Day 1 of Quantum of the Seas (Royal Carribean) Cruise to nowhere

The day started well as I was quite sleepy and tired, thus I slept in instead of doing my morning workouts. I finished packing well ahead of time and after P came home, we had a quick lunch (of maggie mee) and headed to marina bay cruise centre. It's the first time we arrived there, although we saw the huge cruise ships when we stayed garden view in MBS before. There were not many cars on the road heading to the cruise centre and when we arrived and unloaded our sole luggage, we saw a few other families arriving with us. I think overall just three or four groups of people and there were a lot of staff standing around. 

Purple for Star Class (like the royalty)

Once we identified ourselves as Star Class passengers, there was a staff holding a purple placard ushering us to all the different counters. It felt like VIP treatment immediately, but things could not sped up much as there's the mandatory ART that we have to take before boarding and the results took at least 30min. The uncomfortable part about taking the test was not the test itself but waiting in the makeshift area out of a carpark and the weather was rather hot and stuffy this afternoon. Even for Star Class passengers, there wasn't a more comfortable area but just cordoned off and nearest to the boarding area for priority boarding so we can board anytime as soon as we received the SMS. Well, I cant complain much as the staff serving us and waiting around are stuck there the whole day, it kind of reminded me of the election duty I had performed many years ago. As for the test, it's quite similar to the swab test but less invasive as the swab stick only went to the lower part of the nose for swabbing.

Other two groups of Star Class passengers waiting for us

The rest of the passengers grouped according to their check-in time

Of course, one of the perks of being Star Class passengers is that we can check in anytime, even if we did not managed to get the earliest time slot of 2pm. I've been looking out for the booking of time slots since months ago but we only managed to choup the 3pm timeslot. Nevertheless, we arrived at about 1.30pm to take the ART since we can board at anytime. We were not the first few to board as our results only came in slightly later at 2++, the staff kept checking on us to see if we had received the SMS as we were the only ones left at the Star Class area. I peeked at the list of Star Class passengers on the staff's hand and I think there are about 9-10 groups. While waiting for ART, we saw a family of six and it was a couple with 4 young gals (1-10 years old). Yeah, there was quite a few families with children so I guess we cant enjoy a holiday totally without the kids but when we spoke to the staff, the capacity for the cruise is about 500+ compared to the full capacity of 5000. Even though they are allowed to operate at 25%, I think many people decided not to go ahead with their trips. 

Complimentary Moet champagne sent to the room

Generous fruits and canapes were ready

Refillable minibar

Lots of Evian bottled water for us

Our room dining area

Masks, tracelets, Hand Sanitizers and lots of menus

Very comfy living room area 

Stairs leading to our loft bedroom

Very comfy bed but pillows too soft

After clearing the immigrations and showing many staff our passports many times, we were finally on board at 2.40pm and we met our Royal Genie once we got onboard. There were many crew and staff members lining up to welcome the guests at the entrance but we were already well taken care of by our Royal Genie Peng Yu dressed in her purple work suit. It was hard to tell the difference of being on board and on land as the cruise just looked like a big shopping mall. Being virgin cruisers, we were overloaded with information and excited to get to our suite so Peng Yu brought us up immediately. The deck we arrived on was on level 5 and there were two lobby areas with rows of elevators to get us to other parts of the ship. 

Our room was on deck 10 and Peng Yu briefed us the necessities after we finally got there, it was a long walk as our room is right at the aft at all the loft suites area. After she gave us lots of information, she left us to settle down in the room. We excitedly explored around and took pictures, it felt bigger than our home so there was still plenty of space to look at. After reading milelion blog, I thought it would be better for us to handle the luggage on our own, but they assured us that the luggage would be brought to our room almost immediately. It was a good idea as we had to go around to take the ART and wait for the results so being luggage free was really better.