Jewel/anyone back today?

[tokidoki]

Just wondering if the itinerary was intact with the problem going on? thanks fellow cruisers!:):):)

[nancy591]

I am back today from the Jewel. What problems are you referring to???

[tokidoki]

Hi, recent cruisers report delays arriving in port, PC??? Did you arrive @ noon? Something about the thruster problem and dropping a port during the sept cruises to Canada?

[Richpontone]

You just came back from your jewel cruise. Any problems. Any thing to report that was good on your cruise?

[happythoughts]

Just got back from the Jewel and had a wonderful time- will write a review soon

 

I believe we may have docked a little later than scheduled in Port Canaveral but at all the other ports we were docked on time

[gmss0205]

We were on the Jewel two weeks ago. Docked at Port Canaveral at 1:30PM rather than Noon. They gave a 25% discount for the tours to Orlando due to the reduced time in port. Still crazy to me that anyone would pay that kind of money to go Disney or Universal for about five hours total.

[nancy591]

Arrived at PC at 1:30pm. VERY crowded getting off the ship. HUGE waste of time in PC IMHO! I think they should skip that port all together and spend more time in the Bahamas.

[Turtles06]

Arrived at PC at 1:30pm. VERY crowded getting off the ship. HUGE waste of time in PC IMHO! I think they should skip that port all together and spend more time in the Bahamas.

 

I suspect the port is a moneymaker for NCL compared with the Bahamas. The fact that NCL calls the port "Orlando (Port Canaveral)" speaks volumes. The NCL shore excursions to the theme parks are about $150 pp for an adult, and nearly that for a kid. I think that's a great deal more than NCL charges for many of the excursions on the islands (e.g., $50 to snorkel for half a day, etc.).

[tokidoki]

welcome back! If the Disney trip was delayed, do you know what time the buses came back? I know the ship sails @10pm, I had hoped the buses would leave alittle later?

[Crusin6]

I would be interested to know about those pax who were going to the Space Center. Did anyone out there do that on this cruise? Was there enough time there? I would think you might not even get to the Space Center until close to 3pm if you docked at 1:30.

 

So does anyone have anything to report about going to Kennedy?

 

Thanks,

Cru

[gmss0205]

The ship sailed at the regular time. The excursion to Orlando still left exactly when they would have left had the ship arrived on time. It just mean the exursions to Orlando lost about 90 minutes, which is lousy when you have such a limited time there to begin with.

 

We didn't even get off the ship there and it was the right decision. Judging by the crowds at the pool and the buffet, it appeared that at least 50% of the passengers stayed on board.

[mama22]

We just returned from the 8/21 Jewel sailing. We went to Universal despite the shortened time frame because my son is a big Harry Potter fan and that was the highlight of his trip. They had all those with excursions to the Kennedy Space Center, Disney, Universal and Sea World meet in the theater. Because of the late arrival into port, they offered anyone wanting to cancel the oppurtunity to do so and offered the 25% discount for all these excurations if you chose to go anyway. Got off the ship very shortly after the ship got in and was cleared. The buses left at about 2 pm getting in to Universal at about 3pm. We were told the buses would be departing back to the ship between 7:30pm and 8:15pm. We did Harry Potter, which took the longest due to the crazy crowds there. The rest of the park was great and we walked on several rides with little wait. We made it back to the bus by 8pm and waited for a few minutes for it to fill up, making it back to the ship by a about 9:15pm. The ship still sailed at 10pm as planned. All in all not the ideal with the shortened day there but we made the most of it and had fun! Very glad we didn't make private arrangements to get to the park actually, especially with the 25% off we received.

 

My parents were scheduled to go on the NASA Up-Close excursion which was cancelled due to the shortened day. They ended up doing the other Kennedy Space Center tour and they really enjoyed it.

 

Hope this helps and happy cruising!