Hello - Overall we enjoyed our trip to Alaska. We had decent weather overall and really liked the sites we saw - which were amazing at times. The review below though is going to focus on the Jewel, what we liked and what we didn't like or found underwhelming.
For background purposes: We are a family of four, kids ages 13 and 11 (girl and boy)and we travelled from MN to Seattle and arrived one day early to tour the downtown Seattle area. We were on the June 29th cruise and visited Ketchikan (no rain that day and in the 60s!), Juneau (low/mid 60s and sprinkling/drizzling - but did not impair our whale watching), Skagway (cold and windy that day, but we were on the train ride, so OK) and Victoria (beautiful city and nice day in the 70s). Seattle was beautiful the day we left and arrived back in port.
Room: We had a mini-suit in the forward to mid section of the ship (11526). Our room location was fabulous for the areas we probably visited the most - pool area, buffet for breakfast/lunch, stardust theater for shows, exercise room and spinnaker lounge. The room size was nice for a family of four and we loved having the deck for outside viewing. The interesting part was that there were no outlets in the bathroom for hairdryers (only low voltage razors), which I thought was odd and a bit inconvenient. With that said, there were a desk area that you could use for make-up and hair. My only complaint about that was poor lighting for that purpose in that area. Definitely bring a power strip with you. Our cabin steward was friendly and did a great job with making up the room each morning and getting beds ready at night. Overall we would probably give the room an A-.
We had a mini-suit in the forward to mid section of the ship (11526). Our room location was fabulous for the areas we probably visited the most - pool area, buffet for breakfast/lunch, stardust theater for shows, exercise room and spinnaker lounge. The room size was nice for a family of four and we loved having the deck for outside viewing. The interesting part was that there were no outlets in the bathroom for hairdryers (only low voltage razors), which I thought was odd and a bit inconvenient. With that said, there were a desk area that you could use for make-up and hair. My only complaint about that was poor lighting for that purpose in that area. Definitely bring a power strip with you. Storage space was overall adequate - we found a place for all our stuff and we had a lot (4 large suitcases and 4 carry ons - I don't know how to pack lightly and the Alaska weather created extra packing challenges for me).