We had been planning this cruise for about a year for my son's HS graduation present. Over the past several months I have been reading some pretty harsh reviews about the Jade and the staff so I was a little worried about how this cruise was going to turn out. Well it was great. The Jade is in excellent condition and we found the crew to be very friendly and helpful.

Although the port of Houston is not attractive the embarkation was the smoothest of any of the 4 cruises we have been on and we were literally on the ship in 30 minutes. Once on board we had lunch in the Grand Pacific dining room which was not crowded at all most likely because most of the people were at the buffet on deck 12. In fact all week we avoided the buffet and had meals in the other venues which were not crowded. I did hear that people were happy with the buffet food quality and my son went there a couple of times. The food in the main dining rooms was good and best in the Grand Pacific. We ate dinner there twice and lunch and breakfast several times. We only ate dinner in Alizar once and were not happy with how loud and obnoxious some of the people were. There is no dress code in the Alizar and I think some people who wanted to be very casual ate there for the most part.

The for fee specialty restaurants are worth the extra money. Le Bistro was so good we ate dinner there twice. The steak there was delicious. The Italian and Japanese restaurants were also very good. The only one we did not try was Cagneys but I suspect it was good too given how booked they were all week. Read more