Travelling on an NCL ship with my husband, son aged 9 and daughter aged 7 was certainly not the family-orientated holiday we had hoped for. Let's start with the children's pool which was 4'11" at the shallow end - yes the shallow end! My husband however is 6ft tall and was unable to stand up even in the shallow end. Fine if your children are confident swimmers, but I had to buy my daughter armbands as the pool was completely unsupervised despite being so deep, and the wall around it meant that you could not see into the pool when sitting at the side. My next gripe is the Kid's Club where despite it being the first activity listed in the brochure, there was no sign of a Wii nor Xbox for the whole 14 days we were on the ship - a source of great disappointment to my son who was at the top end of the age group and wanted more than playing group games with mostly girls - yuk! My main gripe with the Kids Club however was the so called "nominal charge" while in port, which was basically nearly every day until 6 or even 8pm and for two children was $18 per hour! Hardly nominal, especially as the website indicates $8 per hour for two children. Therefore we did not use the Club unless we were at sea or in the evening which really impacted on our enjoyment of the holiday as parents who have previously been P&O customers, whose kid's clubs were free and open all day. There were also times during the day known as "family activities" when you were not allowed to enter the Kid's Club unless your child was accompanied by a parent - gee thanks NCL! A kid's Club where you have to supervise your own children - genius!There are many reasons why we will never book another NCL cruise apart from the above, and the top of the list has to be the way we were charged, and in many cases overcharged, for everything NCL could possibly squeeze more money out of us for. The drinks prices were extortionate, as were the excursions, the "duty free" shop prices, the restaurant surcharges, the tips, the spa treatments, Internet Cafe and Laundry services ($1.95 for a pair of socks and unlike P&O ther is no laundry room where you can use a washer/drier). Ok, you don't HAVE to buy drinks, you don't HAVE to eat in the resturants, but the overall feeling was that you were being ripped off left right and center, and it's not a good feeling, it really spoils your holiday.Another thing that spoils your holiday on the Jade is the general attitude of the staff - you are made to feel that you are a bit of an inconvenience to them unless you are handing over money. The staff will walk across in front of you stopping you in your tracks, and continue with their jobs even if they are in your way. They are not openly rude, but are certainly often inconsiderate and surly. And woe betide you if you try to complain about anything at reception - they will suddenly be unable to understand english and be charmingly useless.The food on the Jade was boring, mundane and repetitive. Very, very repetitive. Very. No doubt trying to force you to spend what would often be a cover charge of $100 for our family to eat in an alternative restaurant.          NCL's attitude to going ashore seems to be "go on our excursions or we will make your trip ashore as difficult as possible". The information available about the ports was minimal and usually incorrect, which is a problem if you have never visited that port before, and it became clear that this sabotage was deliberate. We were frequently told that there was no shuttle bus, only to find this was not true. We were told that the centre of Lisbon was a 10 minute walk from the ship, it was in fact at least 3km away. We were told that the center of Gibraltar was 10 minutes walk, and the cable car not far from there. It took us over an hour to walk back to the ship from the cable car in boiling heat - thanks NCL! We were not told that there was a lovely sandy beach next to where the tender dropped us off at Cannes, we therefore had to turn round and go back to the ship for our beach gear. Time and again the information was incorrect and made the visits to the ports less enjoyable than they should have been.I would not recommend a cruise on the Norwegian Jade, nor with NCL at all. We paid over £3000 for our cruise, but it felt like a budget cruise and was not a patch on our previous cruise experience with P&O - if you are considering an NCL cruise my advice is - DON'T! Try P&O or Royal Carribean instead.