Holidays!

Cruise to Nowhere – D1

When travelling is no longer an option, we opted for Royal Caribbean’s cruise to nowhere on Quantum of the Seas. I was initially a tad worried as I am quite prone to motion sickness, but it all turned out fine. I can feel the ship moving but didn’t puke. So that’s good. Overall it was a good voyage with some memorable events.

I plan to first document my 4D3N voyage and then do a post just on Tips and Tricks, riding on Jia’s wonderful list – which was VERY useful, and cute. I smiled and laugh every time I read it. 🙂 I have wonderful friends.

Day 1 – 13 Sept 2021

Met ZZ for lunch at McDonald’s to collect Bonggo, a soft toy which was supposed to give us more BINGO cards when we pay for the cards. More of that in Day 3.

We booked a Grab and when we thought finally, we see the cruise centre, Hubby asked “You got bring passports?” instead of answering “Of course!” as per usual with a smirk, I exclaimed “NO!”. BOTH of us forgotten about passports. I had a checklist, which I followed and thought of going through 1 last round just before leaving the house, but I forgot to do that – which was also not the norm. Luckily, the Grab is actually a Comfort cab and in a very chilled manner, the driver said “I convert to meter loh.” Super HENG…

Another lucky thing was that Jia encouraged us to book the earliest time slot for boarding so that we get to enjoy the facilities/ activites more. Hence we did not miss our cruise. When we finally reached, we did our ART test (which is not as invasive as PCR [not PRC – original typo. LOL] test), waited, got our results, and boarded the ship. It was all done in an orderly manner – kudos to Royal Caribbean.

Finally! The start of our Jiak Ba Koon Koon Ba Jiak (eat full sleep sleep enough eat) voyage!

• 

• 

After resting for a while, we heed Jia’s advice to go for popular cruise activity – FloRider first as the queue is still manageable. When we walked pass the location on other days, it is true that the queue were quite long.

Hubby managed to kneel for FloRider, but I did not…. #weakcoremuscles He said it was also because I did not keep my elbows close to my body for that push. The instructor we got was really patient even though I was hopeless. 😡 Throughout the voyage, Hubby said that his arms are sore. LOL.

We were contemplating if we should get WIFI for our voyage but decided not to because,
1. Time away from connection is not a bad thing
2. Online reviews are that satellite WIFI can be quite weak in stateroom. We saw quite a number of guests at the top deck to get signal, so guess that is quite true
3. WIFI onboard is not exactly cheap. It was $60+ for 1 device throughout the voyage. Which Hubby recognised that it can pay for 2 months’ home WIFI already.
4. I thought that communicating to each other onboard will still be possible via their app if we are going to do separate activities, hence we need not use Whatsapp. (clarification below)

Anyway, recommendation by Jia is that if getting WIFI, to try to get something called The Key which will allow priority queues rightfully. However, some of the service crews might not know what that is. Regardless, purchasing WIFI before the voyage will be cheaper than getting it onboard. Regarding #4, I thought wrong. You are required to pay to use the app for communication, and all participants must purchase to chat.

After FloRider we walked around the ship a bit to explore and opted for earlier dinner as Hubby was hungry. We also tried pizza and some sides before our actual dinner. Hungry man is an angry man, so better eat. We opted for an earlier dinner at 6:20pm as opposed to our default dinner time at 7:15pm, which we are encouraged to follow for crowd management. But again, hungry man is an angry man, so better eat.

Some pictures of our food,

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Dinner on Day 1 was rather slow and I regretted not bringing my book along. The service was also quite meh, luckily, Day 2 and 3 our perception totally changed. The food was also quite meh. The cookie was too sweet but Hubby was good with the Carnivore pizza. I ordered vegan pumpkin squash soup but was served grilled potato soup, which I thought was really bad as the potato soup is not vegan. My pasta was a bit too soft and the bananas were too sweet.

After dinner, we went to take a walk around the deck which was quite nice.

• 

• 

We were shocked with the queue to go into casino.

Supper was also pizza. I was not-so-ok with my caramel bananas that I ordered cake, which was so-so. The only late night dining places are Sorrentos (Pizza) and Cafe Promenade (tea, some cakes, sliders). You can also opt for In Room Dining, which you will need to pay for additional charges of $7+ and service charge of 18%. Being cheapos (and proud of it), we just went for complimentary food.

Hubby was excited when they have sports channel. And he exclaimed that it was as clear as his Singtel subscription.

We then dialed for Room Service to order our complimentary breakfast for tomorrow morning. I felt bad to call so late (it was 12am), but apparently everyone else was calling too as the line was engaged and the operator was not shocked to receive my call.