Vangrizz

The "virtual" Quantum CA itineraries are currently a combination of 3 and 4 night.  Much like Carnival's west coast 3/4 itineraries, the 3 night does Ensenada while the 4 night does Catalina and Ensenada.  

Not gonna lie...a little disappointed that the sushi making class is at a table. I had visions of myself standing behind a sushi bar, rolling things and shouting out random Japanese phrases (mostly Styx lyrics from the early 80's).
On the other hand, the hats completely save everything. LOVE that look.
Also, how many people do they take in the escape room at a time?

We have made it on the ship!

currently in the windjammer....stuffing food in our mouths since we are hungry!  More updates in a bit about the transfer, embarkation process etc. later. Muster is soon, then we have to get the kids registered for adventure ocean. Time for some more food. But first, find some booze!

I'm just basing my speculation off the app overlap for Quantum that Twangster posted about. And maybe a little wishful thinking. Five day runs out of Los Angeles to Catalina and Ensenada over Spring Break at a REALLY good price might work into my plans very well.

I'm just basing my speculation off the app overlap for Quantum that Twangster posted about. And maybe a little wishful thinking. Five day runs out of Los Angeles to Catalina and Ensenada over Spring Break at a REALLY good price might work into my plans very well.

So I was just looking on royal Caribbean's main webpage and @twangster photo from Dawes Glacier made it on to the website under the ovation of the seas page. Congrats on the spot on the webpage @twangster!!

 
 

I didn't want to buy into all the Buc-ee's hype - but - man. my sandwich was amazing.  And, they had geocaches to find. And the dog park signs were the best. 
For dinner - we didn't get a photo of the Japchae! but it was great. Driving in this Houston suburb was a bit crazy. 

That last statement by Fain is telling...that may be common across the cruise industry as a whole, given financial reports of household disposable capital has been trending downward.

Pre-cruise Day:  We stayed at the Country Inn & Suites by Radisson which is the closest hotel to the port.  The room was pretty nice and the bed was comfortable; however the hot water was so-so sometimes warm and other times okay. 

Could be doing first responders but like when Empress and Majesty lost Cuba they sold those ships at ridiculously low rates and offered a lot of casino comps to fill the ships.  There was no single supplement and I added 6 cruises to my resume as a result.  
Better to minimize losses and cover some operating costs such as crew costs through daily gratuity charges plus a good way to shake up the west coast cruise industry with a cold weather ship in a colder ocean in the spring.  Quantum class is a good fit for CA cruising in the spring.  I also think people spend more on board when they get a bargain on the cruise fare.  Why not splurge on a beverage package or dining when the cruise cost so little?

Some more menus from around the ship...
Chops Grille
Lunch

Dinner



Wonderland

Izumi



Jamie's italian
Lunch

Dinner


Bottomless Brunch

Taste of Royal

Hotel Tour: We are staying at a Homewood Suites by Hilton. We have a 2br suite. 

Living room

Master BR has a king size

 
Bedroom 2 is two queens

There is a small kitchenette 

I always find these situations funny....

I do a lot of codes inspections with the FD, so when I see stuff like this I wonder how this got past the design phase.??‍♂️
 
The kids are already in the pool

We have made it to Houston. Loaded up the rental car and we are headed to the hotel!

Day One - Addendum
One thing I forgot to mention was on our way down on day one, Julie was on Facebook when she said, "Oh no. It looks like there was a medical emergency on the Liberty. They are diverting to Cozumel and ..."
Did I mention that our first two RC cruises were cancelled? As she said this, my heart sank and I truly expected her to say " ... they've cancelled our cruise." But they didn't! Turns out they would just be delayed in returning to port. I breathed a sigh of relief and figured a few hours delayed is bettered than cancelled!
Day Two - Almost There
We woke up and were on the road by 7:30. We are geocachers so we needed to grab a quick cache to add Oklahoma to the list. Off and running on a fairly uneventful trip. As you head into Texas, there is an exit for a Welcome Center literally as you cross and so we availed ourselves of the rest rooms, free maps and found our first Texas geocache. Back on the road, we kept on until we needed to stop for lunch. For that, we had decided to stop at Buc-ee's. 
             

I watched a video on YouTube about Buc-ee's and knew we'd drive past at least one. When we realized we'd pass one as we headed through Dallas, we knew needed to stop. Oh. My. Gravy. If you don't know about Buc-ee's, the best way to describe it is if a convenience store (we have Casey's, QuikTrip and Kum & Go here in Iowa - 7-11 is probably best known) and a Cracker Barrel had a baby. It was HUGE. Grabbed some sandwiches that were so good, we ate there again on the way home!
           
 
We spent WAY too much time in Buc-ee's but finally got back on the road. We also enjoyed the warmer weather. It was in the high 60's / low 70's which was a lot better than the 20's / 30's we left back home. Kept heading south but had to make a stop in Arlington to visit the home stadium of the best team in the NFL, America's Team, THE Dallas Cowboys. I am a HUGE Cowboys fan but living in Iowa, I had never been to the new Stadium. We grabbed a virtual cache and visited the gift shop but decided to run across the street to Walmart as I figured they'd have a large amount of Cowboys gear and at Walmart rather than NFL prices! Sure enough, we found that and a few things we knew we forgot (and some soda and propel to take onboard for the boys). 

We planned to meet Grandma & Grandpa just outside of Houston and they messaged us that they were already at the hotel. We needed to get a move on! Back in the car and we headed south. On the way, we got the email from Royal saying our embarkation is delayed and asked us to wait until after 12:30 to arrive (we didn't, we wished we would have). Our only other stop was at another Buc-ee's for a soda the size of our head. We finally arrived a couple of hours later than we planned, but still in time to find some Korea food at a place called Bon Chon. Great KFC (Korean Fried Chicken!).

Soon enough, we were back at the hotel and trying to get some sleep because tomorrow is EMBARKATION DAY!

I think that "somebody" wants to come along, too! It's hard for me to leave our "somebody"(Manny) with sitters, but I know he will be happy-ish. 

Your husband seems to take his vacation time very seriously....it's awesome!

Animal Kingdom day! Woke up this morning breakfast burritos for breakfast then we had to go exchange our rental van (really just do new paper work as we booked the rest of the days using air miles) then off to animal kingdom. As soon as we got there it started pouring rain. Like we were all soaked. Off to Navi River journey thankfully this ride was indoors so we could stay out of the rain. then off to our first fast pass the festival of the lion king! Loved this show it was amazing!! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
next was another fast pass for Kilimanjaro safari. This was really well done too. My sister who has done a safari in Africa says this was really well done for Disney and even for North America. Got to see some cool animals!  
hippos 
 
baby zebra - it was so tiny
 
cheetah 
I will post more animal photos when I go through my camera photos. 
 
Then off to Starbucks we went, everyone was cold and wet still. Hot beverages for all and an animal kingdom Starbucks cup were bought. Then it was time to find lunch wow this was harder than I thought. I found there were less food stands in animal kingdom than in magic kingdom. Finally a hot dog was consumed by me than off to ride triceratops spin this was a fun children’s ride but i enjoyed it. Then off to dinosaur. This was my favourite ride of the day! It was amazing!! A thrill ride was enjoyed! Then time for a bugs life show. This was really well done and we all enjoyed it. It reminded me of the 4D rides at universal but those are better. Then it was time to make the long trek back to the car! 
 
then on to Florida Mall for the m &m store! Got to visit them all! Actually I have! Did some shopping got some new dress pants on sale boring but very useful! Then home for dinner of heart shaped pizza, salad wine and chocolate covered strawberries. All in all a good day! 
 
Final Disney thoughts: I enjoyed going to Disney and it was a fantastic experience! Magic kingdom was WAY better than animal kingdom! Part of it was the weather but I also enjoyed more rides at magic kingdom and more characters everywhere. As a whole next time I will do magic kingdom and universal studios! I think that’s my best fit!  
 
 
 
 
 

Day 6:
We had breakfast and drinks delivered this morning then off to the Dolphin and Manatee Encounter.  There we had a ton of fun. I kissed a girl dolphin and a boy manatee.  I preferred the girl dolphin, so I don’t know what that says about me ?
Would not recommend lunch at the encounter. ?
we purchased the photo shoot and it turned out awesome!
grabbed a taxi and went down town for a real lunch and shopping, taxi back and port shopping.  Had enough of the shopping
back on board, drinks and cookies waiting for us.
cleaning up for a CK dinner!

I fly about 6-8 roundtrips per year between North America and A/NZ, and the flight length definitely helps, and it's almost impossible to not get at least some sleep on a 13-17 hour flight. I'll get there early one morning, stay up until a normal bedtime that night, get a good nights sleep, and be just about completely adjusted by the time I wake up. 

two70° drink menu









Prices are $USD.

Cruise Summary
This cruise was a pretty fantastic experience overall.  New Zealand is pretty amazing and every port was very welcoming.   Sydney was a great city to start from.  
A couple of days pre-cruise to adjust to local time was perfect.  In general terms I haven't found the time changes to be that hard on the system on either end.  The long flight helps the transition.  
I was able to use credit cards in most cases so there wasn't a need for a lot of cash.
Third time on Ovation.  I'm very comfortable with Quantum class and it was a good fit for this cruise and the environmentals around New Zealand.  Tendering wasn't an issue, they seem to have this down to a science on Ovation.  In fact they did a better job tendering on Ovation than Vision did on a recent cruise with a tender port.  
I booked this cruise for the ports of New Zealand yet the time in Fiordland was the highlight of the cruise.
This was a photo intensive cruise.  Picture stats: 4,828 pictures taken, 870 posted.  
I hope you enjoyed following along and I thank you for viewing.
PS - some menu pictures coming soon.

Now my mind is racing with all kinds of ideas.  ?

I debated if I would do a blog for this trip or not and finally decided to take the plunge. I have lurked around here for about a year....... I know how helpful the "cruise boards" can be from all of my previous cruises and the research I had done..... My husband used to think I was crazy..... Then on our first cruise he was sitting in the ESPN sports box next to a guy-- drowing his sorrows in a beer as he didn't get any Palo reservations during the cruise for him and his wife and was in the dog house-- and realized that we had got dinner, champagne brunch and afternoon tea reservations because I knew where to be when. He realized my endless hours scouring the cruise boards really do pay off!!!   THEN WE SCORED THE START THE CAR $23 CDN/DAY OOPS OVER THE CANADA DAY LONG WEEKEND FOR THIS CRUISE AND HE WAS SOLD ON MY RESEARCH ?
I have read 1000's of cruise reviews so I will use some of my favourite styles to write this one ?
How this cruise came about:
In March 2019 we were away at our time share for our annual spring break getaway with our son. I was still recovering from a very serious concussion and couldn't travel and our time share was only 3 hour drive from our house so we went there. I was so sick of the weather--cold, snow, cold, snow and more cold and snow. I was jealous as our best friends and their son were away at an all inclusive in Mexico.  So I started looking one morning when I couldn't sleep at cruises for in March of 2020. Hubby and I had done a B2B on Royal to Greece and Croatia out of Venice (our first with Royal and our first B2B) along with a whirlwind tour of England and Switzerland for a total of a month in Oct 2018 and were pretty much sold on Royal. We previously had cruised Disney.... (huge break 15 years almost) and then Carnival a number of times. Needless to say Royal won us over.  I came up with this cruise ABC's (a bucket list for cruise) and St Marteen or Carnival Breeze- a ship we liked to Amber Cove, St Thomas, San Juan and Grand Turk..... well this one won out.  Got hold of our stellar TA and this was booked same day........ AFT Junior Suite .. SO EXCITED!!!
Sitting with our friends about a week after we all returned from our March breaks we told them about our cruise and she was booked within 24 hours.... It was supposed to be a surprise from her hubby and our teenage sons but ...... It's not lol.... and Everyone is excited for our vacation.
Background:
Our family is Me, DH, DS 16,  Our Best friends- my GF, her hubby and their DS 16.  We have been friends since we met them camping when our boys were 3 and had a knock down drag out fight.... You know the one where the playground is all theirs and myself and GF hubby are mortified about their behaviour and then later in the day these darling 3 yr olds are best friends?? They are a strange pair but are the best of friends and brothers!