Norwegian Jewel Review

Fun with limits

Review for the Panama Canal & Central America Cruise on Norwegian Jewel
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Spaniellady
6-10 Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Feb 2017
Cabin: Penthouse with Large Balcony

We chose this cruise because we wanted to see the Panama Canal and had cruised on NCL before and had good experiences with the line. I'm not saying this was a bad experience, I am saying it was generally "blah." I say that because it was a 16 day cruise and the food overall was not good. With exceptions. First - the Canal is fantastic and this is a great ship to see it from. We started in Miami so we saw it on the 4th day (4th or 5th, not sure!) If I had it to do over, I would go from LA to Miami - then you have the Canal to look forward to and all the ports are just vacations. My only quibble and that's my own. The shore excursions are fine - we went to Las Caletas - John Huston's house and beach and I highly recommend it. The crew on the Catamaran over is fabulous and entertained us with a hilarious show of their own. Some of us got off and walked around a few other ports but the ladies stayed on and did the pool and the spa.

My two biggest complaints - the on board "entertainment" was spotty, and poorly thought out. I am not talking about the evening shows - they were fine. Usually there is Bingo everyday, and all kinds of games etc. Not on this ship - in fact one of the two Bingo games was canceled because there were not enough people. The same thing happened with a trivia game. There were a few of these but the crew in charge of them really didn't care much and were very haphazard about them. The cruise director was very impressed with himself and did a lot of entertaining by himself. I wished he had p aid more attention to his staff.There just wasn't enough to do except lie by the pool, which we did. About the food - it was boring, I never had a piece of meat I didn't have to fight with (except in the specialty steak house and Brazilian "meat" restaurant), The buffet restaurant was same old, same old though they did try. In my case, everything had bell peppers in it, which I cannot eat. And I mean, everything. I love indian food and they had a lot of it, all with peppers. What saved me was the hamburgers and sandwich makings. We had been in the French restaurant on previous cruises and loved it - not this time. The food was lukewarm and the service was terrible. In fact the service was generally not good in all of the restaurants. We got the feeling the whole place was understaffed. I feel badly about this review because I wanted to really like it. It was the first time my husband had been on an ocean cruise and he kept saying he thought the food would be really great - and it wasn't. I hope I can get him on another cruise, but I doubt it. We loved our cabin which was an aft suite and weren't even bothered when we hit some bad weather. The beds are great!

We like to book a suite so that we get priority embarcation and disembarcation.. In Miami they didn't seem to know what they were doing and led us all over the terminal until we were allowed to board. LA was a breeze compared to it.

Cabin Review

Penthouse with Large Balcony

Cabin SF

Very nice, comfy, great balcony, good bath room. No compaints.

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