My review of Jade Feb 6-13

[outtabux]

Outtabux,

 

Thanks for your great review!! As far as your cab in Belize, how long did you use it for only $40? I contacted a driver for the day and he quoted me $80 (two people) for four hours for our cruise in March. If you only used the cab for an hour, then our $80 isn't too bad. I don't want to commit if just grabbing a cab will be a lot cheaper.

 

Thanks again for your review and your great ideas.

 

Kathleen

 

There was 8 of us and we probably had a cab for an hour or an hour and a half. We just had him drive us to the Belize sign and take some pictures and we bought some jewelry from a guy there at the park.

[Toliverair]

Thank you for the great review!

[hlb76]

Thanks for the review. we are getting closer and closer to our vacation! So bummed to hear tendering is still and issue. Make me nervous to think about booking a tour. yes we are month away with nothing booked :eek:

[Sun&BeachLoving]

Here's my thoughts on the Entertainment.

 

The shows are twice nightly at 7:30 & 9:30. We would eat in Alizar at 5:45 and we could make it to the show by 7:15 which was just enough time to get good seats.

 

 

Stay tuned for Port Adventures!

Thanks for your reviews. We are going on 3/12/16 for our first ever cruise. Did you have to make reservations for the shows and can you do that ahead of time? I didn't see a list of shows or times on NCL website. :confused:

 

Also if I make dinner reservations ahead of time, is it easy enough to cancel/change them? I will be traveling with 13, 16 and 18 year old who are known to change their minds. :)

 

Lastly are we able to bring drinks/sodas on board to have in cabin? I thought I read that on one of these threads.

Thanks so much for feedback.

[Starflyr3]

Thanks for your reviews. We are going on 3/12/16 for our first ever cruise. Did you have to make reservations for the shows and can you do that ahead of time? I didn't see a list of shows or times on NCL website. :confused:

 

Also if I make dinner reservations ahead of time, is it easy enough to cancel/change them? I will be traveling with 13, 16 and 18 year old who are known to change their minds. :)

 

Lastly are we able to bring drinks/sodas on board to have in cabin? I thought I read that on one of these threads.

Thanks so much for feedback.

 

Hi! Come join our role call, we are having a "meet and greet" and a slot pull ojn the first sea day. Maybe a cabin crawl if people are interested at the Meet and Greet. Its a nice way to meet others:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2125226

 

You do not need to make show reservations on Jade - that is for the bigger ships in the fleet. It is easy to change dinner reservations if needed, but maybe not last second (specialty). If your kids like changing their minds, there is ALWAYS a variety of foods at dinner in the buffet, and since they're old enough, they would be able to go eat there if you and your spouse preferred a specialty that night. IDK if you have the dining package or not.

 

You can bring on water, soft drinks and bottles of wine (you pay a corkage fee for the wine), so if you dont like Pepsi products, you can bring Coke or Dr Pepper or whatever.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Starflyr3

[Peptmf]

And finally....PORTS

 

Cozumel: This was the first time we have ever booked an excursion through the cruise line. We booked the Dolphinaris through NCL. We tried to book it direct and I can't remember if it wasn't available or they wouldn't book direct. We booked the Swim and Ride Package for the kids online on the NCL website. While researching this excursion I found out about an Observer Package which can only be booked once on board through the Shore Excursion desk. The Observer package just included transportation, lunch and 2 drinks for $50 each. I didn't love the hurry up and wait experience of a large group excursion. It took 2 1/2 hours just to get everyone from the Jade and into the water at Dolphinaris. They did get to spend 1 hour in the water with the dolphins and that part was great. The "observers" took pictures and ate while the rest of the group was in the water. The lunch was just so-so. The lunch was hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos and stuff to make nachos. I think my hubby had four drinks. (They don't keep track) I believe the pictures could be purchased for about $20 each, but I tried not to look because I had decided beforehand that I wasn't going to buy any.

 

Belize: We had booked a private excursion through Caveman Tours to go snorkeling in Caye Caulker. This would mean we would have to tender in and then take a water taxi to Caye Caulker. Tender tickets were available at 8:00 for the first tender at 9:00. We got to deck 7 to get our tickets at 7:55 and got group 5. Right at 9:00 they called groups 1 & 2. It then took over an hour for them to call group 3. We finally got on a tender boat at 10:45 which meant we had missed the 10:30 water taxi to Caye Caulker and we didn't have the water taxi schedule memorized to know when the next one would be available. It was a 15 minutes ride to Belize, so we stepped off the tender right at 11:00. We decided we were too tight on time to try and make the Caye Caulker thing work, so we made a new plan. We walked and shopped through the tourist village and decided to go get a cab and go to the Belize sign and take a Christmas card picture. We found a nice cab driver named BJ standing right outside the gate. He had a van for all 8 of us. He quoted us $80 round trip for our group and then quickly lowered it to $60. We offered him $40 and we were on our way. Outside the gate of the tourist village the vendors and cabbies are in your face and pushy. They were calling the girls princess and wanting to braid their hair. The usual stuff. When we got back from our little tour around town, we had to go through the x-ray machine and have our bags hand searched. There are two "official" buildings right next to the gate. One is the x-ray scanner building and the other is where you can get your passport stamped if you would like. I don't think we saw the best Belize had to offer but with the time constraints and tendering issues this seems like a difficult port. The port time was 9-6 with the last tender back at 5:00. Oh, I forgot to mention that there were two other boats there and they were there before us so I think that was part of the tendering problem.

 

Roatan: We booked Little French Key on our own. People were up earlier this day to get their tender tickets after the big delays yesterday. I asked about pulling into the pier for a while before the NCL Dawn arrived and they said they did that earlier in the year but they were not doing that anymore. Tendering went quicker to Roatan and it was only a 5 minute ride in the orange life boats. As you walk through the tourist village, there is a little building/hut that will stamp your passport if you would like. We walked through the village and outside the gates to find Dave and Larry to drive us to Little French Key. Everyone seemed to know Dave and Larry and no one bothered us and people were nice about pointing us in the right direction to meet up with them. It was a 30 minute ride across the island to get to LFK. You pick your package and pay and then take a 3 minute boat ride over to the remote island. The island is GREAT! There is lots of room to spread out. The drinks and the lunch were great. I could go into great detail, so if you have specific questions I can answer those later. Lots of fun water activities, loungers, hammocks, sand volleyball and the animals. We got to hold the monkeys and take pictures. The staff was very good about going around and collecting people to get a van back to the pier so no one missed the tender.

 

We loved this cruise! The boat was in good shape and clean. The crew were friendly and we had no problems communicating with any of them. We had 11 people in our group and our only small complaint was that we had to walk to the bar and stand in line for our drinks around the pool. The selection of food and the quality were above average. We didn't think anything could be better then DCL and by the end of the week we decided that NCL is overall a better fit for us, especially for the price!

 

We'll be on the Jade in a couple weeks and was wondering what we can expect from the pool and ocean temp.?

[outtabux]

My kids spent most of their time in the hot tubs. We did spend the day in the ocean in Roatan and no one complained about the water temperature.

[hawk1972]

We'll be on the Jade in a couple weeks and was wondering what we can expect from the pool and ocean temp.?

 

We swam in Cozumel and Roatan and the pool, and to me, the pool water on the ship was colder than the ocean/sea temp.

[lawnbowler48]

Thanks for your review it was a good read

[HandC4Me]

This is my first cruise and I'm not sure how the whole tender ticket thing works. Can you go get your tender tickets and then go get breakfast? Or do you have to stay in the general area where you got the tender tickets? Do they announce what tender group is boarding over the whole ship or just by where you got the tickets?

 

Thanks for the report! We'll be on the Jade in just a few weeks!

 

I thought these were some good questions, and I'm wondering if anyone can answer them for indigoeyes? I'm not totally clear on it myself or I would attempt to.

 

Thanks!

[NMLady]

I didn't mind the decor. The atrium is very red. The Medusa Lounge has some ugly and uncomfortable orange chairs, but overall the decor didn't make or break my cruise. Everything was in good condition and clean so that was more important to me. I did hear from the CruiseNext lady that the Jade is going to dry dock in Oct and will be losing a lot of the Hawaiian stuff.

 

Actually the drydock has been changed to Spring, 2017. Exact month hasn't yet been given.

[aneka]

Thinking about a Mini Suite on Deck 11 for an upcoming cruise. Just wondering if you experienced any noise from the Great Outdoor Area which was right above you on Deck 12?

[olesiabr]

This is my first cruise and I'm not sure how the whole tender ticket thing works. Can you go get your tender tickets and then go get breakfast? Or do you have to stay in the general area where you got the tender tickets? Do they announce what tender group is boarding over the whole ship or just by where you got the tickets?

 

Thanks for the report! We'll be on the Jade in just a few weeks!

I'd like to know the answer to this question as well...can one person stand in line for the entire party?

And is there then a line up to proceed to the tender? Do they allow the group ones to go before the group two's or is it a free for all? What deck does the tender depart from?

Thanks!

 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

[Newbee-Jcar]

Thanks for the review. We were on the same Cruise. I didn't know about this web-site or I would've looked at it for what to expect.

[Newbee-Jcar]

It depends on which port you are out to which deck you tender out of. sometimes it was 4, or 6 or 7. We had excursion tickets so didn't have to deal with getting a tender ticket.