Day 3 on board the Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s (and the world’s) newest cruise ship and it’s another gloomy day full of rain, wind, thunder, and lightning as we head towards our first port of call, Port Canaveral in Florida.
While I’ve been very impressed with almost every aspect of the ship so far, others – mainly Royal Caribbean’s frequent cruises – aren’t exactly buying into the line’s next generation of cruising.
The biggest complaint?
Dynamic Dining. This is a concept that rolled out with Quantum and will soon be on other RCCL brand ships in the coming month. Instead of having a main dining room with the traditional early and late seatings that most cruises have come accustomed to, Dynamic Dining gets rid of the main dining room and in it’s place are more than a dozen different restaurants. Each eatery offers a different style of cuisine from set menus that don’t change throughout the voyage.
If you’re looking for steak, head to Chops Steakhouse. Want sushi, go to Izumi. Looking for some Asian fusion, go to Silk. In the mood for something a little more imaginative, try the new Wonderland. Have a hankering for Italian, head to Jamie’s. With so much to choose from, there’s no reason not to give each restaurant a shot it time allows. Unfortunately for me, there are more restaurants than there are cruise days.
I’ve never been one for the main dining room concept on ships. Early on in my cruising history, there was no such thing as “specialty restaurants” where for a fee you could bypass the throngs of hungry masses and eat “restaurant-style” in a more intimate setting. The main dining room was a place where you were seated with a group of 8 to 10 other cruisers, who you either loved or hated and spent your evenings kibitzing with them over lobster thermador with JELL-O for dessert.
The last time I did the main dining room was on the Queen Mary 2. Two of my table-mates were wonderful while the other two sat there night after night bitching about everything – from the temperature of her “blue rare” filet to the sun not shining on her side of the ship at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. She told us tales of how her husband, who we appropriately nicknamed Milquetoast (you young folks need to Google that one), would plant more tulips than were grown in Holland all around their sprawling estate somewhere where she most certainly kept a pony or two.
It was abhorrent.
When I cruise now, I always book specialty restaurants each night where I sit accompanied only by a glass of champagne or a well-shaken, dirty martini. Neither of which will bore me to death or make me seriously consider taking a header into the briny deep just to escape from the madness.
As I sip a few cocktails and down several large prawns dripping in cocktail sauce, I listen intently to the conversation around me. On Monday, I sat next to a table of six who were deeply religious. Hoping my heathen ways wouldn’t come out in front of them and force them to douse me with water blessed by some guy wearing a cape, I did my best to behave and not comment on their conversation which revolved around the riots in Ferguson and the prison time two men at the table spent where they “discovered” someone by the name of “God” and had one of those life-changing moments.
Bugger all, I digress.
Back to the chief complaint from the “Loyal to Royal” crew – the dining situation. It seems that while they do mourn the demise of the main dining room, they despise the fact that they have to go online, use the Royal iQ app, or hit up one of the kiosks around the ship to make reservations for everything – including dinner. I asked one complainer exactly why he felt so strongly against reservations and he told me “it’s just too inconvenient, it involves a lot of planning.”
I see his point. Between shows, shore excursions, bingo, Johnny Walker scotch tasting and Invicta watch sale in the Royal Esplanade, making dinner reservations is just too much to handle for some. Good grief, on a Friday night in season in Palm Beach, you can’t even get gas in your car without a reservation.
For the most part, the complaints revolve around technology. The older folks on board have not fully embraced the concept of the “smart ship” as Quantum of the Seas is called. They don’t carry an iPhone where the Royal iQ app is your key to everything on board, they have a Jitterbug. They don’t know how to use one of those fancy tablet computer thingies where you touch the screen, type in your name, and find a time for dinner.
They want the old-fashioned, “I’ll show up for dinner at 5:30pm” cruise that Quantum is not.
Oh, and then there’s the Cigar Bar.
On Quantum of the Seas, there isn’t one, and cigar smokers who enjoyed going to the smoke-filled room on other ships are lamenting its demise. There is no smoke-filled room for them to gather in where they can don their red velvet smoking jacket, kick back and enjoy an overpriced cognac while asking each other, “what are you smoking?”
Cigar – and cigarette – smokers are banished to smoking areas on outside decks. However, in the daily program, the mention of a cigar bar appears every now and then, but it’s not a true “cigar bar.” The North Star bar located near the North Star (imagine that) observation-pod-on-the-end-of-a-crane thing is designated as the Cigar Bar, but it’s outside.
While some Royal frequent flyers aren’t overly delighted with the new direction the line’s ships are taking, others are thrilled. While I only have one recent Royal Caribbean cruise to compare Quantum to, I’m pleasantly surprised with almost every aspect of the ship – especially the design of the décor. The ship is simply gorgeous, there are no other words to adequately describe it.
On this rainy day at sea, there wasn’t much to do except count the raindrops and the seconds between thunder and lightning to see how close the storm was. The North Star observation capsule was shut down due to the lightning, and the ship’s main pool remained closed due to the weather and the water sloshing. The Solarium pool, one of two which are enclosed, was open and was a hub of activity throughout the day.
The ocean continued to bounce us around a bit until the afternoon when things calmed down despite the storm we seem to be unable to escape from. The cold, rainy weather has followed us from New Jersey, and as I sit here in Port Canaveral writing today’s installment, it’s cloudy and raining here as well with the temperature hanging in at 58 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once again the day was void of any announcements from the cruise director or captain over the public address system. With Thanksgiving tomorrow, that is one thing I’m going to give thanks for!
After a leisurely day of wandering aimlessly around the massive ship (it’s a long way from the Royal Esplanade on decks 4 and 5 to the 15th top deck if you take the steps) I retreated back to my stateroom to get ready for the evening’s activities.
The main show was at 7pm in the Royal Theatre and was a 45-minute performance by a ventriloquist (I forgot his name but will get it!). While I thought I’d be sitting through a vaudeville revival show ala Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, the guy with the dummy did a good job at keeping content fresh, family-friendly, and most of all funny. Although I’m fairly certain the audience members in these shows who are “chosen at random” are shills, as they perform as well as the entertainer.
When the dummy was back in the trunk, the theatre emptied out and I headed over to Vintages wine bar for a few glasses of champagne before dinner at the ship’s previously mentioned steakhouse, Chops.
Chops, Royal Caribbean’s signature restaurant, offers up your traditional steakhouse and seafood fare including filet mignon, new york strip, porterhouse as well as Maine lobster. This happens to be one of the restaurants that charge a per-person cover charge of $35. There are also menu items that have an additional surcharge on top of the $35, such as the Maine lobster which will set you back an additional $21.
Wanting to go all the way and see how well Chops compares to land-based steakhouse joints such as Shula’s, Morton’s, Ruth’s Chris (which I despise mainly because they bathe their steaks in butter), and my Boca Raton fave, Abe & Louie’s, I went on a meat and seafood frenzy.
I started off with the Grilled Black Pepper Bacon which is described as “slow-cooked Berkshire pork with a sweet and spicy glaze.” While it wasn’t tough or crispy like most steakhouse bacon, this was more like a boneless pork rib that could easily be cut with a fork rather than using a steak knife. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but was very good and worth a try.
Up next was a traditional shrimp cocktail served with cocktail sauce and a cucumber concoction containing the world’s most vile weed – cilantro. With that ingredient part of the dish, it was quickly banished to the side as I enjoyed the “colossal” shrimp simply dipped in the cocktail sauce.
For my main course, I chose a 6oz “petite” filet mignon prepared rare. It actually came out medium rare, which was fine with me. It was however served on a plate where the grease from the steak, or added butter, is collected around the rim of the plate with houses the restaurant’s own steak sauce. Remember what I said about Ruth’s Chris? This type of presentation took away from my enjoyment of the filet. I prefer my meat “simply grilled,” because if it’s done right, you don’t need to do anything else to it to make it taste great.
Along with my filet, I sprung for the $21 roasted 1 ½ pound Maine lobster. While I declined the drawn butter, as I don’t need any of that artery-clogging junk on my lobster, the crustacean was not simply roasted and basted with lemon as described, but also had some type of white sauce on it which to me detracted from the overall enjoyment. However, it was shelled and halved with the claw meat in the critter’s cavity.
Going with my server’s dessert recommendation, I got the Huckleberry Cheesecake which was great until a huckleberry rolled off my fork, down my shirt leaving a trail of blue juice before settling on my seersucker jacket causing me to curse under my breath as I dabbed club soda on myself in hopes the stain wouldn’t stay.
Overall the Chops experience didn’t live up to my land-based expectations and I find the Pinnacle Grill onboard Holland America ships to offer up a better steakhouse experience in the same class.
After dinner, I headed over to the Schooner Bar, a staple of Royal Caribbean ships and the place where those wishing to down a few cocktails and sing along with a guy playing the piano hang out. The piano player wasn’t bad, but when you play Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” at the piano bar, it’s a little kitschy. The bartender told me that the piano player’s playlist remains the same and is dictated by the “people in Miami.”
Before bed, I stopped to see if the constantly malfunctioning Bionic Bar was indeed working. Much to my surprise, it was, although the disk jockey spinning techno music was playing to just two tables of people. I’ve come to think that most just expect the thing to not work and they don’t waste their time going there.
On a side note, I’ve been told that it takes two-and-a-half hours to clean the Bionic Bar at night in order to get it up to United States health standards. If this were Mexico, it would take about two and a half minutes.
I have some schedule rearranging to do today as I’ll be meeting some friends in port this evening and having dinner off the ship. Or… I may just move my reservation to later in the night and grab a light bite earlier with them so I can experience another one of the ship’s restaurants firsthand.
Either way, outdoor activities are pretty much a bust today, but the North Star should be up and running as there’s no lightning and of course, there’s always the skydiving simulator!
Personal Day-By-Day Quantum of the Seas Cruise Review:
Photo Tour of the Quantum of the Seas:
No cruise vacation is complete without taking a ton of photos, and that’s exactly what I did on my Quantum of the Seas cruise. From the ship’s stunning interiors to its beautiful pool areas and my cozy stateroom, I captured it all on camera. You can check out my photo tour of the ship and see all of the pictures I took by visiting the links above for my day-by-day review of the cruise.