Quantum Of The Seas "The Karaoke Cruise" - December 2025 These Quantum-class cruise ships are my favorite in the Royal Caribbean Fleet

When the weather turns cold at our home in Washington state, we like to fly south and do a cruise somewhere warm.  So, in December of 2025, we flew down to Los Angeles and boarded Royal Caribbean's "Quantum Of The Seas" for a cruise down to sunny Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

This was my first time cruising on Quantum Of The Seas, but not my first time on one of Royal's Quantum-class ships.  In 2016, I had sailed on Anthem Of The Seas, and that ship really impressed me.  Royal Caribbean made a lot of smart design choices with this class of ships.  Ever since then, I've been looking for the right opportunity to sail on another Quantum-class ship.  The opportunity finally presented itself when my friends, Jeff & Michelle, mentioned that they would be doing a cruise out of Los Angeles on Quantum Of The Seas...  and oh, by the way, would we like to join them?

Jeff & Michelle

When Jeff and Michelle are on a cruise, they love to go to all the karaoke shows.  Both of them like to get up on stage and sing.  When Jeff performs, it's especially entertaining...  because he was actually a professional singer and performer earlier in life.  Now, in his retirement, he loves to wow the crowds with his energetic and professional performances.  My wife and I have horrible singing voices, so we just enjoy sitting in the audience and enjoying the shows.  Just about every night of the cruise, you could find the four of us at a karaoke show.  So, that's why I shall always remember this particular cruise as "The Karaoke Cruise".

If you've ever gone to a karaoke show, you know that the average karaoke singer will sing while viewing the lyrics of the song on a video monitor in front of them.  A lot of them stumble through the song, messing up the lyrics, and looking every bit like someone with zero stage presence.  Not Jeff!

Jeff knows the lyrics by heart, so he is not confined to standing in front of a video monitor reading them as he sings.  He gets out there on the stage and works the crowd.  He's really quite the performer!  At just about every one of his performances, he got the biggest ovation of any of the people who had performed that night.  He was even able to dazzle the crowd with a performance singing along with the ship's live band, rather than singing along with a pre-recorded karaoke track.

Still photos do not do this story justice.
You need to see a video of his performance to really appreciate it.

What I Love About The Quantum Class

At the top of my list of great Quantum-class features is a relaxing and quiet adults-only area of the ship that is fully protected from the outside weather by a glass cocoon.  This is known as The Solarium.  It's a little slice of paradise inside.

The Solarium has a complete heating and cooling system to keep the air temperature perfect, no matter what the weather outside is doing.  This makes it perfect for cruising in cold places like Alaska, or places that can get uncomfortably hot at times, like the Mexican Riviera.  As you can see in that last photo, the Solarium has a series of pools that cascade down to several lower levels.  There's more of them than just the two I could fit in this photo.  The water is heated, of course, to keep it all very comfortable.  Nearby there are also two hot tubs with even warmer water.

One interesting aspect about the fact that the Solarium is fully enclosed in a glass shell is that the Solarium is located at the very front of the ship, on the very top deck.  On a cruise ship, the front top of the ship is the windiest possible place you could be when the ship is sailing at sea.  The speed of the ship's motion, plus the speed of the wind coming at the ship, usually combine to make things windy and miserable up at the top front of the ship, unless the ship is tied up to a dock somewhere.  But thanks to all that glass, you're fully protected from all that when you're inside the Solarium on Quantum Of The Seas.

I often think about the Solarium when I cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines, because Carnival keeps making the dumbest mistake over and over with the design of many of their ships.  They put their adults-only relaxation area (known as The Serenity Retreat) at the top front of many of their ships, and they do not enclose them in glass.  It can get absolutely miserable out there on a cool, windy day.  They should have done exactly what Royal Caribbean did here on Quantum Of The Seas with the Solarium.  But for some reason, they never have.

Even Royal Caribbean has gotten it wrong many times!  On their Oasis-class ships, they only PARTIALLY enclose the top front area of the ship with glass.  Huge openings between some of the sections of glass, make what glass they do have totally ineffective.  It's one of many things that prevents me from ever sailing on another Oasis-class ship again.  But I love how they got it right with the Quantum class.

As if having one fully enclosed pool area was not enough, Quantum Of The Seas actually has a second one!  This one has a larger, deeper swimming pool that is suitable for swimming laps, rather than the more shallow cascading pools in the Solarium.

Another thing I totally love about the Quantum-class ships is a special lounge at the far back end of the ship.  It's called "Two70" because if you stand next to those big glass windows that wrap around the back of the lounge, you have a 270 degree field of view.  Here's a photo of it during the day:

The lounge is home to various events during the day, such as morning yoga stretching, presentations, or just used as a quiet place for people to sit and enjoy the views out the back of the ship.  But in the evenings, the Two70 lounge completely transforms in to the most high-tech theater I've ever seen!  Gigantic screens are lowered over the window openings, turning those huge picture windows in to a gigantic screen that they can project anything they want on to...  much like a movie screen.  So, any backdrop they need for any show can be projected over what during the day are big picture windows.  Also, a series of big video monitors mounted on robotic arms can come to life and go in to motion to create an amazing series of special effects like you've never seen before.  It's SO creative!  Plus, the sound and lighting in this theater is fantastic.  So, the shows they do in here are super high-tech, and they always impress me.

One important note, however.  If you are at all sensitive to bright lights or flashing lights or strobe lights, please stay away from the shows in Two70.  If you're prone to epileptic seizures, stay away.  If you get headaches in the winter months because the sun is so low in the sky and seems so bright, stay away.  The lights in this theater do frequently point right at the audience, and are quite bright, and will flash rapidly with the music.

I actually got a little mad at Royal Caribbean when someone in the audience went in to a seizure during a show I attended.  I remember very clearly that before the show started, there was a generic announcement made that there "might be" some flashing lights during the show that might bother some people.  That announcement totally missed the mark.  It was worded to give Royal Caribbean legal cover, so that they could say people were warned.  But the use of the phrase "might be" made the announcement completely misleading to the people who needed to be protected.  It should have been worded much more strongly, and someone in the theater the night I was there ended up paying a painful price for it.

Quantum Of The Seas is a fantastic ship for families who are cruising with children, multi-generation families, and young people who like to stay active during the daytime hours rather than just lounging around and relaxing all the time.

Here are some of the fun things you can do while cruising on Quantum Of The Seas.  Let's start with the surfing simulator, known as the Flowrider.

There's also a skydiving simulator, known as iFly:

There is an extra charge to use iFly or the Flowrider.  But there are also a lot of fun activities that people can do on Quantum Of The Seas that do not incur any extra charges at all.  For example, there's a multi-purpose space known as SeaPlex that can transform to fit several different free activities.  My personal favorite is when they turn it in to a bumper car track!

That same space can be set up as a basketball court, a roller skating rink, a laser tag arena, a pickleball court, or a dance hall.  You can also see in that last photo that behind it are game tables for things like air hockey and other active tabletop games that kids will love.  Upstairs, are numerous video consoles such as Xbox that are connected to large TVs in a living room type of environment.  None of it incurs any extra charges, and kids are welcome to use all of this equipment for hours on end.  You can imagine how great that is for families traveling with kids.

Another thing that really impresses me about the Quantum-class of ships is the smart choices they made in designing the cabins.  There are features in these cabins that are so brilliant!  All the other cruise lines should study what Royal Caribbean did here with the cabin design.  Let me just point out one that's easy to see in this next photo.  A lot of cruise ships feature two closets, since typically you have two people sharing a room.  But where a lot of cruise ships get it wrong is by placing the two closets right next to each other.  Look at what Royal Caribbean did here.  The two closets are completely separated from each other, with a large couch in between them.  Allow me to explain why this is so smart, and two adjacent closets are not...

When two people share a cabin, they tend to do things together as a couple, right?  You're going to go to dinner together at the same time, so you're going to be getting dressed for dinner at exactly the same time, too.  If your two closets are next to each other, you bump in to each other the entire time.  If both are trying to get in to the closet at the same time, it's awkward.  You're in each other's way.  Stretch your arms out to put on a shirt, and your arm bumps in to the other person.  Royal Caribbean figured all that out, and realized that the smartest cabin design would separate the two closets with as much space as possible.

There are lots of other ideas that Royal Caribbean came up with along these lines.  When the lights in the bathroom are turned off, a nightlight automatically activates...  and stays on until you turn the bathroom lights on again.  So, if you stumble in to the bathroom at 2 AM for a potty break, you don't have to turn on the very bright lights inside the bathroom.  There's just enough light from the bathroom night light to allow you to do what you need to do, but not enough to disturb the sleep of the other person.

Another brilliant bathroom design choice involves the large towels that you would use to dry off with after a shower.  Have you ever hung one of those up on a hook on the back of a bathroom door, only to have it fall to the floor when you swing the bathroom door open?  On Royal Caribbean, those big towels all have fabric loops on one end, so you can securely loop the towel on to the hook and know it won't fall off the hook when you open and close the bathroom door.

There are many more little things along those lines that the folks at Royal Caribbean came up with when they designed these Quantum-class cabins.  I'll point out a few more of them in a future YouTube video, and will post it here when it's ready to be seen.

Jim & Kellyn In Vacation Mode

Kellyn and I are always so much more relaxed and happy when we're on a cruise ship than when we're at home experiencing everyday life.  Here's a couple of pictures that I think show it.  This is us in vacation mode.

Videos

Still photos are great, but a YouTube video tells the story of this cruise so much better!  Here's a video I made that explains why Quantum Of The Seas is a ship that I definitely recommend.  Just click the little triangular play button to get the video to play.

There's going to be a follow-up video to that one, but I haven't started editing it yet.  It will focus on the things we did, both on and off the ship, during our cruise.  I'll post it here when I've finished editing it.

There is one other video from this cruise that you can watch right now.  It's unusual!  When our ship was docked in Ensenada, our balcony faced a dock where they were loading and unloading shipping containers on to a ship.  It was oddly fascinating to watch, but it all happened so slowly that it occurred to me that it would be a lot more fun to watch it in a time-lapse video.  So, I got my GoPro out and made one.  Have a look:

Need A Travel Agent?

Booking a cruise can be confusing, especially if you haven't been on many cruises before.  There are lots of first-time cruiser mistakes that a travel agent can keep you from making.

If you're interested in booking a cruise with any cruise line...  please feel free to use the services of my travel agent, Caitlin Gallagher.  She's extremely pleasant to deal with, easy to talk to since she lives in the United States and speaks without any kind of an accent, and quite experienced and knowledgeable about different types of cruising.  Caitlin is the owner of Ambren Travel.  Visit her web site, check out the Ambren Travel Facebook page, or contact her using the information below.

The Cruise Ships We've Been On

If you've enjoyed this page, you would probably also enjoy reading the stories about some of the other cruise ships I've traveled on.  Click here to see the complete chronology of all the cruises we've ever taken, and to read the full story of any that look interesting to you.

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