Just reading a few of the most recent reviews I do wonder whether some of these people were on the same ship! This was our fourth NCL cruise, but first on Jade, and we had a great time.

Embarcation. We stayed in Venice for two nights before the cruise – our last visit there was over 40 years ago. We stayed close to Piazzale Roma and travelled to the cruise port soon after 10.00 a.m. using the people mover. Hardly anyone was there and when registration started at 10.40 we had very little wait to get our key cards. There was another half hour until they started boarding – we were group 3 - and we were on the ship well before midday. Simples! We have followed this timing with NCL before and it always makes life easy. There is time then to explore the nearly empty ship and have an early lunch from the extensive buffet.

The only gripe was the annoying requirement to hand over all water before going on board even, in our friends’ case, full bottles they had just purchased. This was even more crazy later in the cruise when we were on an NCL excursion and given bottles of water by the guide a few minutes before the tour ended which we then had to throw away as we boarded the ship! Please re-think this policy as it caused more frustration and comment than anything else. Read more