2015 Quantum Barca, Dubai

Overall this was one of the best cruises we've been on.
The four days in Dubai with Maz and Sue were once again brilliant.
Just the same as two years ago they were the perfect hosts, sometimes too perfect lol.
I had to fight Maz to allow me to pay for anything, he did conceded once or twice, but under duress lol.
Sue explained that it was the Arab way, not letting guests pay for anything when visiting their home.
As for the cruise, I really enjoyed it, the fact that we hadn't done a cruise for six months probably helped as last year we did to many all very close together and we were cruised out.
Also the new ship helped, as it's totally different from any other Royal Caribbean ship, especially in the layout, it was a very tranquil ship, nobody seemed to be rushing around and the whole atmosphere was sort of calm.
Even the artwork was themed to be calming and reflective.
As for the staff, we only had a problem with one of them, that was a guy in future cruises, everyone else was brilliant.
The Captain was one of the best I've met, and definitely the most visible, we saw him all over the ship.
He came up to the concierge lounge about 10 times during the trip, and covered the whole room each time, speaking to everyone.
For the first time in ages we used the restaurants on board and not just the Windjammer, giving the dynamic dining a fair try, and I must say we where pleasantly surprised, it seemed to work perfectly.
We tried most of the free restaurants the best of which imho was Chic, and two of the pay restaurants the best of which was Jamies Italian restaurant.
The concierge lounge and diamond lounge where both nice if a bit small, considering the amount of diamond and above passengers on Royal ships these days.
The diamond lounge at least is situated in a place where it is able to allow an overflow. The concierge lounge is situated right at the back of the ship, where it has beautiful views of the seas but no overflow availability.
The entertainment on board was excellent and the cabaret lounge, which is called Two70, is beautiful and puts on AMAZING shows the one we saw was called Starwater.
The lounge itself is very high tech with huge video projection screens, and robotics.
One sad thing about the entertainment on our trip was that there was no Broadway show as Mama Mia had been taken off and nothing replaced it, to be fair we where informed of this and compensated for it.
But it was still a disappointment.
One show in the theatre that we missed was Sonic Odyssey and it got rave reviews from everyone who saw it, so not missing that one next time.
Other entertainment which we didn't actually try but looked brilliant included, the Seaplex,, which has Bumper Cars, XBox room, table tennis, indoor basketball / football court, which converts into a roller rink complete with disco lights.
Outside is the usual rock climbing walls, and Flow Rider, one great addition is the IFly, which is a skydiving simulator where you actually skydive in a big glass tube.
Also there is the North Star which is basically a giant glass pod on the end do of a huge crane, that gives you amazing views of the ship and the sea, or the port if you're in Port.
There are lots of other things to do, to many to mention here.
Overall I'd score the Quantum of the seas 8 out of 10.En savoir plus