We were on the Oct 23-30 Jewel of the Seas cruise from Boston to: Portland, Maine; Bar Harbor, Maine; St. John, New Brunswick; and Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was our 12th cruise overall and our 2nd cruise with Royal Caribbean. We stayed in a D2 Balcony aft cabin (1604). We are independent travelers (both age 50) who rarely do ship excursions.

Embarkation: We arrived at Black Falcon (Boston's cruise port) early due to taking a redeye flight in from the night before. We arrived at about 10:15 and were among the first 20 or so people to arrive. We were told that boarding would be delayed due to extra cleaning and sanitizing onboard, since there was an apparent outbreak of norovirus the week before (fine with us, take your time and get it extra clean). Everything went smoothly with the embarkation with two notables exceptions: 1) they had difficulty getting me a working SeaPass card (it took over an hour) and the one they eventually delivered to me failed as well when boarding; and 2) since we arrived early, we were not given a priority number when it was time to board, so we ended up in the back of the herd (can you say "moo"?) when boarding finally commenced. As such, boarding took much longer for us than any prior cruise. We finally boarded at about 12:30p. Black Falcon Terminal is pretty bare bones with folding chairs on a cement floor. Once onboard, we were told the cabins would not be ready until at least 4:00p, but an announcement was made at 3:00p that the cabins were ready.

Cabin: The cabin was a pretty standard balcony cabin with the exception of the balcony, which was quite large. The balcony had plenty of room for two deck chairs (with footrests that flip out when needed), two chaise lounges and a decent sized table (large enough for serving breakfast on the balcony). Because it is an aft balcony, there is slight overhang between the cabins above and below, so about 40% of the balcony is exposed above. Our cabin was on the 10th deck, which was directly below the outdoor seating area for the Windjammer Cafe. Given the late time of year and cool to cold weather, there weren't many people out in that area on deck 11, but I can see how it might be an issue for warmer weather cruises (since it would effectively take away privacy from about half of your balcony space). Read more