2026 Mexican Riviera B2B on Quantum of the Seas: Final Thoughts

Another extremely relaxing vacation, even despite some health issues for each of us. Some takeaways:

Without question, food on Quantum was MUCH better than Brilliance. There were a handful of things that we’d tried on the TA and marked as “red” that earned “green” this trip. In particular, the Warm Apple Cobbler and Chicken Parm were edible on Quantum, and the leap-of-faith taken to try them after the terrible experience on Brilliance was rewarded. This is the first time we’ve seen obvious evidence of the oft-mentioned comments on Cruise Critic that “the head chef on the ship makes a difference”. OTOH, the mass-produced desserts in places like WJ and Café Promenade were generally dreadful on both ships. Too much gelatin mixed with too much whipped cream.

As far as specific menus go, here’s how we ranked the individual nights, from best to worst:

1. Chops
2. Jamie’s
3. Welcome Aboard
4. Taste of the Caribbean (we skipped on this cruise, but based on prior cruise)
5. Taste of France
6. Taste of Mexico
7. Taste of Italy
8. Wonderland
9. Bon Voyage

One obvious take-away is that, in future, we should schedule a specialty restaurant the last night of a cruise, and Taste of Italy night is also a good candidate to be replaced.

• Quantum-class itself left us unimpressed. Better than Freedom-class by a long shot, but far inferior to the warmth and design on Radiance-class. The two70 venue has some interesting features, but the supposed “wow factor” of their $7M investment in the robotic TV screens is lacking. The only decks where you can go outside are 5 (where the views are almost completely blocked by lifeboats and where you can’t make a full circuit around the ship), 14, and 15. Less than ½ of the public spaces have outside window views. The theater is particularly poorly designed with tons of awful sightlines once you start moving away from the center of the seating area.
• Cruise Director Tami was neither the best nor the worst CD. Based on videos we watched in our stateroom of the late night dance parties held in two70 she’s got boundless energy – but all the times we saw or heard her in person she seemed to be doing the standard formulaic schtick. The activity staff had few standouts compared to other cruisers. Luciana (from Brazil) and Emily (from New Orleans) impressed me, and there was a girl from South Africa whose name I never caught that had moments. (She was great at banter during the Scavenger Hunt, but when she hosted us in the Royal Puzzle room she seemed pretty disinterested.)
• The B2B experience was interesting – and, once again, we confirmed that long-length cruises “work” for us - but the quick repeat of menus (i.e. let’s restart with the “Welcome Aboard” menu and start the cycle again) risks the food getting boring. Additionally, although there is a little bit of variation in the activities schedule, many of the trivia events had overlap in questions, so the mental stimulation can diminish. We did witness some events we wouldn’t have otherwise, however, in an effort to keep things fresh. We were also both happy to read quietly at venues (even if the venue itself wasn’t quiet) and we, once again, managed to complete a 2-player game of The Crew enjoyably. Hopefully Royal can find a way to make the Mexican Riviera more than just a random combination of Cabo/PV/Mazatlan/Ensenada, although we’re not holding our breath.
• One clear after-effect of the Covid pandemic is that EVERYONE washes hands now. No one skips the “washee washee” stations at Windjammer, and no one skips a sink in the bathroom.
• Our magnetic motion-sensitive night lights, such a godsend on Brilliance, were less needed on Quantum, although this is probably a reflection of the Junior Suite, where the toilet room had a constant night light. If we’d been in a normal balcony and/or interior it is possible that we’d still want the additional lights.
• Long Beach (airport and cruise port) remains a great place for us. Easy to get to, easy to get in and out of. The ports sailed TO are generally boring, however. Cabo is not our kind of port, and while we had a great time on our Ensenada wine tour I think we’ve pretty much done all there is to do. The $4 shuttle from the port to “downtown” – the port itself is in the middle of NOTHING – leaves you in an area about 6 blocks long filled with NOTHING. It is obvious why most people don’t bother leaving the ship.
• With this cruise, we’ll finally make Diamond, after a short (sic) 12 years of trips. With that, we’ve earned the key perk of 4 drink vouchers per day, and our biggest additional expense has gone away! We have no doubts that we’ll be much more likely to order more drinks (and willing to abandon “mistakes”) than previously. Of course, the reality is that we probably won’t be able to do another cruise for a couple of years – when you pack four cruises into twelve months it takes a good chunk out of your wallet, and we need to be mindful of that. Sigh.

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2026 B2B Day 13: Final Debarkation and Flying Home

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

We decided last night that we weren't going to try to eat breakfast onboard, expecting to get something at LGB when we arrived and had plenty of time. Therefore, we set the alarm for 730A, expecting that we'd be woken up long before that anyway.

Of course, we were awake by 645A, so I got up and showered, and then while E showered I made a quick swing through Windjammer to get her a few slices of her favorite bread and me a couple of cinnamon donuts. We relaxed in our rooms until 8A, when they announced it was time to vacate.

It took the ship longer than expected to get port clearance. As such, self-departure, slated to start around 730A, didn’t begin until a little after 8A. What that meant is that when we walked downstairs from Deck 7 to Deck 5, with the intention of going to Schooner where Jr. Suites and up had their waiting area, Deck 5 was mobbed with a huge line running all the way back to the mid elevators. Trying to get past all those folks and to Schooner seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, so we continued downstairs to Deck 4 figuring we could enter the theater, walk up to the balcony, and THEN make it to Schooner.

Still a madhouse. So we simply waited in the theater (with, you know, the common folks) until deciding that we could skip the madness of Deck 5 entirely and walk down to Deck 2, where they were encouraging folks who weren’t lugging around big bags to go. So we did that – and then had to allow two banks of elevators and ANOTHER set of stairs to merge into our line once we got down to Deck 2.

We’ve never experienced a debark that seemed this crowded before. Not sure if it was 100% due to the delay in clearing the first round of departures or (more likely) bad traffic flow because of Quantum’s layout. Whatever the reason, it actually took the better part of 30 minutes to get out of the ship and into the terminal to claim our luggage, then another 10 minutes or so to get through the Customs line, and finally about 15 minutes to FINALLY get into a Lyft to the airport, at which we arrived at just about 10A. This was still plenty of time for our 1155A departure.

The flight home on Southwest was one of the few non-full flights we’ve been on in a long time. We were chatting with one of the flight attendants about Southwest’s new assigned seating policy and I asked whether they had noticed any changes to loading times. She said it was still hard to tell because February and March are historically slower times so hard to gauge. What she did say was that they’d seen a dramatic drop in wheelchair requests now that seating is pre-assigned. Turns out that they had a LOT of passengers who used to pretend that they needed wheelchairs in order to get pre- boarding and seats up front who would miraculously recover and walk off flights under their own power at the destination. “Yeah, we’d see that all the time but, of course, we weren’t allowed to say anything about it.” People can be such scum.

Although our row started with three of us in it, as soon as the plane was in the air our aisle seat-mate was able to move forward one row and I moved from the middle into the aisle. The flight left a little early and we arrived at SJC about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, at 1P. The bags were out quickly and we were calling the shuttle from the right location by 115P and at the car by 130P.

From there, we swung by Togo’s (for a shared #9) and Safeway (for ingredients for our Welcome Home dinner of BBQ chicken, baked potatoes, and salad – likely accompanied by one of our bottles of L.A. Cetto cab). We put away vacation gear and started the first load of laundry before finally sitting down with a contented sigh at 3P. (Actually, we first had to “spring forward” the clocks at home since we hadn’t been around to do it a couple of days earlier.)

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2026 B2B Day 12: Ensenada (Cruise #2: 6N Mexican Riviera)

Monday, March 9, 2026

Cruise Compass

Around October 2025 I found an interesting looking winery excursion in Ensenada. For a very reasonable $50 each (later reduced) we’d visit two wineries, taste about 8 wines, and also get food tasting (plus access to paid tacos for lunch) during a 4-hour excursion. Given the slim pickings at Ensenada this was a nice surprise. Given that we weren’t planning anything organized this seemed like a good option. Left to ourselves we definitely would NOT have gone ashore here.

We woke up in the morning and, checking weather reports, dressed for what was supposed to be high of about 64 degrees before heading down for a quick Windjammer breakfast. As we left to head back to our room, E had the good idea to step out on the pool deck to check the outside temperature. It was obvious that the day was going to be warmer than the forecast, so back in our room we both lightened up what we were wearing, including me putting on shorts. The advantage to my shorts is that they have a lot of pockets, so I can easily carry wallet, phone, both passports, and both SeaPass cards securely, so E doesn't have to lug around her purse.

We gathered on the pier and quickly found our tour. We were on a bus with about 30 people headed for the wineries, with our local guide Michelle. She was very entertaining and not only gave us just the right amount of local info but also made the logistics of what was going to happen very clear, including advising us re: the three things we could NOT bring back onboard from the winery shops (cheese, cream cheese, and flowers). Otherwise, everything was fair game.

L.A. Cetto was the first stop. They are Mexico's oldest and largest winery and (supposedly) are known for a wine based on Italian grapes that no one, other than them, has successfully grown outside Italy. Here we tasted four wines (essentially, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Chard, a Merlot-like, and their normally-only-grown-in-Italy wine). We both liked the Sauvignon Blanc but were less enamored with the others. Apparently, they are also known for their taste-to-value ration, with most wines being sold directly at the winery ranging from about USD 10 to USD 30 per bottle – and most were below $20. As we got back on the bus we also (each) were given a 375ml bottle of their Cabernet Sauvignon, plus a keychain with a fob made from recycled oak barrels. Several people opted to open up one of their bottles after we left the second winery. We opened up one of ours for our first meal at home upon return. Let’s just say that at “free” the wine might have been slightly overpriced. I’m guessing that Cetto is the Gallo of Mexico.

Our excursion guide, Michelle, setting up for the first pouring at L.A. Cetto.

More proof that we made it onto dry land in Ensenada.

E living her dream...

The second winery (La Casa de Dona Lupe) was just across the street and served us each a flight consisting of some kind of white wine, a honey wine (that was based on red grapes), and two different sangrias. One sangria was VERY raspberry-forwards and the other less so. I gave both of those to E. The honey wine was surprisingly not awful. We wouldn't buy it, but it was pleasant to sip. The white was forgettable. The REAL purpose of this winery is that it offers food for sale. Normally this is burgers, pizza, and some Mexican standards, but on the day we were there they had two off-menu options also available, both of which we split. The first were Baja fish tacos that were excellent, served with a nicely spicy hot sauce. The other was a plate of 5 beef flautas served with a (different) salsa that wasn't as flavorful as the one that accompanied the tacos. It was still tasty, however.

After lunch, we still had about 15 minutes left to look through the store, selling an assortment of salsas, jams, and flavored tequilas. We apparently could have asked for tastings of the latter (and WERE offered both salsa and jam tasting options) but we passed on all of them as we were full after lunch. We did buy some small items for the kids on our way out, however.

Back on the bus, several folks opted to open up at least one of their small bottles of Cab Sauv, and we enjoyed a relaxing trip back to Ensenada where we were redelivered to the ship and into our room by about 230P which meant…nap time! Well, nap time for E and time to type these notes up for me. We had a final (6th) towel animal to add to our menagerie waiting for us. We didn't realize it, but the fact that we had collected six animals might have been a perk for Junior Suites and up. E said she overhead our dining neighbors at Chops last night saying something about not being able to get a new towel animal without turning in their existing one. Thinking about it, this is probably true. If EVERYONE got to collect 3 animals every cruise they'd have to stock something like 2500 additional towels just for that!

Our towel animal menagerie by the end of the cruise. When I moved animal #5 (the puppy) from bed to counter his head fell off, so I messed up his face. However, our stateroom attendant obviously noticed because he fixed it when we were out, as shown here.

We enjoyed another sail away on the balcony heading out of Ensenada. We actually went out when we heard lots of cheering and catcalls outside and realized that there must have been pier runners out there. Sure enough, we saw a couple of people just entering the ship and could hear the folks on the dock directly below us saying “there’s still five more”. Two of them arrived on a port-supplied golf cart almost immediately after that, but the last three could be seen running about a ½ mile away, already 5 minutes after All Aboard time. The golf cart guys took pity on them and went to retrieve them and they received a huge ovation from the crowd which they acknowledged with apparent good humor. From there, we watched everything from the cast off of lines, the sideways push away from the dock, until we’re we chased down by the pilot boat and the pilot jumped from our ship to their boat and peel away. In all, we had a pleasant 30 minutes out there.

The evening was pretty calm compared to our other nights, particularly because we had to do the hated “pack everything up to get the bags in the hall by 10P" dance. There was only one trivia left that we'd have time to do (5P Afternoon Trivia at the Pub – which, it turns out, we didn't do, opting instead to finish up our final three missions for The Crew sitting outside Café 270), followed by dinner and the 8P farewell show, after which we returned to the stateroom to do our packing. We decided to forego the option of going down to listen to the Piano/Vocalist (Justin) at Schooner after we had finished packing and spent the rest of the evening relaxing in our room

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2026 B2B Day 11: Sea Day #2 (Cruise #2: 6N Mexican Riviera)

Sunday, March 8, 2026

Cruise Compass

This was a pretty relaxing Sea Day for us. We both crashed HARD last night and slept in until about 830A or so. We were correct about there being no actual change in time overnight. After a typical breakfast in Windjammer were in the Schooner Bar in time for the 10A Morning Trivia. Our 13/20 was good for 2nd place, behind the winner with 15. We stayed in comfy seats catching up on tablet games and then reading through another edition of Napkin Folding and Dingbats, where 4 of the 20 puzzles had been switched out. If we'd played it “new" we would have score 16/20 (assuming we would have missed the same hold-over puzzles that we hadn't know the first time around).

As we wanted comfy seats on the main Music Hall floor for the later Harry Potter visual trivia we went over to the Music Hall, forgetting that they'd be starting Royal Mystery the hour before our HP trivia. So, yes, we were “those people" who took up two comfy chairs that would have better served two people playing the mystery game – but dem's da berries. It was interesting to watch the two teams on either side of us work (or not) at the challenges. One team got close but submitted a wrong final answer, while the other team never finished all the basic puzzles.

HP trivia was the usual assortment of questions, where there's usually one specific question that's meant to stump 99.9% of the players. In this case, the question was “how many staircases are at Hogwarts?” to which the answer is 142 (or maybe it was 144 – I forget). As expected, ONE team knew the answer…but that wasn't enough to give them 20/20. They were one of 4 teams with 19/20 in a playoff where the tie-breaker question was “what was Ron's patronus?”, which we believe was a Jack Russell terrier, although we didn't stick around to confirm. Our 18/20 was shared by many team around the room.

Since we'd had a late breakfast we had decided that we'd only snack in the afternoon, so post-trivia, around 145P, we went down to Sorento's/Café Prom for some small bytes, and then went and walked through the SeaPlex (since we hadn’t actually seen it on our earlier trip around the outside of Deck 15) and hung out watching the kid’s pool until our 230P escape room.

Mid-afternoon we’d booked a slot for “The Royal Puzzle Society”, which was a low-production-value escape room hosted up in Fuel, normally the teen’s disco area (and probably used for that in the evenings). We were one of three couples in our session, which had us finding 3 physical keys to unlock 3 of 6 locked boxes, while we had to solve some number puzzles to unlock the other three. I feel like we would have benefited from 2 more people because a few of the puzzles took a lot of time for our group and we failed to get out of the room. Sounds like it is about 50/50. I say “low-production” not as a bad thing. They have pretty cleverly figured out how to get an escape room experience in a way that is a lot more portable than the dedicated rooms we’ve seen on the other ships. The physical components were low-tech (tangram puzzles, a paper/pencil puzzle, some lucite overlays to neoprene mats, etc) but served their purposes well. I had no complaints, especially given that it was only $10/person.

After the puzzle room, it was time to head over to the tables outside Café 270 for more of The Crew. I went into two70 to the bar but there was no bartender to be found, so ended up at Vintages to get us a couple of Mai Tais. Inside two70 they were rehearsing bits of Starwater, clearly needing to do some spacing as they were still down one male dancer. A tech guy saw me standing (I was looking onstage to count dancers) and came over to say that this was a (public) rehearsal and I was welcome to come in and sit. I asked him if the male dancer was seriously hurt, which took him a bit by surprise. He asked what I had noticed, so I explained. He was (rightfully) not going to give me much detail, other than to say “we haven't been given much detail". They did rehearse the acrobatics scene that he got hurt during, and I saw one of the other ensemble male dancers in the featured slot. I'm not sure whether the featured female who was also rehearsing was his normal partner or one of the featured women we'd already seen. I'm suspecting that there's AT LEAST three couples capable of stepping into the featured role. Who knows? May all six couples can do the part?

While Eileen went to the cabin to start her afternoon nap I went down to Guest Services and charged off additional tips for our stateroom attendant (Joseph) and waiters (Veronica and asst. waiter Ikadek). When I got back to the cabin our luggage tags were waiting – such a sad sight! L

Dinner was at Chops and, as usual, we had a great time. We basically had the same stuff as on Brilliance. Interestingly the one item Brilliance seemed to do better was my Grilled Black Pepper Bacon, which here seemed more pork-chop-like than previously. On the waiter’s recommendation I tried the Red Velvet Cake for dessert and it was excellent. The difference between the mass-market version served in the WJ and this was huge. The Chops version was just about perfect.

Post-dinner, we had time for another visit to two70, this time to listen to the Quantum of the Seas Orchestra perform numbers by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, and more. From there we hoofed it over to the Royal Theater for…wait for it…MO5AIC! Yep, the boys were back and yep, they were doing the same show as always. Actually, there were a couple of differences. No more opera interlude, and there was at least one new arrangement for the encore. They also had a sub in for one of the guys. He had to have been someone who had been a prior member because he slid in seamlessly.

We ended the night reading in comfy seats at the Music Hall while listening to another set by Pulso. They are very good, but the main band we had on Brilliance was better – but that's a plaudit to the Brilliance band, not a knock on Pulso.

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2026 B2B Day 10: Cabo San Lucas #2 (Cruise #2: 6N Mexican Riviera)

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Cruise Compass

Another rough night of sleep for me, being awake from around 2A until sometime after 530A and then getting up around 815A. As a result, I'd end up taking a nap at 1130A before lunch. But first…

CABO! Yes, on the 4th possible day to visit we finally decided to go ashore and walk about. At Cabo they contract for local tender service, and a variety of vessels handle the roughly 11 minute ride into the marina. Our inbound boat was a smallish one, where the driver (I can't give him the honorific of Captain) crashed about as we left Quantum and as he backed into the dock at the marina. Our outbound boat was a much larger affair and we had a calm, smooth sailing.

As expected, you are assaulted by vendors selling glass bottom boat tours, boats to The Arches, private yachts, fishing, jewelry, hats, and what looked like fridge magnets. We stuck to the boardwalk (actually a red concrete walk) and while most vendors were concentrated in the 1st hundred yards or so, there was never a point in anywhere that we walked when we were less than about 200’ from someone trying to offer us something.

E was interested to see if she could find something like a dress or shawl or similar, but everything we saw seemed to cater to younger women. In a building signposted as a market we discovered dozens of individual stalls, mostly sharing the same merch. E did find two silver pendants that she intended to get for Ash and herself, but when they indicated that they wanted USD 200 each (or a “deal" at USD 300 for both) it was apparent we were in different worlds, so we had to take a hard pass.

Somehow my mental map for the boardwalk was way off from reality. I thought much more was within just a couple hundred yards of the cruise ship drop-off, but some of the really well-known places were a longer walk away than expected. We got as far around as Solomon's before turning around, and since we had no plans to do any kind of excursion we were fine heading back to the ship after an hour onshore.

Post-nap we made an obligatory stop at Windjammer for lunch, although neither one of us was very hungry, and then headed to the Music Hall for mid-afternoon as that was the location for trivia today. During that time we each tried new drinks found on the MH menu. I had a Hotel California (essentially a tequila-forward marg with Tabasco sauce which left me unimpressed, while E had something with vodka, raspberry liqueur, a berry sparkling water, and topped with club soda which also left her wanting.

We saw several seals hanging around barking at boats. We'ree guessing that they are used to getting fed, either by fishermen or, more likely, by tour boats.

 Evidence that we went ashore at Cabo.

Our home away from home for 12 nights.

As we waited for the first trivia to start, a guy named Dan sat down at our spare chair and announced that he'd be on our team and he'd lead us to victory. Turns out he's another one of these solo cruisers who lives/dies by his trivia playing. He then proceeded to play a mostly silent game when he'd write down “the team's" answer with smugness. He didn’t want us to be on his team – he wanted us to be witnesses to his greatness. Whatever, Dan.

The instructions as we (the room) understood things was we had to give the airport and location, as in YVR=Vancouver, Canada. However, when we started grading the host said he wanted the NAME of the airport (so “Vancouver Int'l"). No one, including Dan, had written that down but he named several – but certainly not all of them – on the fly. However, when it came time to announce our score it seemed like we (he) was still going to trounce the room so when we were asked our honest score I wasn't about to do what he wanted (claim a perfect 40) because I'd heard him guessing wrongly at a few names. When he looked to me to feed him “40” I arbitrarily said “32”. Well, turns out there was another solo player in the room who claimed 36 which led Dan to mutter “I should have said 38” and basically pout because he wasn't going to win a keychain. There was a team sitting behind us that also suffered from “not fair" syndrome. Thankfully, Dan left and didn't insist on “teaming up” with us on later rounds.

A recap of our trivia day:

• Airport Codes: 32/40 (2nd, 36 wins)
• Visual Trivia, Landmarks: 35/54 (54)
• TV Theme Music: 13/20 (17)
• Afternoon General Trivia: 11/20 (12 – by “Mr. Blue Shirt" aka Wally)

It is interesting that Wally, when the questions are (I think) reasonably unique and not part of their catalog of themed questions, does as well as we do. So this just makes his (and similarly, Dan's) obsessive need to “win" their 20th time through a random themed trivia all the more sad. At best they are self-focused somewhere on the autistic spectrum. At worst they are selfish narcissists. This is why we have always made a habit of allowing ourselves no more than one public trivia win on a cruise. When we piled up multiple wins in the past we were simply silent about our scores in later games. Who needs more key chains, zipper pulls, pens, and similar crap? (We won the “best" prize several years ago when we got our Royal-branded baseball caps – and even then, once we had won 4 of them in a single game we stopped claiming more caps.)

Other than both sail-aways, today was the first real use of the balcony. I sat outside while E napped and I typed up these notes. Our first time through Cabo it had both been too hot and the balcony was too sun-exposed to be comfortable, but today it was just lovely. The screaming baby in the cabin next door didn't detract from my enjoyment. J

Just like our TA on Brilliance, our in-cabin time has been limited. Other than naps we've mostly been sitting out in public spaces (like the bars and The Library) and the value proposition of a balcony is becoming increasingly questionable. Not sure whether we’d feel like shut-ins if we took an interior cabin or maybe a virtual balcony, but I'm hopeful that we'd be OK doing this, as it plays into my dream of occasionally taking advantage of Royal's “Going Going Gone” offers to perhaps score a last minute cheap cabin out of LA. My calculations suggest that we might be able to take two “cheap" cruises for the price of what we're currently paying for a balcony cabin.

Dinner at Jamie's Italian was pretty good. Certainly, in comparison to The Taste of Italy menu in the MDR, well…there's no comparison. Our only real disappointment at Jamie's were the gummy and mostly tasteless garlic rolls. Both of our pastas (Penne Arribiatta for me, Penne Carbonara for E) were excellent, as was my Banana Split for dessert. Post dinner we relaxed in the Music Hall while a game went on in the lower level, and then continued our reading with the very good band Pulso playing in the background for a couple of sets.

Once back in our room we debated whether we needed to change our watches or not. The waiter at dinner said we should turn back 1 hour tonight due to crossing back into Pacific Standard, BUT…we believe we are also LEAPING FORWARD 1 hour due to the start of Pacific Daylight time, with the end result being that we shouldn’t change anything at all. Curiously, today's Cruise Compass made no mention of any time change, nor did we receive a printed reminder on our bed from our stateroom attendant, so we decided to simply leave our watches set as-is and we'll sort it out tomorrow morning.

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2026 B2B Day 9: Cabo San Lucas #1 (Cruise #2: 6N Mexican Riviera)

Friday, March 6, 2026 

Cruise Compass

After a less than wonderful night of sleep for me (thanks, runny nose) we got up and had breakfast before embarking on a trivia-heavy morning in Schooner:

• Today's daily puzzle – the first time we've made it in time on either leg of this trip – was a musical instrument word search. We were happy to stick with the initial, simple puzzle that was offered and started in on our tablet games instead of grabbing the 2nd word search made available.
• Morning trivia was the usual eclectic mix of questions. We got 13/20, which was probably good for 3rd place with 16 winning the room.
• American Jukebox: We did AMAZING for us, getting 20/32 points. Each question was worth 2 points – 1 for the song title, 1 for the artists. Not surprisingly, several teams did better with 31 ultimately winning. But we were quite pleased with our score.
• Sports: Our 10/22 was OK, but the winners had 15.
• Cartoon Theme Music: held after lunch, we got a very respectable 16/20 but lost to 19.

As we did last Cabo stop, we didn't both getting off the ship today. Instead, post-lunch (once again at Café 270) we headed forward to Deck 15 and took a tour around the running track so we could see the Sports Deck. We didn't see either the North Star or iFly in use, but briefly watch some FlowRider action. We did see North Star in operation later in the cruise, but never saw iFly in action. It was pretty hot out there today, although we did note a nice shaded area with loungers that might have been nice if we had wanted to spend more time outdoors. Instead, we took the forward stairs down to level 5, looking at the artwork as we went. The forward stairs had really paltry offerings compared to the midship stair route we sampled last week.

After a reading stop in two70 (where the crew appeared to be calibrating one of the lift lines used for Starwater) we returned to our cabin for a short nap (me) and a long nap (E). We then went down to the Music Hall around 4P to get a drink (Mai Tais, today's Drink of the Day) and stake out our seats for the 5P Afternoon Trivia, in which got a good 14/20, losing to 19. Mr. 19 is the same guy from the prior cruise (Mr. Blue Shirt) who clearly has memorized every question he's heard – and unlike us, who are happy to win at most one prize on a cruise, this guy wants every single crap trinket he can get his hands on.

Tonight's dinner was Taste of Italy, and was another example of “what a difference a ship makes" when it comes to food. Although I'd been badly bitten by TERRIBLE Chicken Parm on Brilliance (so bad that Keyshelee had told us that many folks were getting replacement entrees) I crossed my fingers and got it here – and it was fine. The overall menu for this night is still pretty weak, however, and it is a good candidate to get skipped in future cruises.

Following dinner (and some post-dinner reading in Boleros) we again attended the Starwater show in two70, this time sitting in slightly better seats a bit more central and a lot more comfortable. The quality of the show remains high, with the somewhat slow start and the amazing finish. It turns out that they have (at least) two different pairs of featured dancers, as tonight we saw a different pair than last week.

Interestingly, in an early show sequence where two men descend from the rafters with cable apparatus and perform intensive movements, one of the guys bailed out really quickly. We didn't see what happened, only noticing at some point almost immediately after his entry that he was gone and his ceiling portal had closed, as if he'd been hauled out. We later noticed one of the Tango couples was missing and in the final number there was a female dancer without a partner. We theorize that he suffered an injury – likely a pulled muscle – and therefore wasn't able to perform the many lifts required in the Tango and finale number. Hopefully nothing more serious.

When we returned to our cabin at the end of the show we found an envelope containing our SeaPass cards from the first leg that they'd confiscated as we exited the ship after issuing our current cards. Clearly they have a lot of B2B passengers who save their cards as souvenirs and have learned that they need to give them back. 

 

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2026 B2B Day 8: Sea Day #1 (Cruise #2: 6N Mexican Riviera)

Thursday, March 5, 2026 

Cruise Compass

Lost an hour of sleep again as we travelled into MST overnight. Up around 845A and did our standard WJ breakfast. The morning and afternoon were spent doing trivia and watching some things we'd never seen before.

On the trivia front, we did:

• Movie Catchphrases: 17/20 but the winners had 19
• Logos: This “race to the finish" took another team only 5 minutes to get all 25 answers, shocking not only the room but the Activities host! The team HAD to be long-time cruisers because there's frankly NO WAY anyone could know all 25. We had 13/25 and were quite pleased with ourselves. Unlike prior cruises, thie time we knew the Buckee's logo J.
• True or False: Sadly, 18 of the 20 questions were the same as the prior leg, the 19th question was predictably about the national language of Brazil, and we got one of the two new questions wrong! We weren't going to compete for the win, but the winners claimed 20/20 anyway, besting our 19/20.
• Afternoon (general) trivia: As usual, these tend to be more difficult, and we were pleased to find our 13/20 good for a 4-way tie for the win. None of the teams got either of the 1st two tie-breaker questions (Q: what was the English name given to Pocahantas when she was taken to England? A: Rebecca and Q: How long had Romeo and Juliet known each other before deciding to marry? A: 1 day.) One team got the 3rd question: Phantom of the Opera was the longest running musical on Broadway. What was 2nd longest? Our guess of Cats was wrong – it was Chicago.

Among the things we saw that were new (mostly because we arrived early to a venue in order to get nice seats to read and then enjoy trivia) were:

• Flash Mob class in the Music Hall after Movie Catchphrase Trivia: They will be doing this as a “surprise" on Day 5, outside the pub around 230P (when we scheduled our Royal Puzzle Society session, so we'll miss it). The piece is a mash up of several well-known pop tunes and is about 3:40 seconds long. Today they learned the 1st half, then they'll have two more rehearsals before performance time. Folks were having fun!
• Line Dancing class in two70 before lunch and the game show: Pretty well attended with the lower floor area of the stage pretty packed as well as small groups all around the upper seating area of the lower bowl. Couldn't see into upper deck area so not sure if there were folks up there as well. Pretty low impact exercise, and lots of age ranges.
• Game show “60 Seconds or Less": pretty mindless as one group of 8 were challenged to place pick-up-sticks on the backs of their outstretched hand and then pop them into the air and catch with the same hand, increasing the number of sticks by one each time. The folks who tied at 9 sticks did a playoff where 7 sticks won. A second group of 8 had to balance a small key chain fob on their heads and (somehow) drop it into a small cup about 12’ away w/o using hands. AFTER everyone failed the host showed the trick: while balancing, lay down on the ground so you were next to the cup and then twist your head so the object fell into the cup.

There are still a lot of young kids on this leg, but we're not seeing as many school-aged kids this time, suggesting that the last cruise may have coincided better with spring break. That's just a guess, however, and might not make sense since the prior cruise encompassed Friday plus 2 more school days and this one encompasses 3 days of the same week.

Dinner this week has moved for us. Last week we were in American Icon Grill, but this week we're next door at Silk, a consequence of Veronica and Kadek being assigned to this side this time. Again, we had been unaware that the waiters moved around each cruise. The table we had last night was situated in such a way that it was hard to get to it and also hard for them to service it “the right way". It wasn't a bad table – just the victim of the room's specific layout. Our lunch yesterday was on 3rd deck, in the Chic room. We didn't like this room at all. VERY open and sterile with white walls and furnishings. Nothing to break the room up into sections or anything. Of the 3 (out of 4) dining rooms we've seen we rank American Icon Grill as 1st and Chic as a distant 3rd.

Dinner was pretty good. An interesting event: at the table next to us (but blocked from my sight by a wall although E could see) someone's water glass shattered as we were having dessert (and the other table was waiting for dessert). Not sure what happened as there wasn’t anything obvious going on – no staff was serving them, no guests were walking by. There was just a loud “pop" and suddenly a water glass was in many pieces in front of the female guest. Two waiters (including Veronica, whose table it was) mobilized extremely quickly. The first waiter moved all the large pieces to his serving tray, then used his crumb scraper to scrape as many small shards as possible, following which Veronica placed down a double layer of napkins and together they reset the diner's place for dessert. Quick and extremely efficient. I assume the diner didn't get wet as she remained throughout and I couldn't see any “drying movements" coming from her.

We re-watched the production show Sequins & Feathers tonight. Unlike last week, where we never saw any seating reservations in the balcony for “status" guests, tonight the three central balcony sections, including where we had sat all last week, were manned by ushers with signs reserving them when we arrived 30 minutes pre-show. As the HR and HL balcony sections have terrible sightlines we moved down to the orchestra level and found seats in the center back which were just fine. We'll probably end up there again the rest of this week.

Having lost an hour of sleep and having skipped nap time this afternoon, we decided to turn in for the evening after the show was over.

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2026 B2B Day 7: Turn Around Day at San Pedro

 Wednesday, March 4, 2026 (end of leg 1, start of leg 2) 

Cruise Compass

Even though we're staying onboard for the next cruise we're still subject to the timelines followed by those who have to go home today, so we were up at 715A in order to shower and head down to Windjammer at 8A for breakfast. We, however, did not have to pack up our gear or clear out of our stateroom. Instead, we headed to the Music Hall, which served as a waiting lounge for B2B passengers, of which there were probably about 60 or so people. They checked us off a list, asked us if we were staying onboard or going ashore, assigned us to groups 41-43, and handed us an envelope with our new SeaPass cards plus a small card saying something like “In-Transit Passenger", which I think only mattered for those planning to go ashore.

We waited in the MH through all the various announcements about which luggage tags were being called to exit the ship. At 9A they had announced all luggage tags, but they didn't issue a final call until 930A. At about 940A we were all escorted by Royal folks and exited the ship (scanning out and having our old SeaPass cards confiscated) walked down through the luggage warehouse (where we saw one set of unclaimed luggage, so clearly we were held back until all other folks had left Customs), and processed through the Customs face-scanners within minutes. We then all turned around to be escorted back onboard, scanning in with our new SeaPass cards. By 10A we were back onboard and had the ship to ourselves!

We decided to continue lounging in the Music Hall, listening to announcements to the crew that everyone should be at their embarkation stations by 1015A because they were going to start boarding new passengers at 1030A. A few crew (likely dancers) came by and grabbed a couple of life jackets from a closest behind me before manning their station just outside the MH entry. We stayed (pretty much completely alone) until heading down to the MDR (Chic dining room) where B2B cruisers were being given lunch. The Key folks were all lined up at the neighboring Grande room for their lunch. We sat at a table on a port-side window and enjoyed lunch before heading up to The Library to play The Crew.

As we came up the stairs inside two70 leading to The Library we took some time to consider what constituted “backstage" for this venue. We decided that there were a couple of enclosed spaces L and R of the stage that clearly had to have hidden entries in the sections that were cordoned off from public access that contained stairways both up to the over-stage entries and down to the under stage areas where the lifts could be loaded and actors could crossover to the other side. Whether there was enough space on the level of the assumed doorways to do quick changes is unknown. They probably have to do quick changes on the stairs or under the stage. (We would turn out to be wrong re: location of the stairways. Turned out that they were at either side of US and fully visible during the shows. Either they had been covered when I did my exploration or I was just so focused on looking for non-existent doors that I completely overlooked giant down staircases!)

Anyway, we played The Crew until 330P and then it was time to go grab some finger foods at Café Promenade (for E) and pizza at Sorrento’s (for me). Eileen carried those up to the room while I went over to Boleros to get my sail away Hand Crafted Margarita and E's Mai Tai. The balcony was a few degrees cooler than it had been for the prior week's departure, so E hung out just inside the cabin while I lounged outside, but once underway we both moved inside while I got caught up on these notes.

We officially updated our MTD time to 630P last night. On Quantum they apparently now have 3 “official" seatings: 5P, 630P, and 8P – and since a 630 start puts less stress on trying to make events that start at 8P we were happy to move from 645P.

Given that this cruise is going to basically be the same as the last cruise as far as events go, we're anticipating that our evenings this time might be more music oriented since we didn't take in many of the acts onboard during the past leg. With that in mind, our post-dinner activities were 8P at Boleros to listen to The Latin Town, and 9P at the Music Hall to listen to their rock/dance band, Puslo. The Latin Town was a female lead singer on bongos, another woman on keyboard and backing vocals, a male drummer/vocalist, and a male bass player. They were fine – and we answered our question of whether or not the Boleros dance floor got used. It was heavily trafficked during their set. Over in the Music Hall we were sitting out of sight of Pulso, but I did confirm it was a typical 3-player band plus female vocalist. They were quite good – but the lead singer of the Brilliance band was better. I can see us potentially seeking them out on future nights.

As we passed by the Pub on our way back to our stateroom I can see why our intentions to go listen to the guitarist keeps remaining unfulfilled. The Pub on all cruises is crowded, noisy, and generally has uncomfortable wooden chairs. So our desire to listen to different music is generally trumped by our desire to sit in comfort.                  

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2026 B2B Day 6: Sea Day #2 (Cruise #1: 5N Mexican Riviera)

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 

Cruise Compass

We gained back our lost hour of time and slept in until about 8A, so took our time and got down to breakfast at 9A. There's no escaping the staff dancing, as the WJ crew were “happy" to snake their way through the dining room so we could “appreciate" their hard work. Fortunately, our small area was spared all but about 30 seconds of the revelry. We finished up eating and headed over to Schooner to work through our tablet games while waiting for the 10A general trivia.

For trivia, we were invited to form a team by the folks near us and, having no reason to say no, found ourselves a group of five. The questions ranged from hard to obscure (including questions like “how many diver sculptures are in the Solarium?” and “how many red lanterns are outside Splashaway Café?”). Although we only got 10/20, that was actually good enough for 2nd place, behind the winners who had 16/20.

We stayed in Schooner, playing both Dingbats (15/20) and Phobias (10/20) while filling in down time with reading, as well as watching others who were learning the art of napkin folding. Ironically, on Dingbats we recognized one that we’d been stumped by during our Brilliance cruise – and we remained stumped by it this time, too! Finally, at 1245P we headed to WJ for lunch. While hardly a new thing, the contrast between the abundant variety of food available during our 1st cruise in 2014 vs the very limited offerings of the last several years in huge.

Found outside our door (when we left for breakfast, actually) was the letter outlining how we were to handle ourselves as B2B cruisers. Essentially, at 845A tomorrow we're to meet at the Music Hall with our boarding passes and passports and we'll be issued new SeaPass cards, then escorted off-ship to go through Customs before being escorted back on the ship to do as we wish. If we wanted to do some kind of LA-based activity we could do so, as long as we reboarded after 11A and before All Aboard at 230P. We're also being hosted for lunch at the Chic section of the MDR (Deck 5). Curious to see how many people are doing B2B.

Post-lunch we decided that none of the trivia-based activities interested us (things like Game of Thrones, NTT Taylor Swift, and more Harry Potter), so we headed once again to the Library behind two70 to play more missions of our 2-player The Crew game. They appeared to be doing some tech rehearsing for tonight's Starwater, for which a new cast is apparently debuting. So we're apparently going to see the 1st on-ship performance done by this particular group of performers. Opening Night! Anyway, mid-afternoon it looks like they were rehearsing a few scenes that involved various apparatus. We saw one performer suspended about 10’ above the stage wearing a “dress" ala the nightmare scene in Fiddler. We're planning to let Veronica (our MDR waiter) know that we want to push through dinner so we can leave the MDR no later than 730P in order to stake out good seats for our 8P show.

As has been our custom, we came back to our stateroom around 315P for snacks, relaxation, and naps. E's cough is definitely getting better, but it is still hanging around and fatiguing her. My scratchy throat tapered off and was essentially gone in 36 hours and I currently have a VERY mild cold – hardly noticeable and definitely not tiring for me, fortunately. Hoping that this good fortune continues throughout the 2nd leg.

We did go down to Schooner for Afternoon Trivia – I think. Either I didn’t record the score, or we didn’t actually go but I wrote it down ahead of time and forgot to delete if from the “Actual” plan column of the spreadsheet.

At the start of dinner we let Veronica know that we wanted to be out of the MDR by 730P and she and Kadek pushed us through dinner in about 25 minutes(!), so we were out by about 715P. (Having figured out that they opened up MTD starting at 630P we had already started appearing at the MDR at the earlier time rather than at 645P.) We made a quick stop at the podium on our way out to ask that they officially change our 2nd leg reservation to 630P at Veronica's table and then walked over to two70 where they scanned E's SeaPass card to ensure that we had reservations. Sadly, all the seats in the center (of both decks) were reserved for Star Class and higher, so we ended up on the first level, house left, in the semi-uncomfortable stadium seating – which actually turned out to be a great place to view from.

Starwater is an interesting show. It starts pretty slow, with several minutes of “artful wanderings" from the cast, broken up about every 60 seconds with about 45 seconds of Madonna's “Vogue", before finally finding its footing. What follows is a combo of singing, dance, gymnastics (two guys on flying apparatus who perform aerial stunts), and finally ending with an incredible tango followed almost immediately by a super high energy dance number that has the cast pouring buckets of sweat. Overall, a very enjoyable show and one that we decided we'd see again on the 2nd leg, probably from the same general location but hopefully slightly more comfy seats.

Our night (and 1st leg) ended in the Theater with comedian JR McCollum’s adult show (in which the row in front of us had two children under 8 years of age…). I'm almost certain we saw JR on another cruise at some point. He was described as a “Royal Caribbean favorite", so I assume he books a lot of time with them. He was fine – although at the end of a cruise everyone is a bit lower energy than at the start so the room seemed to enjoy him but no one seemed to be howling with laughter. Guessing that he'll have better energy tomorrow, as he kicks off the next leg of the cruise as the opening show in the Theater for a new, more awake crowd.

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2026 B2B Day 5: Cabo San Lucas #2 (Cruise #1: 5N Mexican Riviera)

Monday, March 2, 2026 

Cruise Compass

Slept late. LONG crew drill this morning, running from about 930A-1030A. A typical WJ breakfast. One “entertaining” moment came in the bacon line. I watched a woman grab tongs and put her hands all over them (including far down the handle) and then proceed to leave them (touching all the bacon) badly balanced on top of the heap rather than placing them on the resting plate provided for that purpose. Of course, the tongs fell and clattered to the floor as she wandered off completely obliviously. The funny thing was the eyeroll by the staffer inside the serving island. He didn’t see any of this happen, but he heard the noise and was rolling his eyes and shaking his head as he immediately walked over to the cabinet where they stored extra serving tongs.

Post-food, read for a bit in semi-comfy chairs between the Bionic Bar and Schooners, then True/False trivia in Schooner (13/20 – far back in the pack). I think the Bionic Bar was a good idea that probably didn’t pan out. It is in operation for limited hours, requires a staffer to be present to baby sit things, seems to take a long time to make a drink (compared to a human), and – fatally – measures everything precisely, so you’re never going to have the accidental – or intentional - “heavy pour”. The fact that they stopped building them – and are potentially pulling them out of other ships – is not surprising.

We wanted to return to our stateroom to drop off our stuff before heading to the Music Hall for Th Royal Mystery game at noon. I had a vague memory of moving all around the room when we'd done this game on Mariner, and didn't want to risk leaving our bag unattended. So we left Schooner and actually (finally) walked out onto the outside of Deck 4. This is the lifeboat deck, so there's actually little to be seen, but at least we confirmed that there IS outside decking around all these enclosed spaces!

Then to Music Hall for Royal Mystery, which was really fun. As people entered the host directed you to form or join an existing group until each team had 7-8 people on it. We were with a dad + three 20s-something sons (on a dad and son cruise) plus a young married couple. All of us were definitely “gamers". In fact, the sons were carrying D&D books plus a couple of card games, and the other couple had done dinner murder mysteries before. Our team was one of 3 (out of 11-12 teams) to solve the puzzle. From what E and I can recall of the game we played years ago on Mariner, this game might have been a reskinning of what we already played. We certainly recognized that the “connections" puzzle formed a picture of a bunny, and there was a footprint puzzle that tied into the alphabet. So we had a little meta knowledge, but unlike last time (where I was the leader and therefore had a better overview of the entire puzzle) we each worked on one of the sub-puzzles and neither one of us knew what was happening around us. We submitted our answer with about 5 minutes to spare. Not sure if we were first to solve or not. No prizes, but we all felt good about ourselves. The family was slated to undertake the Royal Puzzle Society challenge later in the day, which motivated us to book it for the next leg of the cruise. Turns out that we could have had our stuff with us – at least one of us was always at the couch where our team gathered. In retrospect, I think that on Mariner we had been younger than our teammates and therefore did a lot more of the “running". In today's game we were the oldest team members and we happily let the youngsters run back and forth.

After the Mystery, we went to the Pub and each ordered a Pub Burger and shared the Pulled Pork Nachos. The nachos were nothing special – soggy chips topped with pulled pork, BBQ sauce, cheese, and onions. Taste was fine – just a bit too soggy/messy to eat. The burgers were each made of two thick 4 ounce patties (8 ounces total) with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, some kind of mild green pepper, and garlic aioli and ketchup on the side, along with steak fries. Burgers were pretty good – for a ship, they were excellent. I paired with a specialty gin and tonic while E had Strongbow Cider. Nice! Downside: they give you little 4” square cocktail napkins to eat greasy food. They need bigger napkins!

We then returned to our stateroom to pick up our tablets. We took a path that allowed us to walk through the hallways of our deck and look at the art on the corridor walls. Compared to other ships the corridors were pretty sparse, and most of the stuff on our floor were aspirational affirmations rather than art or photos. Kind of a letdown. We were surprised at the number of cabins that had decorated their doors. Didn't count, but I'm guessing that it was at least 25-35% of doors sporting something on the outside.

Tablets in hand, we decided to try and find the “best" chairs where we could relax and read. We looked at the deck plans and decided to try The Library, located on Deck 6, tucked up behind two70. Turned out to be the perfect choice. Comfy padded chairs inside a quiet room protected from direct sunlight but not so isolated as to make you feel lost. Spent close to two hours reading and relaxing there before deciding it was nap time and coming back to the cabin once again around 345P.

Wonderland was our specialty dinner reservation and definitely fell into the “been there, done that" category. As usual, they asked about any potential food allergies and the certainly listened. E received several modified appetizers compared to what I got, highlighting a combination of how many food products MIGHT have been exposed to nuts during packaging and how terrified they are of possibly killing someone. For example, my “tomato water" test tube was garnished with ONE drop of Siracha, while E received none because, to our surprise, siracha might have nuts in it.

We each started with one of the specialty cocktails: a smoked Old Fashioned for me (novel but no better/worse than any other OF) while E tried Down the Rabbit Hole. Again, nothing to write home about.

Anyway, while the dishes might qualify as imaginative, almost none of them qualified as “good". One appetizer in particular had some kind of deep-fried potato cone which had been fried in VERY tired oil. I mentioned this – not as a complaint, but as an FYI, to our waiter. Surprisingly, there was effectively none of the above-and-beyond customer service I would have expected. I figured they'd bring us a 7th appetizer or something simple like that, but nope. Not that we'd likely have found enjoyment in another meh appetizer!

For appetizers, as first-timers our waiter brought us a curated “greatest hits" selection of 6 (out of 9) options. I personally enjoyed the shrimp with siracha aioli (E got Thai chile sauce instead, and she didn't get the potato(?) strings) and E most enjoyed their citrus salmon offering. The rest was just meh. For entrees, I got Snap Crackle Pork, which was mostly tasteless with a pork crackling that suffered the same “tired oil" problem as one of the appetizers. E got the chicken which was also mostly meh. We were offered two of the three desserts (#3 contained forbidden pistachio). The apple “thing" was mostly Royal's signature rubbery crème brule-like apple flavor with a center of raspberries – no bueno as per both of us. The other was their signature The World: peanut butter ice cream atop a caramel cream atop of chocolate fudge cake base, surrounded by a globe of dark chocolate that gets a hot caramel sauce poured on it, causing it to melt and reveal the ice cream/cake inside. Both technically and visually impressive – and quite tasty. Far and away the best food of the meal.

With dinner over we were early enough to try to catch Battle of the Sexes in the Music Hall. We arrived during the tail end of If You Know It, Sing It. It was pretty raucous and it was clear that seats that had a view of the stage floor weren't to be had, so we simply enjoyed the comfy chairs and read, while listening to the Battle as it happened.

We then made the short hop over to the Theater for their special Sonic Odyssey show, starring some dude who invented a strange instrument. As we sat down I spotted what seemed to be a line of small lighting instruments strung diagonally over the main seating area. Turns out they weren't lighting instruments but were actually the termination points of the strings of the instrument that was located DSR. Dude played the amplified strings by rubbing them while wearing gloves. He also did percussion stuff, including playing a musical jacket that made different drum noises depending on where he hit himself. Add in the usual vocalists and dancers and the show was certainly different. We enjoyed ourselves, but aren't certain we'd watch it again on the next leg (whereas we will certainly go see Sequins & Feathers again in a few days). Another case of someone mastering the weird instrument they invented.

The night ended with us turning our clocks back an hour to reflect our return to Pacific Time sometime while we slept. 

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2026 B2B Day 4: Cabo San Lucas #1 (Cruise #1: 5N Mexican Riviera)

Sunday, March 1, 2026 

Cruise Compass

Opinion of Quantum class: meh. The whole ship seems to be designed so you can't see you are on the ocean. The main public decks (4 and 5) might not have external decks. We haven't looked hard yet…BUT there's the only OBVIOUS door leading outside is on Deck 5 outside the theater. The only spaces where we've seen windows to the outside are the MDR, two70, and small windows in Boleros. Otherwise everything is just a bunch of enclosed spaces. It is still much better than the shopping mall feel of Freedom class, but there's just not anything that really stands out. The worst thing is that Schooner, in particular, feels more like a classroom than a comfy bar. Too many rows: a row of high tables with stools; another row of a single long high table with stools either side; 4 rows of 6-wide seating, etc. A big hunk of Bolero's has the same problem, although Bolero’s was a bit more comfy. The Music Hall comes closest to the right vibe, but it is too big a space overall to feel “warm".

Another complaint which we've heard echoed: the elevators. There are 2 banks for 5 elevators fore and mid. The midship set is literally 20’ feet (max) from our stateroom door – which is a HUGE win. But they take FOREVER to arrive, and once they arrive they close their doors really quickly. We'll see a couple of elevators apparently parked on 4th floor, unmoving for the 90-120 seconds we're waiting. We'll have elevators pass without stopping. We’ll have elevators that refuse to rise to our floor, making multiple trips up/down just above or below us. They just seem to have a strange algorithm in operation. And we know we're not being fragile flowers because this is a common topic from others. Weird.

We had a couple of morning trivia events, including Cartoon Characters 21/35 (30 wins) and Sports 18/20 (20). We also read during the Scavenger Hunt. Teams have only 15 minutes to try to gather up to 40 items on a list before returning to show off. The activity staffer running it was quite funny and we learned that being present for the final 15 minutes can be entertaining.

Lunch: DAS: burger/fries, EMS: Honey Garlic Chicken (mostly just “Chicken") Desserts: Oreo Cake (red/red – just a lot of white cream with soggy cookie crumbles); Raspberry Pound Cake (yellow/green – at last it had an opinion re: flavor). At dinner we both added a Desert Pear Marg to our meal. A lovely lavender shade, but otherwise not much. It was fine but not something we'll repeat.

Post-lunch we returned to cabin to dress for outside and spent time on pool deck just chilling and planning to let the bar waiter bring us stuff as we read and relaxed. Never actually saw bar waiters at all, so I went to the Pool Bar and got me a Mai Tai (drink of the day and very good) and brought E her request of “something frozen with strawberry in it" and got something with strawberry, mango, and peach with rum and ice. We sat on the non-sun side of the pool deck - which was actually quite nice – for a couple of hours reading before returning to the cabin to nap and relax (more) before dinner. In truth, our butts were getting sore from the pool chairs we had been sitting on.

Shows: The Generational Showdown (not the correct name) is intended to be two teams of 5, one of 7-12 year olds and the other 45+ who compete to answer questions more suited for “the other" group. So kids had name as many B&W movies as they could in 5 seconds while the older group had to name Disney movies. Sadly, the audience was too small so they had to expand the kid group with a 17 and 20 year old. The overall lack of energy in the room didn't help things along and we actually pulled out our tablets midway through and paid more attention to those than the show.

The Perfect Couple is intended for 18+ only and, like Love and Marriage, starts with auditions on-stage to find those willing to be bold. One couple got selected when they mimed a blow job to the prompt “show us how excited you are to greet your partner at the airport after they return from a 30 day trip”. That's the vibe. It's crass and low-brow, but we enjoyed it as we'd never seen it before. I suspect that, again like Love & Marriage, if you've seen it once you've seen them all – but it does move at a faster pace than L&M and I'd probably be OK with watching it live again, whereas we only watch L&M on the in-room TV replay if it happens to show up.

 

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2026 B2B Day 3: Sea Day #1 (Cruise #1: 5N Mexican Riviera)

    Saturday, February 28, 2026 

Cruise Compass

We had a few new experiences today, taking in some events that we’d never witnessed on other cruises before. This is mostly because we spent time reading during some event that was BEFORE a trivia event we were actually targeting. 

Among the new stuff:

• We watched a morning dance workout class in the Music Hall while we caught up on our daily tablet games. There were probably 25-30 people participating as they were led through dance aerobics by one of the activity staffers.
• We (unintentionally) crashed a Top Tier event in two70 in mid-morning when we went to play The Crew. Actually, it is possible that we were invited to the event, which was celebrating mostly those attaining Pinnacle status, but we arrived at least 15 minutes into the event and no one at the entry batted an eyelash. We did NOT attempt to claim any of the free champagne that was being poured.
• The Top Tier event was followed by their somewhat mawkish Salute to Veterans (which included digging deep to also celebrate police and fire folks). The ship’s orchestra was there to play a medley of service tunes, Taps, and finally the national anthem. Finally, at the end of those events there was some sound testing in two70 that led to some REALLLY LOUD noises as we continued playing The Crew.

As far as trivia for the day, here’s how things went:

• Visual Trivia, Romance Movies: 8/20, pathetic
• Tri-bond Trivia: 15/18, 17 wins
• James Bond Trivia: 5/20, 12 wins, another very poor showing by us
• Sports Trivia: 6/20, 16 wins. The three women next to me were making healthy use of their drinks package but did know sports. At one point, in response to a baseball question, one of them said to her friend “all I know about those guys is that I dated one of them” and I realized that they fit that “type”, i.e. the Bull Durham team follower type.  
• Afternoon Trivia: 6/20, with 16 winning. The winner was referenced by the game host as “Mr. Blue Shirt” – we’d later hear him called “Wally”, as he also B2B’ed our cruises. Wally was clearly a serial solo cruiser who was VERY impressed with himself. He always played as a team of 1 and always loudly called out the answers he’d memorized. (Those that he wasn’t certain about didn’t earn the same level of volume.) Winning was clearly VERY important to Wally – and we’d meet another guy later in the cruise (Dan) who had a very similar MO.

On the food and drink front:

·

• I tried one of Schooner’s special drinks: Toasted Marshmallow Old Fashioned; meh, while Eileen had a Pina Colada (also meh).
• For lunch (the only one I bothered taking notes for) I had the BBQ pork chops (good) with mashed potatoes and gravy (the expected meh) while E made herself a sandwich by picking apart their roasted chicken. We tried both the “mainstream” red velvet cake (yellow, too much whipped crème, not enough cake) and Coconut Custard Tart (awful – suffering from the same gelatinous issue that so many of the mass-produced desserts have).
• The poor MDR waitstaff: at dinner the waiters and assistant waiters are obligated to dance like monkeys and perform the Macarena around dessert time. Hate it! While we didn’t witness this any other night, on our final night onboard we heard them calling all waitstaff to prepare for their entertainment as we were leaving the MDR.)

After dinner we went over to the Music Hall and read while listening to the Family Majority Rules game. This is our second time at this game, after our time on Brilliance. It seems likely that the “winners” come out of teams with serial cruisers on them, as the questions (which are clearly standardized since it was the same ones we already heard) generated mostly the SAME majority answers as last time. We guessed that the answers that were mentioned by only 1-2 teams were newbie teams who were making honest responses, while the majority responses were mostly tams going “yeah, this was the majority answer the last 3 of 5 cruises…”

We attended the first of their two production shows this night. Sequins and Feathers involved a large cast of 6 singers, 12 dancers (6 men, 6 women) and 4 showgirls. Honestly, not certain I could tell the difference between female dancers and the showgirls. The last couple of cruises the male dancers didn’t seem as strong as the women, but we thought all the dancing was good this time. The singing was fine, with one of the men being particularly strong. Like all shows, lots of costume changes and what we THOUGHT were some tough quick changes…until we later saw Starwater, which has some horrifically tough changes. We were both happy to plan on re-watching this show on the 2nd leg of our B2B.

Now, let me insert some general comments on other things I was tracking on a daily basis:

• Internet speed: With only one exception, we remained connected to Starlink via a Los Angeles-based ISP. Down/up speed tests showed 8Mbps down/3Mbps up speeds, in general.
• Wireless quality: Wireless generally got worse the deeper into the cabin I got. At the bed it was fine, at the couch next to the balcony it was sometimes spotty. It seemed like we both got auto-disconnected overnight every day. We’d have to reconnect every morning.
• Weather: I used the Windy app for forecasting, which wasn’t necessarily the best choice. Doing it on my tablet rather than phone was tough because I didn’t have location services on the tablet, so had to click on the map and compare the long/lat with that shown on the TV to ensure I was in the proper location.

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2026 B2B Day 2: Boarding Quantum of the Seas and Sailing Away (Cruise #1: 5N Mexican Riviera)

Friday, February 27, 2026

Cruise Compass

The day started earlier than we would have hoped as E was awake at 430A with a massive coughing attack, the result of a cold she caught just after we got back from our Bodega trip the prior week. Perfect timing! Although mine might be better – I might be getting the cold on boarding day. We'll see.

Breakfast at Hampton was better than last time, but that's damning with faint praise, at best. Anyway, with that ordeal over we killed an hour in our room until checking out and calling a Lyft. Our driver arrived in about 60 seconds and we were on our way to the port. The driver was …umm…aggressive in his driving and I think he managed to shave about 3 minutes off our projected 34 minute trip. We arrived at the port, where both Quantum and Navigator were docked at 1025A and were checked in by 1030A. Unfortunately, they weren't boarding the ship yet and we had to sit and wait in the terminal until finally walking onboard around 1055A.

Waiting at the LGB cruise terminal to board

So, ironically, if we’d arrived at our “official” boarding time we likely wouldn’t have had to wait at all.

We immediately made a beeline for our muster station to take care of things and then stopped quickly at Boleros to make a reservation for the Starwater production show that takes place at two70.  I had been trying to get online with our Voom account first, but kept failing because – it turned out – I had booked it under E's name rather than mine but kept trying to login as dstein.  D'oh!  Took me a visit to the Voom help team around 215P to resolve this.

We walked around the two main social decks (4 and 5), checking out the various bars and restaurants, until heading up to WJ for lunch at 1130A.  After that we cruised the pool deck (it was a hot 92 degrees outside so we had no desire to stay outside) and then chilled at two70 until the staterooms opened at 1P.  I found our bags down the hall so we were unpacked and relaxing by 130P in our room.  I messed around a bit trying to get HDMI source switching working on our TV so I could use Samsung DEX, but when I disconnected the network cable (necessary to allow the remote's source button to work, according to posters on CruiseCritic – which it did) I confused the TV.  It took a bit of doing to restore normal service, at which point I decided to abandon my attempts and the rest of vacation was spent recording stuff on the tablet via Blutooth keyboard.  Oh well!  (Early into the 2^nd leg I noticed that the “Live TV” menu node had an “HDMI 1” selection along with all the other channels, so I probably could have leveraged this – but I didn’t want to mess around with it by that time.) 

Around 2P room service knocked on the door and delivered a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries, a gift courtesy of our travel agent (Kim Royer).  That was a nice surprise – although another $50 in OBC would have been more welcome! :-)

Our shared response to what we've seen of the ship so far is “Meh".  There's no “wow factor".  It is not as sterile as Freedom was, but there's no question that we're in love with the Centrum of Radiance class ships, which is lacking here.  We also note that several of the specialty restaurants are “open air" and include some tables directly neighboring the public walking paths, next to all the passing passengers.  We do like the look of two70, and we think it likely that this is where we'll go when we want to play The Crew (which we brought again).  Schooner Bar, in particular, seems particularly soulless compared to other ships. 

Another thing that's immediately obvious is that the “completed" onboard schedule was anything BUT complete.  In the last 24 hours so much has changed that much of my meticulous pre-planning was largely for naught.  Some changes are simply that they've changed performers – but I think others might be a bit more fundamental like moving time slots.

I don't recall when we first met our stateroom attendant (John) on Brilliance, but we finally met Joseph as we were leaving that stateroom at 330P to go get our sail away drinks.  We grabbed a Hand-Crafted Marg (D) and Cozumel (E) from Bolero's, which is just below us on deck 4.  We're a hump cabin one door removed from the elevator lobby, so access to other decks is SUPER easy!  While we both liked the concept of also adding a snack to our drinks, the reality was that we didn't actually want food at this time, so we returned to our balcony with drinks (only) in hand.  One very nice thing: unlike Brilliance, the orange juice in use is back to the quality we expect.  Drinks that include OJ are back in play, baby!

The J3 Junior Suite on Quantum is different.  The most obvious thing is that there are two bathrooms, one on either side of the front door.  One holds toilet + sink, while the other has glassed-in shower, separate tub, and another sink.  There's a large closet with a ton of hangers and a 6-drawer dresser under the TV.  Finally, there's a storage closet (with one large shelf – which I think is probably supposed to be two shelves) with room safe on my side of the bed.  There's not a lot of “small drawer" storage, however, nor is there any “high" storage, so we had to find alternate places for stuff we're used to placing in the “missing" spaces.  Décor is modern, and we have a full glass wall for the balcony – both a full sliding door as well as flanking rounded full-height windows.  Lots of floor space.  The two seat couch is rock hard, however.  We'll survive.

Our J3 Junior Suite as seen from the door (and before we started messing it up)

As seen from standing in front of the balcony door.  The reflective panel on my side of the bed turns on when you turn on the shower room light.  Seems kinda dumb.

The shower room.  There's a full-size showere with rainfall shower head plus handheld shower on the right.

The toilet room across from the shower room. Strange use of space and felt like "form over function" to us.

We also have a doorbell. Which some kid has already used to play Doorbell Ditch. Oh, joy! We assume this is spring break for a lot of families because we've seen a lot of kids onboard already.

At 330P the CD (Tami) came on announcing (we think) that we were finally at All Aboard – and maybe saying that everyone had completed muster drill?  Anyway, she must have called for everyone to cheer because we could hear some shouts through our cabin door.  Being a low-priority announcement it didn't play in the cabin.  That's been reserved for earlier announcements to check into muster stations plus the captain's announcement that they were just about to sound the VERY loud emergency signal, as per regulations.

As is our usual, we spent the sail away on our balcony, enjoying our drinks.  Around 445P we went back down to Boleros where I got another drink (a Hemingway Daiquiri, which was not worth repeating) and we settled in to listen to our first live music, this courtesy of the Diamond Duo, a couple playing violin and guitar.  They were OK, but not “appointment listening”, so we didn’t seek them out later.

The Diamond Duo in action.  She often sounded like she was out of tune.  Made us appreciate the Violin/Piano twins from Brilliance.  Also, as usual, after a few first day photos this was basically the last significant photo I took until we were onshore.

I realized with a bit of horror that I had NOT pre-booked our MTD timeslot for our desired 645P timeslot. Not sure how I let that one get away from me! So at 630P we headed down to the MDR to stand in the “MTD w/o Reservations” line which, surprisingly, was already moving at a nice pace. (We’d later determine that Quantum officially has a 630P seating, so they’d begun processing the line 10-15 minutes prior to our arrival.) In fact, we ended up getting seated right about 645P anyway. Unlike Navigator, MTD seemed really well organized on Quantum. I didn't see folks confused as to where to go, nor did I see anyone trying to jump the line because of some inflated sense of self-importance.

We ended up getting seated in the American Icon Grille portion of the MDR (as opposed to Silk, also on Deck 4).  As we sat down, we were greeted by our table neighbors, Travis (construction project manager from Los Angeles) and Adria (travel agent from San Diego) who were, as far as we could tell, romantically linked despite the geographical separation.  Travis, in particular, was very outgoing, and never met a food he wouldn't eat.  His typical dinner was three (and once, four) appetizers followed by an entrée and then 1-2 desserts!  Plus usually at least one cocktail, one wine, iced tea, and water.  We enjoyed interactions with them.  Our table was served by Veronica (South Africa) and Kadek (Bali).  She was nowhere near as familiar with us as Keyshellie had been on Brilliance (which is totally OK with us – we really do not want to be best friends with our servers).  Upon exiting the first dinner I set us up to retain the same timeslot and section.  It turns out that Veronica might NOT be in the same section next cruise, so we might have a new team in a few days.  We'll see.  This was our first indication that servers move around each cruise.

Post-dinner we went and sat in the Music Hall overlooking the stage while the folks below played “Rock the Room”.  The room is divided into two teams and the host starts giving factoids about the song to be named before playing it.  Someone from each team rushes to a team chair in the center of the room, with the first arrival given the first opportunity to name the song.  It was a pretty dominant performance by one side over the other.  One of the few people on the losing side who seemed like they knew what was going on was using a walker, so even when he knew an answer he basically couldn’t get there in time.  (It was also the most feminine looking man – we both thought he was a middle-aged woman.)  The best contestant on the losing side was the younger dad who absolutely FLEW into the chair ahead of the other side when he realized – after 1 note – that it was “Let it Go” or, as he put it “from my daughter’s favorite movie”.

We ended the night at the Theater, where Cruise Director Tami (Tami Salto) from Brazil did the normal “who here is from Canada, etc?” survey and the “You're not here to sleep, you're here to PARTY!” speech before introducing the comic, JR McCollum, who was actually pretty good.  A guy a couple of rows behind us certainly thought so, because he was laughing at EVERYTHING like he'd never heard a joke in his life before.

 

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