We have been doing Thanksgiving trips with our family for the last few years and decided that a cruise might be the best way to avoid many of the hassles associated with coordinating 12 people ranging in age from 11 to 75. I believe that this cruise accomplished these objectives. There is literally something for all ages at all times. It was great to know everyone could find something that appealed to them. There is probably not a class of activity that our group did not use at one time or another on this ship: art, bingo, karaoke, lounge singers, rock bands, game shows, cirque style performances, camera lectures, alcohol tasting, card room, cigar lounge, and deck lounging. We tried nearly all of the specialty restaurants on board. My favorites in order: Teppanake, Cagneys, Bistro, La Cucina, Chin Chin. As it was Thanksgiving we had dinner in the Tsars palace which was good but noisy. We ate breakfast most days in an area called the Great Outdoors which was not as crazy busy as the main Garden Café. The Garden Café was a zoo. If we had to eat here more, I would have gone crazy. Way too many people.

A first big plus for the NCL Jewel is that it sails out of the Port of Houston meaning that 9 of our 12 family members only needed to drive less than one hour to get to the port. Once at the port, the boarding process was efficient. This cruise was packed. Kids everywhere in all ages. They literally overflowed the areas the ship set up for entertaining the youngsters. I am not sure I would have liked this cruise as much if we had not had a suite which enabled us to have expedited boarding and disembarkation. We also had a great concierge (Florentina) who also helped handle dinner reservations for our party of 12 at nearly all of the specialty restaurants.

We had some reasonably rough weather and high seas. I felt the ship handled it well. A couple of people in our party did not weather the rocking of the ship as well as others. Read more