NCL Jewel to Alaska 8/22-29/2015 Pics and VIDEO!

Hey All! I have found so much helpful information using online reviews that I like to contribute too! We were on the NCL Jewel to Alaska Aug 22-29, 2015. Hopefully my experiences will help other people just like reviews have helped me.

I use trip advisor regularly to plan trips and started using cruise critic about 5 years ago when we were planning our honeymoon on the Carnival Victory. I became sooooo hooked on cruising and have been using cruise critic since then to plan our cruise vacations. We have done several Caribbean cruises (Carnival victory 2010, Carnival Breeze 2015, NCL sky 2013, and NCL Getaway 2014). We have also done a European cruise in 2011 (NCL EPic). We LOVE cruising. I found picture reviews in the forums when I was planning the Getaway and have used them since then in planning our Carnival Breeze Vacation this year as well as this Alaska Cruise.

Who are we? We are Ben and Rebekah (Rebekah types the reviews and makes the videos). We are early 30/s DINKS (double income no kids) who love traveling. I like to do reviews from my POV and full disclosure: they are generally mostly positive. There is a reason for this...we much prefer vacation to working!! Even a yucky day on vacation or at sea is better than a great day at work. This is not to say we hate working...we just love vacation more.

Another disclosure: although we have not cruised all the cruise lines, we do LOVE NCL. I'm not sure I quite make the rank of NCL cheerleader but I do love me some freestyle cruising. I know this is not for everyone and I am open to another line changing my mind but NCL does freestyle and suites well and we love them.

This cruise was decided upon by my mom. She asked us to go to Alaska with my dad and her and we had been trying to plan it for the past few years. Finally we decided on a date and August 22, 2015 it was!!! We booked our rooms and started to plan!

I can't wait to share with you a brief summary of our planning process and all the awesome parts of our cruise! I have a video on youtube that shows a summary of our trip that I will put in my signature and then will post another link once the review is done!!

Planning:

Like I mentioned we planned this cruise for a couple of years and booked it in approximately Nov 2014. We picked August because we already had another family trip planned in May 2015 and we didn't want to use all our summer vacation too close together so we picked end of August 2015.

My parents were going on this cruise with us so we were a party of four. We are not a room-sharing party of four, but a party nonetheless. When picking a room we looked almost exclusively at suites. Our first suite experience was NCL sky in 2013 and we have never looked back.

The NCL suite experience is usually totally worth the price. The butler and concierge usually make the price worthwhile! We love the lunch and breakfast option of the haven or cagneys/moderno depending upon the ship. Usually if you need something either the butler or the concierge will take care of it and it is wonderful. We did a suite on carnival in January and it was really just a bigger room with not many other perks.

We love an aft room (back of the ship for any newbies) for the view and so an aft penthouse is was on this cruise. We had 8130 and parents had 10164. 8130 was a good location because it had rooms above and tradewinds shops below. 10164 was closer to the great outdoors (the outdoor buffet) and noise was apparently not a problem for my parents.

For those who have never done an Alaska cruise apparently the cruise is about the ports and not the ship on this type of trip. We do not usually do cruise sponsored excursions because we don't like full-bus type of trips with a bunch of strangers. We (my mom and husband and I) spent a lot of time researching what types of private excursions we could book for alaksa. For those who haven't cruised much, this means that if you are late from this excursion the ship WILL NOT wait for you, but you can plan to be back in plenty of time so you will not miss the ship. We ended up getting excellent excursions that included only the four of us and it was amazing!!!

In Ketchikan we did a Misty Fjords flight tour on a float plane through Misty Fjord Executive Air. In Juneau we did Harv and Marv Outback Alaska whale watch tour. In Skagway we booked Sherry through Skagway Private Tours. All had excellent reviews on Trip Advisor and they were all as excellent as trip advisor advertised.

Pre Cruise:

We live in an area where the airport is small. This means that flights can be delayed or cancelled easily with no other way out of town that day. If you live in an area like this...you should always plan to leave well before the day of the cruise.

This trip was no exception. We planned for a Thursday after work flight so that we could have Friday for Seattle exploring and Saturday to rest before the cruise. We got to the airport before an hour before the flight and it ended up that it was oversold. As we were waiting to board they asked for volunteers to stay another day...we said no. Well, not enough people volunteered so they called our name as mandatory "stay behind people". Boo. Well long story short, it was a false alarm. My "not gonna make it" tears weren't worth it because after they loaded the plane they changed their mind and decided we could all go. Drama for no reason. Typical Small airport problems.

We were so excited to make it to Seattle as planned!!!

We made it to sea-tac at about 1230 AM and headed straight to our hotel: courtyard by Marriott Pioneer square. We checked in and went to our room for some sleep. This was the smallest room we have ever stayed in. Like ever. But it did the trick and we went to sleep planning for a big day in Seattle. We had plans for a trip to Pike place Market, Space needle, and a Duck Tour. We even had dinner reservations at a place overlooking the water and skyline! Little did we know life had other plans!

We will call this portion of the review the "Are we gonna make the cruise section."

Like I said, we went to sleep with big plans to see Seattle. Our normal morning routine was underway and we got up to get ready. After a short few minutes Ben laid back down in the bed and said his stomach hurt. This is not a totally out of place occurrence so we just thought we would wait it out. However, after a few minutes it became apparent that this was not a "normal" abdominal pain. I told Ben it was time to head to the ER and he of course said no because we had a cruise to get to tomorrow. After a small "discussion" it was determined that a hospital visit was not optional but mandatory so we loaded into a cab and headed to where our insurance told us to go!!

Once we got there and Ben was seen it was determined that a small kidney stone was the cause of his issues and it would likely pass on its own and we were given the go-ahead to leave the hospital and also to cruise tomorrow as long as he remained ok! Such a relief that it wasn't anything life threatening and that we would likely make our cruise that we hadn't bought insurance for...

If you are ever in Seattle in need of emergency medical attention, you have my full recommendation for the Virginia Mason Hospital. It was absolutely excellent. The nurses and physicians were wonderful and super helpful in our predicament! I will also disclose that I am a healthcare professional and this was one of the better experiences I have ever had as a consumer of healthcare.

Also, the pic of Ben in the ER was his idea and he wanted it included in the review and the video so please don't think I'm being a mean wife taking his pic in his hour of need and using it on here :)

Needless to say...we did not see Seattle on the day of the kidney stone. We went back to the hotel and waited for the stone to pass on its own with the help of some excessive water drinking and pain medications. We were just hoping to make our non-insured cruise the next day.

GREAT NEWS! The stone passed and Ben woke up feeling great! I wanted to take it easy to make sure he didn't overdo it, but he wanted to see the city so we did. We took off walking to try and find the pike place market and we made it from the courtyard pioneer square in no time!

The flowers at Pike place market are so beautiful and super cheap! Also please note that people were buying them and were allowed to take them onboard the ship to keep. So if you want some pretty flowers for your room apparently you should feel free to buy some and carry on board the ship in seattle.

Ben was still feeling good so we walked to the Space Needle and went up!

After all that walking we took a cab back to the hotel and got ready to leave for the ship!!

Up next:

Getting on the ship and heading for Alaska!

Following along, we were on board with you... I'll be trying to spot us in the background of your pics. :D

Following along, we were on board with you... I'll be trying to spot us in the background of your pics. :D

Thanks @twokids! What a great cruise it was!!!

Thanks @twokids! What a great cruise it was!!!

Just watched your video... didn't spot us... But we were directly behind you at the Not So Newlywed game...

It was an awesome cruise, and looks like your excursions were incredible. I definitely want to do Harv and Marv when we go back.

We also did a tour to the Yukon up the Klondike highway.

Here's a pic of us at the Saywer Glacier.

Just watched your video... didn't spot us... But we were directly behind you at the Not So Newlywed game...

 

 

 

It was an awesome cruise, and looks like your excursions were incredible. I definitely want to do Harv and Marv when we go back.

 

We also did a tour to the Yukon up the Klondike highway.

 

 

 

Here's a pic of us at the Saywer Glacier.

 

 

 

Harv and Marc was incredible! Great pic at the glacier!

Thanks for a great review! Sorry it started out badly, but it looks as though it turned out great. Loved the video!

We're on the last cruise of the season on the Jewel, so your info is much appreciated. :)

Great review!

We headed to the port to get onboard for our long awaited cruise!! We took a car service from the hotel to the port. No porters seemed to meet us to take our bags (even though there were porters there) so we took our baggage into the checked bags area ourselves. NBD and we saved ourselves a few dollars. After dropping the bags we headed out and were directed to the Haven/suite check in area. Usually we get to the port before the ship starts boarding but this trip since we had to see all of seattle that morning we got there a little later. I think we arrived at the port around 1130. This increased our boarding time significantly over our previous ship boardings. It was a little more crowded and we had to wait on the gangway.

The gentleman who led us from the haven check in area then took us to modern where suite lunches are held now on the Jewel. We were greeted by Florentina the concierge and I will state that our first impression was not amazing and it did not change throughout the cruise. We gave her and her staff several chances to change our opinion but overall we were not as impressed as we had been on several previous NCL concierge/suite experiences.

I had the chicken for lunch with risotto, while my mom, dad, and Ben ordered the French Dip. Apparently the French Dip has changed from our previous suite experiences so Ben and Dad ended up having a hamburger instead. In spite of the change lunch ended up being a pretty good experience.

Afterward we went outside to take an obligatory group photo and head to check out the ship and our rooms. The time when we booked the cruise had the 10% OBC offer and so we had a ton of credit to spend. Ben and I decided in advance to use this for the Soda Package and UDP (now SDP). We went poolside to order the Soda package and water package. We then went back inside to concierge desk to order the SDP. Once this was all set up Florentina notified us that we would need new cards with UDP printed on them and these would come later. We told her we ordered the soda package and these stickers were already on our cards. She told us no problem. Of course when the new cards came they had UDP but no soda sticker so we had to spend a couple of tries to get the card with both packages included.

leaving the hotel

our "onboard the cruise" group selfie

Our room for the week!

Walking into room

Sitting area

Room 8130 continued

Fresh Flowers

Dressing/vanity area

One of our favorite parts of a cruise is soon after lunch on boarding day when all we have to do before muster is to explore the ship and find our way around. We had never been on a jewel class ship so this one was a little challenging to figure out the first day but easy to figure after that. On the 8th floor one must walk through O'sheehans to traverse the ship and I will admit I got turned around a few times going through here but we eventually got it!

After a little further ship exploring we went to a pretty painless muster drill and headed back to the room for some champagne and sailaway.

Chilling on the balcony at sailaway

Very much enjoying our posts.

Keith

Thanks for a great review! Sorry it started out badly, but it looks as though it turned out great. Loved the video!

 

We're on the last cruise of the season on the Jewel, so your info is much appreciated. :)

Thanks! We were so glad to be able to still make the cruise and it was a great time! You will enjoy the cruise so much.

Great review!

Thank you!

Very much enjoying our posts.

 

 

 

Keith

Thank you for reading!

Enjoying your review as we board the Jewel in 3 weeks - our first NCL cruise.

We are in Haven and I was glad to read here that Florentina will be on vacation when we cruise as yours is just another poor report about her (see jenseib's report). I think that such poor performances need to be reported rather than just tolerated - just like reporting excellent experiences.

Looking forward to reading more - especially about specialty restaurants.

Enjoying your review as we board the Jewel in 3 weeks - our first NCL cruise.

We are in Haven and I was glad to read here that Florentina will be on vacation when we cruise as yours is just another poor report about her (see jenseib's report). I think that such poor performances need to be reported rather than just tolerated - just like reporting excellent experiences.

Looking forward to reading more - especially about specialty restaurants.

Paulchili I have seen her review and also contributed to the commentary there. I was not too surprised to see many others who joined in with their less than positive experiences with that particular person. I am considering contacting NCL to report back to them. Since this is your first NCL experience and you are gonna be in a suite hopefully the concierge will be excellent as well as your butler. NCL has a great suite experience (usually)!

As far as restaurants we went to specialties every night so I'll be sure to tell you about them :)

Enjoying your review as we board the Jewel in 3 weeks - our first NCL cruise.

We are in Haven and I was glad to read here that Florentina will be on vacation when we cruise as yours is just another poor report about her (see jenseib's report). I think that such poor performances need to be reported rather than just tolerated - just like reporting excellent experiences.

Looking forward to reading more - especially about specialty restaurants.

I read in another thread that Florentina isn't just on vacation now, but is no longer with NCL. Whether true or not, I have no way to say. I also saw positive remarks on her replacement.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

I read in another thread that Florentina isn't just on vacation now, but is no longer with NCL. Whether true or not, I have no way to say. I also saw positive remarks on her replacement.

 

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

Edited: I found the link.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2254632&highlight=florentina

That is interesting. She told me when we were getting off the ship that she was going on vacation after that and was asking to be assigned to another ship. Maybe she did take another job. It has to be really hard to be away from your family all that time.

some pics from ship exploration:

pool

adult pool and hot tubs

the view of seattle from our balcony

After sailaway we got ready for dinner because we had reservations for Cagneys that evening. If you have read my Getaway review you may know that we love Cagneys. Like LOVE. We ate there several nights this trip. I think 3 out of the four of us had ribeye and mom had a filet. As on all other NCL ships the steak was excellent for a cruise ship. Probably even excellent for a land based restaurant. Ben usually has a ceasar salad and I have a wedge salad. The steaks came out and were prepared to our liking. Our waiter was attentive (he was the same waiter who had taken care of us at moderno for lunch. Ben and I had the raspberry crème brulee and mom had the oreo cheesecake. Oreo cheesecake at cagneys is pretty much the best dessert on NCL. Second best dessert is the crème brulee at Le Bistro IMHO.

After dinner we went back to our room to head to bed. We were tired. We live on eastern daylight time and it was VERY late there plus we had a long and tiring day at the hospital the day before so we headed to bed. Ready for a big sea day tomorrow.

Our towel animal that night

Sunday Morning

Remember how I said we were on Eastern time? Well we still were in the morning. We woke up very early and watched cruise ship channels. If you've never been on a cruise they have channels that are running movies and channels running sitcoms or other syndicated shows, news channels, 1-2 kids channels, and the cruise line channels. The cruise line channels play shore excursion advertisements and happenings around the ship (like replays of their lectures and gameshows etc). Sunday morning we watched a large portion of Paul Blart Mall Cop 2. We picked it up somewhere near the beginning and probably watched for an hour or so. (don't worry we watched bits and pieces of it throughout the cruise and ended up probably seeing the whole thing eventually).

After cruiseship tv we decided to go check out the gym. The gym was pretty nice on this ship with a large amount of cardio equipment and a few weight machines and free weights. Like many cruises it was SO CROWDED. It was a little surprising how packed it was but then I realized that probably a lot of cruisers are on east coast time like we are. I couldn't find a machine to get on so I decided to go walk on the walking track. The gym is on 12 forward and the track is on 13 mid-aft ship. I went up there in my tank top and yoga pants and decided it was so chilly that I needed to jog to try and work up a sweat. Brrrr.

Walking/jogging track

It gets a little crowded in this section around the aft where the basketball court is when you meet other guests using the track:

view from the track:

view from the track

After 30 minutes of chilly walking and jogging I headed back to the gym to lift weights for a few minutes and pick up Ben to head back to the room.

After we showered it was time for Moderno Breakfast. This was one of my favorite meals. If you have suite cruised before you know that the menu is very similar whether it is a "Haven" restaurant like on the -away ships or a cagneys/moderno restaurant. The lunch menu is "meh" in my opinion but the breakfast menu is so great. They have a buffet and they have an order menu. Our favorites were the French toast and the waffle. Yum Yum.

French Toast

waffle

We looked through the NCL daily the night before to determine what we were going to do that day (since it wasn't really pool weather for us) and we decided on Bingo (held in spinnaker lounge on Jewel). If you are traveling as a group that doesn't do everything together 24/7 and aren't staying in the same cabin you may want to get the NCL iconcierge app. It costs 7.95 to use throughout the cruise but it allows you to text your group members and let them know what you are doing, when dinner reservations are, etc. I texted my parents to let them know we were going to bingo and so they could meet us there.

While we were getting ready/waiting for bingo to start we saw spouts out the aft of the ship!!!!! We went crazy because these were our first whale sightings EVER. So exciting. We weren't fast enough to get pics of the spouts but stay tuned (or check out my video) to see that we got plenty of whale pics eventually.

Spinnaker

someone spotted a whale out the window before bingo and everyone jumped up to see.

We didn't win bingo. Not even once this whole trip!

After bingo we decided to try the buffet for lunch. I love the buffet layout on this ship. Many of the other ships have a pretty spread out buffet. On this ship all of the buffet stations were clustered together and it seemed to really help the flow of traffic and lines. This may seem counter intuitive that clustering the food all in one area helped traffic but there were rarely lines. It flowed really well. It might be my favorite buffet from my 6 cruises. Also, the washy washy team on this cruise was absolutely adorable. The guy playing guitar and the guy singing washy washy to multiple tunes were super cute and fun.

Also, they have barbeque by the pool on sea days and it was bbq chicken and other items and was pretty good. "we are serving bbq by the pool, bbq by the pool, bbq by the pool. We are serving bbq by the pool..." if you've been on jewel recently you know what the tune is :)

bbq by the pool