as compensating us monetarily in a way that I and virtually every other passenger that we encountered, considered to be more than fair. Read more