This was actually a very nice cruise! We booked an inside cabin back in January of 2013 to sail in November. As prices dropped near the date of departure we managed to upgrade to a mini suite for less than 100 dollars total! It was a great deal and we enjoyed very much having a spacious cabin with sofa and seating area plus a balcony for our cruise. We were lucky to have good weather and had a very smooth cruise. The Jade is nice looking with many lounges, bars and restaurants. The main dining rooms, the Grand Pacific and Alizar serve good food (not exquisite) and vary the menus every night. The Garden Café has a nice variety of food in its buffet, including Indian cuisine, fairly sophisticated for a buffet.

Entertainment in the Ship is sometimes very good, others slightly amateurish. We had a wonderful quartet of male singers, called 4Ever that were extremely good, and had an encore presentation. Other types of activities lacked a little bit. During the days at sea, I was slightly bored, since lounge music, entertainment and games were fairly spaced out and not more than one or two things happening at once. They did have a very good guitarist that sang wonderful oldies.

I found that while the cruise was a very good value, you could easily hike up your bill if you weren't careful. For instance, alcohol was very expensive and automatically added a 15% service fee. (But they did allow you to buy a bottle of wine at the Dining Rooms that they kept for you for the following days if you didn't finish it so you didn't have to buy the wine by the glass which is more expensive). Games like Bingo were pricey to play and the prizes were scarce. The automatically added gratuities for the cruise were $12 per person per day. Ship excursions were overpriced and you were better off making other arrangements prior to departure online with local companies. A lot of sales pitches surrounded many activities. I guess they had to make up for the good prices they sold the cruise for. Still, despite extra charges mentioned above, the cruise is still a very good value and the staff and crew are all very pleasant and willing to please. The atmosphere was good, the ship was nice looking, the service cordial and attentive, so overall this was a very good trip.