This was our second cruise and first with NCL. We selected the itinerary because of the number of ports visited with only one sea day for an 11 day cruise. Our previous cruise was on Princess in the Baltic.

Overall, we enjoyed it as much as our first cruise, which means we are likely to continue to use cruises as our main way of taking holidays. NCL certainly believes in the freestyle cruising. We were also impressed that while there are plenty of upswell opportunities, they were as hard sell as it seemed on Princess. There was a much wider demographic of people than on our Princess cruise and as others have noted about the Norwegian Jade, being in Europe all the time, is that it gathers a fair few non-English speaking people and tries to cater to Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Russian. This seems to only degrade in the buffet queue and during embarkation and disembarkation where everyone just assumes that no one will understand them. Also many people not used to their personal space being invaded in public will need to get used cultures that just don't have the same ideals.

The specialty food is very varied on the Norwegian Jade and all of it felt like value for money, but clearly if you want memorable meals, you will need to budget for it as part of the trip. The MDR food was average but acceptable and the buffet was boring and repetitive. All of it was acceptable though, but on Princess we actually liked the buffet and chose it sometimes as an alternative to the MDR. Read more