Jewel of the Seas Review
Excellent Ports, Terrific Service, Best Christmas Ever.
Rating by category
Additional details
My daughter, her friend, and I took the RCI Southern Caribbean cruise for Christmas. (Dec. 20-27). Our ports of call were St. Thomas, St. Kitts, St. Maarten, Martinique, Barbados. We loved each island, particularly the fact that they all had a distinctly different personality, flavor, and terrain. DD and friend did ziplines and turtle excursions; I stuck to tours and beach excursions. Was not disappointed on any island. Everything was beautiful and we didn't run into any problems with either the RCI excursions or the trips we arranged on our own. (We stuck to grabbing taxis to beaches.)
Service on this cruise was much better than on our only other cruise, particularly in the main dining room. The food was kind of average, but if we scoured the menus and tried different things, we could always find something that was very tasty. The Windjammer buffet is pretty dull fare overall, we thought, but it's not bad per se', and we had no problems eating (and eating and eating). Again, some of the food was very ho-hum, but if we "shopped" the buffet carefully before choosing what we wanted, we were able to find tasty food. We especially loved the sandwiches, breads, and salad bar. We went to Chops Grille one night, and it was divine.
Our waiters and stateroom attendant were all exceptional. Ryan, our statement attendant, was ever-present. We began to doubt that he ever slept or ate. He was extremely responsive and very friendly. He was very gracious about working around our schedule and communicating to me about when my DD and her friend had last been in the cabin and what they seemed to be up to. (College girls!)
Cabin Review
Superior Ocean View Stateroom with Balcony
Lovely stateroom with very nice balcony. Balcony was probably normal for this class, but was bigger than on the previous RCI ship I'd cruised on, so I was very happy. The room was arranged differently than on my one previous cruise, with the bed next to the balcony instead of toward the door. I preferred this arrangement by far because it seemed to open up the room. Our room was sandwiched between two stateroom-only floors, so everything was quiet. My only complain was that I would have preferred to be closer to the center of the ship. However, being toward the front had its bonuses--the forward lobby elevators were much less used and much quicker than those in the Centrum. (Plus they led straight up to the Solarium!)