Norwegian Jewel Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,357 reviews

Norwegian Jewel

Review for the Baltic Sea Cruise on Norwegian Jewel
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Noesenc
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Aug 2008
Cabin: Family Balcony
Traveled with children

This was a reasonable cruise, the boat was very well organized, the excursions were good and timely, cabins were good, staff was overfriendly for additional tip hunting reasons, food was very good in the main Tzar's restaurant and I liked the sport facilities including the NCL stadium with all it had on offer. We also had a case of my wife's bag having disappeared and security doing a fabulous job in finding out by way of camera replay that she had simply left it in the kid's club, actually a club both of my boys enjoyed very much, albeit it was against payment on excursion days, which I was not aware of when I booked. Entertainment was good but I missed some kind of John Heald, as our tour director was nowhere to be seen or heard of, a rather dry and not humorous Canadian assistant running the majority of the shows. Shortfalls were the guests themselves who to a large degree for one or the other reason often reacted aggressively, unfriendly, and many times without respect for each other, something unknown to us so far on any other cruiseline, but maybe this is just an effect or a consequence of the "FREESTYLE CRUISING" theme. I do not mind anymore when mainly US citizens climb into the elevator before caring to let the other people out, but what I do care is when I get treated as the most obnoxious person in the world when I ask a father to tell his three year old child not to stick his tongue out at my four year old and call him a loser. In my country, we tell three year olds not to do that and in my country, there are therefore no knife killings between teens later on. Nothing do to with NCL but with the kind of people who were on the boat as we had more rude encounters of similar nature. We also did not like the cleanliness of the boat, where Carnival is clearly miles ahead. Sunchairs are lying around, not cleanly folded away, the balconies are not cleaned enough as there is always dirt, sport activities do no start on time if at all, several times we went to complain to reception before anyone from NCL showed up. Food, drinks and cigarettes from the night before were lying around in corners the next afternoon etc. which are not so pleasant things. Then, one more thing that stuck out was the service in the dining room. Whilst it was very good and very fast, which I appreciated very much and in addition, all efforts were made to grant us one of the best tables at the rear each time, the number of service staff was just stunning. We had to order soft drinks from a different person than we had to order the water and again a third person took care of the wine, i.e. we had to sign three different receipts every dinner session, then at times, one took away a glass because we did not need it and ten seconds later, a second one placed it back, or the lobster was separated on our plate directly in front of us with brutal force, but to no avail., imagine the worst..........sauce spilling over etc. before we stopped the gentleman and did it ourselves as we did not want the lobster to end on the blouse of my wife. Overall verdict, - a good cruise with the above hickups though, and I might be a moaner, but I mainly mention these things as many of them can easily be improved. NCL, up to you.

Cabin Review

Family Balcony

Cabin B2
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