Norwegian Jade Review
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Being first time cruisers and after reading some of the negative reviews on the Jade we were concerned to say the least about our forthcoming holiday. However after experiencing it first hand we cannot comprehend how some people can be so negative about this ship and NCL. To put our review in context I would like to point out that both on previous family holidays and as part of my job I regularly stay in 4 star hotels in North America & Europe. As such the level of service by the staff is superb and as stated in another recent review the staff were ALWAYS friendly, helpful and very hard working. The ship itself is modern/contemporary, very clean and has the "feel" of a good quality US hotel. We had both a balcony stateroom and an inside staeroom for us and our teenage sons and both rooms were very nice indeed.
FOOD: The food on this cruise is absolutely superb. We ate mainly at the free dining rooms (Alizar & Grand Pacific) in the evening and the overall quality was of a good London restaurant. We also did use the Tex Mex, Papa Johns (Italian) and Le Bistro (French) restaurants which had cover charges of $10-15. The meal we had in the latter was particularly oustanding. For lunches and snacks we tended to use the (free) Garden Cafe which again offered a very good range of nicely presented self service food. No way would I describe it as a "uttely hideous student canteen" as one reviewer did (they obviously never visited the Liverpool University canteen in the early 1980's...now that was bad!)
WINE: Thanks to reviews on Cruise Critic and some additional research by one of our friends on the cruise, you ARE allowed to take your own bottles of wine on board and pay $15 per bottle corkage. You can then take these bottles to the restaurant of your choice to consume with your meal or you can drink it in the bars or your room. On this basis you can buy a good wine from your local supermarket (say £4-6) and pay the corkage which will give you a total cost of around $20-25 per bottle. Much less painful on the wallet.