perfect match

Was this picture from your room with the angled balcony or the regular one? Even though it is interesting to get an up close look at how the lifeboats are suspended, I’d rather not be looking at that view for the whole cruise. I remember that a few years back someone had posted a link to deck plans that showed exactly where the lifeboats were and which ones were the most obstructed like your picture. If I can find it I’ll post a link but it won’t be tonight. Bedtime 😴.

What? No textbooks in college any more? 😱 I don’t know how I would have gotten through school without my textbooks and highlighters! Thank goodness those days are behind me! Far behind! 😂 We were in a JS on Odyssey so we had upgraded bathroom amenities, or maybe it was because we’re 💎. I’m not sure but what we had was ok. When we sail Wonder in September we’re in a Boardwalk balcony so I’m not going to expect anything more than the single soap for everything. I’m going to put a note in my folder for that cruise to bring my own soap, shampoo and conditioner on that cruise. Thank you for that reminder. We never did get to ride the bumper cars on Odyssey. It was on our list of things to do, but we always seemed to have other things we wanted to do when they were open. Guess we will just have to book another Odyssey cruise! 😎 Not out of NY, though. Florida based cruises work best for us. We are traditional late diners like your family. We did switch to MTD on our first couple of cruises right after the restart, but have gone back to our preferred traditional late time slot. Like your family members, I have food allergies and I really appreciate the fact that I don’t have to go over the foods I need to avoid with a dire rent waitstaff each night. I’m happy to report that I’ve never had a problem on any cruise ship that we have been on.

I am very happy for you and your family that you were the ones chosen. Mr Bayley’s office made a great choice! I’ll bet you’re glad you answered that phone call from the unknown Miami number. I probably wouldn’t have. I will definitely be following along here!

So, hove those cows been on board Radiance since she was built? Must have been the inspiration for the Ben & Jerry’s cows. Now I’m wondering where those Ben & Jerry’s cows have gone. 🤔 We have yet to sail on a Radiance class. We had one booked but were bumped for a charter. We’ll have to try again. Please don’t go giving them any ideas! 😱 @SteelCityCruiser10, I’m glad Emma is feeling better. She’s a beautiful dog. I’ll be checking Dani’s thread for updates on your VV cruise.

Thank you very much for a wonderful review of your Jewel cruise! Your pictures have been fabulous too. Hope your dog is ok. I always worry about our cats whenever we are away. I’m quite sure that neither of them would willingly accompany out cat sitter to the vet should it become necessary. 🙀 Having a family member available and a mobile vet was a great solution. Hope you have a safe trip home.

@island lady, Are those cows refugees from the former Ben & Jerry’s “Sweet”? 😂

If we see our luggage anywhere in the hallway on boarding day we always grab it ourselves as soon as we see it and get it into our room. That way we can get unpacked right away. Nice photo from your Samsung! I think my iPhone can do better at zooming in than I know how to make it do, I’m working on my photography skills and have made some progress but I still have a way to go in the learning process. Harry, I can totally relate to you liking the hard copies and even use them the same way as you do. I can manage reading from my iPad but my iPhone, not so much. My aging eyes just can’t manage as well on the smaller screen, and I find writing notes or highlighting to be very helpful. I’m glad we have options.

I’m following! Enjoying the journey. I suspect that a lot of people are a bit distracted by the Icon sailings.

Norris and Carol, thank you for another fantastic GSJ! I enjoyed every last bit of it - well, except for the part where you both got Covid again! Barry and I sailed on Koningsdam but that was before Covid shut everything down. We very much enjoyed our 10 day Southern Caribbean sailing in our aft balcony room. Besides the great aft view, the thing I most enjoyed about our balcony room was something I never thought I’d have reason to say - the shower! We will most likely sail on HAL again at some point. While I have no idea as to what may have changed since cruising restarted, based on what I know about your and Carol’s cruising style from reading so many of your GSJ’s I think you will find your Rotterdam cruise to your liking.

Looks like I’m late finding your review, Twangster. I’ve also been intrigued by Antarctica for many years and I love your reviews and photography so I’m going to take my time and enjoy this trip.

Great pictures and great report! We normally cruise and love the big ships but you’ve got me thinking about Jewel. We would certainly like your itinerary. Thank you.

Harry, we had a similar experience to yours in booking what we wanted to do online once we boarded the ship. We got to port early AB’s since we were in a JS we were able to wait in the suite area. It was a nice place to wait. At the rate prices are going up lately, we may never be able to afford even a JS again though. ☹️ Well, we do have a JS on each leg of our upcoming B2B on Allure, but that’s the last we may have for a while. Anyway, as soon as we got on board I logged on to the internet and was able to book both the free and paid slots that we wanted on both the North Star and iFly. I was also able to book The Book and sort out a problem with my excursion in Grand Cayman. My pre cruise booking for The Book had disappeared from the cruise planner somehow. I have no idea how or why that happened but I was able to replace it. My Grand Cayman excursion disappeared when they added additional times available pre cruise and I tried to change to a different time slot. It cancelled my booking but wouldn’t let me rebook the new times. I had to go to the Shore Excursions desk to get that sorted out. The paid sessions for both North Star and iFly were always marked as sold out pre cruise from the moment they appeared on the cruise planner pre cruise, but as I said earlier, I was able to get both our free and paid spots booked on day 1. My one comment about having to book everything on day 1 was that it really made our first couple of hours on the ship feel very hectic. I would much prefer to already have all of those bookings done before I step foot on board so I can relax and enjoy the ship instead of having to take care of things that could have been done beforehand. I’m hoping that on Allure I will e able to do my bookings beforehand like I have done on all of our past Oasis class cruises.

Wow! I think that’s the highest internet price I’ve seen. We’re doing a 4/3 B2B on Allure in a couple of months and I’m planning to just use our Diamond days. Internet in my cruise planner for both sailings has been $20.99 on sale.

Balcony pics would be great! Thank you. He looks so comfortable there! It must be for him!

I would love to see wha the Aqua Theater looks like Ken, I’d also love to see pics of your large aft facing balcony room. That’s one thing we miss on Oasis class ships! At today’s prices, I’m not likely to book Icon, especially since she’s doing s Horta Bahamas s cruises. How ever, for the right price and an itinerary with the 4 day going somewhere other than the same 2 Bahamas ports like our upcoming B2B on Allure I could be tempted. I will definitely be following along here!

Yes! We’re boarding the ship! 🛳️ We have those same luggage tag holders and I like them. I do need @h20skibum to post a You Tube video of how to print out all those luggage tags on one page though. It would be a whole lot easier than having to fold each tag exactly right so that I could squeeze the bulky tag into its holder! I have the Uber app on my phone but have never used either Uber or Lyft. We do most of our cruises out of Port Canaveral so close to home and an easy drive there. In FLL we’ve had good results with the hotel shuttle. We’ve only cruised out of Miami once. We were going to use Uber there but decided at the last minute to use the shuttle. It was not a good choice. The shuttle driver drove all of the way out to our terminal there but did not stop. He looped back through heavy traffic and stopped at every single other terminal before finally circling back around and out to our terminal and yes, he knew the first time past that we were going there! So by the time we finally got back to our terminal the computer system had gone down and we were left standing outside in the Miami heat and humidity for well over an hour before we even got inside. I doubt that we will ever take another hotel shuttle in Miami again! 😱 We never visit our “uncle in prison” any more. Our pictures never seem to come out good so we don’t buy them anyway.

Norris, I hope you’re feeling better soon.

Norris, I’m sad that this review is drawing to a close. I’ve enjoyed cruising along with you. I believe I still have a day in FLL to look forward to before you’re done here. I have seen a number of weather reports from Chicago recently. It sounds like you’re getting everything we moved south to Florida to get away from! I hope that you and Carol and your adorable feline family members 🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛ stay safe and warm throughout all of the winter weather.

I can totally relate, even to the sand in my bathing suit! I now prefer a two piece tanking over a one piece suit for beach days because I end up with way less sand in my bathing suit! My first hip replacement was in 2010. The second one was and both knees were in 2015. I still do exercises on a pretty much daily basis to strengthen the muscles my surgeries pretty much destroyed. I have made what I consider to be pretty decent progress, but I’m certainly nowhere near as young or as strong as I used to be. I am still able to do a lot of things on my “bionic” legs that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do now. I had the surgeries so I’d still be able to get out there and enjoy living. Some days I’m better than others, but I keep at it.

Harry, it wasn’t perseverance as much as it was my love for being in the ocean and the fact that I swim better than I walk! Swimming in the ocean is very definitely my happy place. You might think that since I live in Florida I’d have close but, easy access to the beach and the ocean. We live in Lake County, aptly named for the number of lakes you have to drive around to get anywhere you want to go. From our house it does take a certain amount of perseverance to get to the beach. In FLL we were staying right by the beach so as lame as I was it was not going to stop me from getting into the ocean! Sorry, I don’t know if the blue walkways get hot. I never saw any blue walkways. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they did get hot. The sand on most of our beaches definitely does get hot so I usually have some sort of beach shoes or flip flops to get me across the sand. I had the same contingency plan to head over to see the Hard Rock Casino/Hotel on our last trip to South Florida. Like you, we never managed to make it there

It’s always so hard to leave the fur babies! I love your itinerary. Can’t wait to follow along on your cruise. 🛳️

I certainly would have appreciated those blue walkways during our FLL trip just before my second hip replacement followed by both knee replacements. It felt like I was walking in quicksand. I was bone on bone in all three joints with little left to hold them in place. It broke my poor little heart to be unable to walk on that beach but it was so painful I just couldn’t do it. The romantic walk on the beach with DH that I was hoping for that evening wasn’t meant to be. On a different day I did manage to get down to the water in a spot where the beach wasn’t quite as wide as where you were and go for a swim. That went well - until I tried to get out of the water and kept getting knocked over by the waves! I finally stopped laughing at my predicament long enough to get my timing with the incoming waves right and managed to get out unassisted. 😂 Ah, the memories! 🤣

As I’m reading this report, I’m remembering how much we enjoyed our cruise on Ruby Princess. I’m thinking that was back in 2014 in an aft balcony. With Princess now sending a ship to us here in Port Canaveral, I’ve been thinking it’s about time for another Princess cruise. I had been hoping they would send us a ship we hadn’t already cruised on. It shouldn’t be hard, I thought, since we’ve only cruised on two, Ruby and Caribbean. Nothing at all against either ship, I just wanted one we hadn’t been on yet. We’re getting Caribbean Princess. This review and all of your beautiful ship pictures now have me seriously considering booking CB while she’s here. We have been to Grand Cayman several times, both on cruises and land vacations. We have enjoyed visits to both Guy Harvey’s shop and The Boathouse Grill, dinner in our case at the Boathouse. It was nice to revisit those places through your review and pictures.

Since I first heard that Wonder only had benches in the AquaTheater I’ve been wondering how I would be able to sit through the show without a back rest! I still think the chairs would probably be more comfortable, but I’m sure the benches are cheaper and they can squish more people into each row! 😱 At least my arthritic back will be happy to have a backrest! Thank you very much for your review. We’re on Wonder in September and we’re excited to be sailing on her. Thanks again @OCSC Mike for convincing me to give Wonder a try! Thank you, @budmeister for your review and all the great information about the shows and food that you shared.

Too bad your underwater camera got waterlogged. I would have loved to see your pictures. I have never had mine leak, but there have been a couple of times that I failed to put the camera on the correct underwater setting so the pictures I took did not come out very well. Colors and clarity were way off.