Norwegian Jade Review

Incredible service from all staff. Room and ship spotless.

Review for the Panama Canal & Central America Cruise on Norwegian Jade
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devigad
6-10 Cruises • Age 60s

Rating by category

Cabin
Value for Money
Embarkation
Dining
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Entertainment
Fitness & Recreation
Service

Additional details

Sail Date: Dec 2017
Cabin: Mini-Suite with Balcony

We liked the itinerary and perks for this cruise. We've cruised on 3 other lines before and this one blew the others out of the water for customer service. Our mini-suite room was really spacious for the 2 of us and would have comfortably accommodated 3 with the privacy curtain. Our steward was like the wind - we never saw him cleaning our room but every time we stepped out and returned it was immaculate. The staff provided several thoughtful surprises for our 30th anniversary, which was really great. Bar and restaurant service was very fast and courteous. Food was very good, excellent in the specialty restaurants we tried. We liked the freestyle format of not having set dining times and rarely had any waits to get into the dining room.

On the minus side, our biggest annoyance was lack of enforcement of dress code for dinner in the Grand Pacific and Cagneys. It annoyed us to be dressed up for the evening only to be seated by men in shorts, t-shirts and flip flops, or women in booty call shorts and sweat shirts. One couple probably in their 70s had baseball hats on throughout their meal.

It took quite a bit of research to find out how to get off the Harvest Caye cash grab and get to actual Belize. With local tour operators not being able to even drop guests back off at the island it added considerable unnecessary wasted time taking the ferry to Placencia and then worrying about whether we could get a return later than our 3 hour allotted time slot on the return ferry. Also misleading was being told we could only get off in Gatun Lake if we booked a tour through NCL but then finding out we could have booked something private ourselves. The ferry excursion we booked was great but cost us over $500 Canadian for the two of us. We also missed out on part of our private tour in Costa Maya because the ship gave 1 minute warning that they were going to bring in the gangway so that another ship could dock. This meant a couple in our group was half an hour delayed getting to the tour. Only other beef was the loud incessant music at the pool during the day. The performers were not particularly good and even if they were I wouldn't have wanted to hear them all day at that volume. It would be good if the pool staff could do something about people leaving a towel on the chair early in the morning and then not using that lounger all day long. There are a shortage of places to be poolside in the sun and half of them were used up by lounger hogs.

Cabin Review

Mini-Suite with Balcony

Cabin MB

Super spacious for 2 people. Curtain in the middle was great for early riser to keep light out from later sleeper. Bathroom was big enough for two of us to be in there at once and bath tub was a decent size. Tons of storage room and thoughtfully laid out.

Port Reviews

Harvest Caye

NCL makes it as hard as possible to get off Harvest Caye and do a tour with a private company where they are not taking a cut. Nevertheless, we did the Monkey River tour with Ralph and it was great. There were only two of us on the tour and we saw lots of monkeys, a crocodile, a manatee right at the boat as well as dolphins right by the boat. Ralph's ability to spot birds and other wildlife is fantastic. Going into the jungle to see the monkeys was really special.

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