Jewel review 4/3-4/12 9 day Southern

[lmt0714]

I just posted this to the member review section...it's long but I appreciated all the reviews I read before I left so thought I would share my experience. I hope to have my pictures uploaded soon and will post a link once they are up. These ports have the most beautiful beaches ever, we really enjoyed them!

 

Also, I know everyone always wants to know what the menus are. I used this site http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2584615350087051315pKzGwU for dining room menus and they were pretty accurate. The days were somewhat a different order and a few items were not exactly the same, but this was pretty much what they served.

 

Any questions, just ask!

 

This was my 8th cruise and my husband’s 2nd, but the first time on NCL for both of us. I work at a school so we had to cruise this week as it was my spring break. We were looking for a relaxing, romantic getaway and I was worried the ship would be crowded with kids because of the school holidays, but we had a fabulous time!

 

Embarkation: I had wanted to arrive at the port around 11 because I know how crazy the Port of Miami can be, but we didn’t get there until around 12:15. Gave the porters our bags and got in the long security line to get our bags x-rayed. This was the longest wait and took about 25 minutes. Once in, we went to the table and paid the corkage for our (many) bottles of wine. Very easy, and it was nice to have our own wine for the week. There was a separate check in line for balcony cabins which was very short, then another line for your key/ship card. We were onboard with a glass of champagne about 1 PM.

 

Cabin: We went straight to our cabin when we got on because we had so much carry-on stuff (including our case of wine/champagne) that we wanted to drop off. We just walked through the closed door of our hallway and found our room. It was cleaned and ready so we left our things and headed to the pool. I booked a guarantee balcony cabin hoping for a higher deck, but knowing I would be happy with any balcony. We were given a cabin number pretty early, and ended up with a BD. It was a fine room with plenty of storage space. It was a little tight as far as moving around and getting ready but adequate. Having a balcony was awesome, and I don’t think I would sail again without one. We were able to relax in our room while getting ready, sit on the balcony with a cocktail and enjoy the view. My problem was that the balcony was semi-enclosed, so I felt a little cheated. I compare it to booking an oceanview expecting a picture window, but getting a port hole. My husband said it was like being a horse with blinders on. Either way you look at it, the balcony cabins on the 8th deck (and maybe the forward ones on the 9th) don’t have glass all the way down and all the way to the sides. I know I booked a guarantee but I didn’t even know this type of partial balcony was an option or I would have booked a different category.

 

Ship: I thought the ship was beautiful and in great shape. I loved the tropical décor and bright colors. I thought all the public spaces were classy and well done. My issue is that so much space is taken up by restaurants that the bars seemed to be shoved in where ever they would fit. I am used to Royal Caribbean and love the Promenade area. It has high ceilings and the bars seem to spill out into the walkway giving it a street feel. On the Jewel, the closest thing they had was Bar City, but it felt like this was 3 bars crammed together in a small, tight space. We went up to the Star Bar one night and it was not as nice as Viking Crown on RCCL. All the windows looked out over the pool deck so you didn’t really get the great view you get in Viking Crown, plus it was really small. We enjoyed the pool on the sea days, and they did a good job of keeping the kids out of the adult pool and hot tubs. The first day I went out about noon (after our M&G) and there were absolutely NO chairs anywhere. That is no chairs that didn’t have a towel or book or random pair of shoes. We walked everywhere, even up to the front of the sun deck and nothing. We ended up setting up camp on the edge of the pool which was fine but not as comfortable. On sea day #2 I became one of those people and sent my husband out at 8:30 to reserve our chairs. Yes I hate when people do it, but it was sink or swim…if you didn’t reserve one, you didn’t get one. We did go out about 9:30 and stayed the entire day so it wasn’t empty for long. We also thought the gym was extremely small.

 

Food: I was really worried about the food aspect of this cruise after reading all the negative reviews, but for the most part, I loved the food. We ate in the dining room 4 nights, the buffet once and in 4 specialty restaurants. The dining room food was great. The two best meals I had were in the dining room – beef wellington and lamb chops. We enjoyed all of our meals here. We only ate in Azura, and the most we had to wait was about 15 minutes. We ate mostly later (8 and after) and a couple of the times walked right in. I don’t usually like to eat in the buffet for dinner, but one night we were tired and hungry and wanted food fast so we went there. It was delicious! The salad bar at lunch and dinner was awesome. There were a ton of selections. We really enjoyed the Asian food selections and the carving station. For specialty restaurants we ate in Chin Chin, Le Bistro, Cagneys and Tangos. Chin Chin had great appetizers (I think we ordered them all!) but the entrée I had was just ok. My husband had sushi and said it was great. Le Bistro was delicious, especially the escargot, onion soup and mushroom soup. We ate so much here and never made it to dessert which was disappointing because this was the only place that had crème brulee. We had high expectations for Cagneys and were disappointed. The appetizers and sides were horrible (bland and boring) and the steak was just ok (but the sauces were not good). On the plus side, the king crab legs were delicious and the desserts (apple crisp and lava cake) were the best we had on the ship. We had Tangos the last night, and for this one I had pretty low expectations but we ended up really enjoying it. The mango salsa was great, and the fajitas were really good too. I also had their white sangria which was amazing! I was sad it took me until the last day to find it because it was so delicious, and only $5.50 a glass. We never had problems with reservations. We booked most a day in advance, but for Tangos decided around 3 that we wanted to go at 6:30 and it was no problem. None of the specialty restaurants we ate in were ever full. The one complaint I have about food is the breakfast buffet. There was a wide variety of food but it seemed like everything was cold. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t keep the food hot. After the first couple of days we stuck to the omelet station which was great.

 

Activities/Entertainment: We’re not big into the organized ship activities so the offerings (or lack thereof) didn’t mean a lot to us. What we would have liked was for the Caribbean band to play more often at the pool. We also would have attended one or all of the tastings (beer, martini, wine) if there weren’t in the middle of the day on the sea days (we were at the pool) and if they weren’t back to back (I don’t think we would have survived 1 ½ hours straight of alcohol tastings!). We didn’t catch many shows because the times didn’t work very well since we ate dinner later (most shows were 7 and 9, we usually ate at 8 or 8:30) but the times I peeked in it seemed kind of cheesy (the Band on the Run for example). We did enjoy the Newlywed/Not So Newlywed Game (we won!), the hypnotist and Cirque Bijou. We heard many good things about the comedian as well. If you go on the Jewel, please don’t miss Cirque Bijou. It’s the best cruise show I have ever seen. We absolutely loved it. I also thought 60890 (or something like that) was very good. Most of our time at night was spent in the casino which was a blast. We played blackjack almost every night, and the dealers were fun and personable. We came out ahead which is always nice too!

 

Service: We had great service. Everyone was friendly and accommodating, from our room stewards to the bar staff to the servers. This was another area that I’ve seen a lot of complaints but we thought everyone was great. We did have one very slooooow lunch in Blue Lagoon but it was pretty busy. We mostly ate at Blue Lagoon around 12 or 1 am after the casino and it was very fast and good.

 

Ports: The main reason we chose this cruise was because of the itinerary. I’ve always wanted to do a Southern Caribbean cruise, but living in Florida it’s hard to justify flying to a port when we can easily drive to so many. So having a Southern itinerary out of Miami was great, plus it was 9 days compared to the usual 7. We enjoyed every port we went to. We did all of our excursions on our own as I’m not a big fan of ship tours. I’m glad our first stop was Samana because it ended up being our least favorite. We went to Playa Rincon, which was beautiful and I highly recommend it, but there just wasn’t much going on here and the roads were terrible. In Tortola we took the ferry to the Baths. Our boat was supposed to dock at 10 am, but they didn’t start letting people off until 10:15. We literally ran to the ferry docks and just made the 10:30 ferry. The Baths was amazing, and I’m so glad that we went there. Devils Beach, which is at the end of the caves, was beautiful and there was great snorkeling. We took the 3:30 ferry back and stopped at Pussers for a painkiller. In Antigua we booked Eli’s Xtreme Circumnav with Adventure Antigua. This was an amazing tour that took us all around the island with snorkel stops at the stingray park and Pillars of Hercules. We had a great lunch on the beach, and ended with a stop at a secluded beach called Rendezvous Bay that was gorgeous. In Barbados the weather was horrible which was disappointing. We booked a sea turtle snorkel with our roll call group. Seeing (and touching) the sea turtles was great, but it was pouring and it was cold! We were with Outdoor Barbados and I thought their boat was a little old and rickety. I would have liked to have been on one of the catamarans (Silvermoon and Cool Runnings were the nicest we saw). Last but certainly not least was St. Lucia. We ended up joining with a group from our roll call last minute and toured with Spencer Ambrose. It’s a very long story, but Spencer had actually cancelled (the week before we left!) the private tour I had booked almost a year in advance. The roll call group was supposed to be with his brother, and even though I didn’t want to give my money to Spencer, I also really wanted to go to Jalouise so we just joined in with the roll call group. I was shocked when we got to the port and Spencer was our driver! I guess the big group he had cancelled on us for had also cancelled, who knows? But after the rest of our group gave Spencer a hard time about it, the day was great. I did feel very sick on the windy roads of St. Lucia, but it was worth it to get to the beach. Jalouise is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. I could spend days there. The snorkeling was great as well. We skipped most of the touristy spots to have more time at the beach, but did go to a botanical garden and waterfall and had a fabulous lunch at a tiny restaurant in one of the towns along the way. The ports on this cruise were amazing, and I had no trouble booking independently.

 

Disembarkation: We chose to walk off with our bags, which turned out to be a wise choice as the ship didn’t clear until late. We were leaving the ship around 9:30 and I don’t think they had even started calling the tag colors yet. The line was pretty long to get off, but I thought NCL did a good job of keeping it organized and moving smoothly. For the most part, a bad disembarkation is all because of customs and how slow they move so you can’t fault the ship. I will say I really loved not being rushed out of the cabin at 8 am. We took our time, had a last omelet and were waiting outside for our ride at 10:15.

 

Summary: This cruise was a much need vacation, and it was everything we wanted it to be. It was definitely busy with 5 port days but there was plenty of time to relax as well. I think if you have a good attitude and can go with the flow you will really enjoy NCL. We loved being able to eat when we wanted, where we wanted. We didn’t feel nickel and dimed to death as some people complain…if you wanted to buy something or participate in something, you could do it. If you didn’t want to pay any extra, you didn’t. Seems pretty simple to me! Considering the itinerary and the price, I think this cruise was a very good value and NCL delivered a very good vacation. If I was to rank the lines, I give Royal Caribbean a slight edge because I love their ships, but we would sail NCL again in a heartbeat for the right itinerary and price because we loved freestyle cruising.

[Almagetty]

Thanks for your review! We were on this itinerary on the Pearl over Thanksgiving in 2007. And now we are counting down the days until we are aboard the Jewel in Northern Europe! Your review gave me a chance to reminisce about our excellent Southern Caribbean cruise and dream a little bit about what awaits us on the Jewel in June. :D

[lovingretirement]

Thanks so much for your review! I appreciate the dining room menus!!! We will be on the Jewel in September which will be our first cruise with NCL. Your review helped me get a feel for the ship.

[dinoman]

Your review is most helpful. We will embark on our 1st cruise w/NCL Jewel in June and I look forward to the Freestyle dining experience.