We have just returned from the most wonderful cruise on the NCL Jewel. It was a 7 day Thanksgiving Cruise to the Western Caribbean. We have been to most of the islands so the ports were not important to us. We just wanted to relax, meet people, eat and have fun. The Jewel did it all. It is a beautiful vessel. The staff is very friendly and attentive. You couldn't pass a staff member without them saying "Good morning or have a nice day." The cabins are adequate in size. The beds were comfortable. The cruise staff were so much fun. So many activities and with the free style dining you were able to attend everything. The entertainment was excellent. Don't miss any of the shows. They were all worthwhile. We especially enjoyed Matilda and Patrick. A great comedy team with a Jamaican Dummy. We love trivia and they had a game called "Shout it out Movies" led by Daniel. It was so much fun and for sure Daniel will be a future Cruise Director. The food was okay and always available.

We especially appreciated the help we received from the guest services director Carolyn, who helped to try and resolve a problem we had with Sky Auction, who was our travel agent. For some crazy reason our trip was advertised as one that included gratuities,however, after booking online Sky Auction charged us again for the gratuities and when we tried to contact them by phone(WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE, ONLY VOICEMAIL AND THEY NEVER CALL YOU BACK)to make sure we were only being charged for gratuities one time. Unfortunately Sky Auction did not fix the problem but charged our credit card again for gratuities. We also asked them to upgrade our cabin since the price had dropped $350 since we booked the cruise. They said they could upgrade our cabin if we paid $200 more and were unable to help us because the lower price was for new bookings only. So now we had paid 3 times for gratuities and still had an inside cabin. We checked with Carolyn, the guest services manager, and would you believe they had no record of any gratuities being paid at all and they were going to be charging us a 4th time for the gratuities. Carolyn was so helpful and tried her best to deal with Sky Auction but she also got no where. She deleted the 4th charge from our bill after speaking with American Express who verified that we had been billed 3 times already. The problem is now in American Expresses' hand's to dispute the charges. I hope they have better luck contacting Sky Auction than we did. We cannot believe how badly Sky Auction was handling this matter after all we are good customers that have used them 20 times before. Next time we book it probably will be directly through the cruise line unless we get some satisfaction from American Express.

By the way the cruise director was wonderful. His name was Que. He is from South Africa. He is very charming and always friendly. He helped us out when I lost my water wallet that had all my valuables in it including my room key. He has a wonderful staff. Read more