It also boasts 18 decks, 2,090 state rooms, is the length of 41 London buses and weighs 167,800 tonnes.īuilt in Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, its first voyage at the end of last year was from Southampton to New York, and an eight-day Caribbean cruise on board starts from $1,333. Kulovaara likes to think Quantum has something for everyone – it even has its own “godmother,” American actress Kristin Chenoweth.īut what exactly does a price tag of nearly $1 billion buy you? The vessel is 16 stories high, has room for 4,500 passengers and a 1,500-strong crew. There are bigger cruise ships out there: Allure and Oasis – both part of the Royal Caribbean fleet – although not quite with the same box of tricks. They keep doing things no-one else has thought of.” “You keep on thinking when they come up with something crazy they’ve hit the wall and there can’t be anything new, but there always is. “They just do things well before anyone else and their ships are traditionally the ones you get most excited about,” adds Spencer Brown, who estimates she has been on 300 cruises as part of her job. “Royal Caribbean are always raising the bar when it comes to putting stuff on board you’d never thought you’d see on a cruise ship.

“It’s unique and unusual, and we just had fun – pure and simple,” is the assessment of Carolyn Spencer Brown, the editor of Cruise Critic, after spending eight days on Quantum. “This is probably going to be a big change for the industry and the future.”Īnd this is not just Royal Caribbean’s prediction. “This is the smartest cruise ship,” says Harri Kulovaara, executive vice-president of maritime at Royal Caribbean and head of the design process behind the project. Such are the maverick creations on board from bow to stern, it is a vessel befitting of the Mad Hatter. Those of a literary slant can even dine at Wonderland, with waitresses dressed up in characters from the novel by Lewis Carroll. The latest brainchild of Royal Caribbean, which has branded the newest member of its fleet the “smartest cruise ship in history,” it is basically a fun palace on the high seas.Įverything, it seems, is a first: the first bumper cars, skydive simulator and bionic bar on a ship.Īnd among the 19 restaurants on board, there is something for everyone. As its name suggests, it is very much a quantum leap in boat building. You could be forgiven for thinking you had been transported into the future on board the new $1 billion cruise ship Quantum of the Seas. Robots serve you drinks, you can skydive on deck and a mechanical arm hoists you 300 feet into the air to view the ship.

Skydiving simulator royal caribbean