Jewel of the Seas Review

3.5 / 5.0
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Review for the Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Jewel of the Seas
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heyletsgo
6-10 Cruises • Age 20s

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Sail Date: May 2014
Traveled with children

I'm excited to write this one because it was pretty darn good. Of course there are glitches! Don't worry, there will be some juicy stuff here as well. One of them about my roll call mates, and one with dining. But I'm glad to say I will give every tip I got to help future cruisers. And of course to memorialize it for myself so I don't forget.

First off, I planned/booked cruise/air August 13', but I didn't look for a roll call until Jan. The roll call started a yr. before the cruise, so a couple of people were like the best of buds by the time everyone else joined. When I joined it I was so excited, and I wanted to say hey and share my great airfare deal with Royal Caribbean's Choice. It was a great deal, and my welcome was 'what a mistake I had made booking through Choice'. Not nice. But I'm here to tell you that there were no issues at all. I got a great price. They booked us with US, so we got AA points. Even my husband, who has enough AA miles to take him to the moon and back 1 1/2 times said he was impressed. We fly all the time. So in spite of the nay sayers...Just do your due diligence. After booking, go to the airline, and follow up. Just like you would do with a cruise. You may book with crown, icruise, smartcruiser, etc., but tickets are issued by Royal. So they (roll call starter wenches) wanted to get the minimum required by Royal together for the meet up, and they wanted to get an adults only excursion together (so I was out with a teenager) and they started emailing each other instead of using the roll call, because "the other people don't need to see all our plans". Whatever. If you have not been to a ship sponsored meet up, Royal is super nice. They book a nice club, give gifts, etc. I tried to start some fun stuff to bring everyone together, including us folks with those nasty children, like a hometown gift exchange, a slot pull, a cabin crawl, but they were already kind of off it. The gift exchange did happen with some of the folks, but going in I wasn't sure.

So lets start with the cruise. Since our last Royal cruise they started My Time dining. We cruise NCL as well, but it's not quite the same. Our first night, Sat. the 24th, we went to dinner about 6, and the host guy asked if we had a reservation. My DH and I looked at each other quizzically, very funny, and said uh, no. So he hands me a pseudo card and says "Call me for a res." Oh boy. It has his name, number, and says call between 8-12 or 1-5. He proceeds to seat us at the saddest table (to me). Take an immediate right when you go in, against the wall. You can't see anything but walls. It sucked. And apparently the waiters thought so too, because the service was not great. So the next morning, I had an early wake up, breakfast, and called him at 8 on the dot. I told him I would like to make a res. Honestly I was making my best guess because we had a great excursion in St. Maarten and I didn't know when we would eat. I asked for 6:30. I also said, can we please sit at a table within viewing distance of a window? I explained where we sat the night before would not work. He said sorry, all the good tables have been taken, reserved for the entire week. He also said a blatant lie; all the window tables are 2 seaters. Absolutely not true. You people do not know me, but let me tell you, that did not fly with me. I was mad. So tip one; know you should make a reservation, and tell them you want that area the whole week, because this is My Time dining! But lets move on.

Cabin Review

This was a small room. The 3rd bed was above us from the ceiling. A first and not sure I liked it. The balcony was ok. My husband said he did not mind the really wide thing, I don't know what it was, but about 15 feet wide, outside the balcony. Like a platform. And to make it more attractive, it said NO STEP on it in big red letters. Nice.

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