Being from North American, we traveled about 10,000 miles to be on the NCL Jewel cruise. The cruise started in Sydney and when as far as Adelaide and returned to Sydney. The most important part of this cruise was to experience great shore excursions. If food, entertainment, sun or drink were of prime importance, we would have taken a Caribbean cruise which involves much less travel to get to the embarkation location.

All of the excursions were way over priced. As experienced cruisers we expect some cruise line "mark up"; but, NCL Jewel took marking up to an extreme, I estimate 50% more than order cruise lines.

The majority of the excursions offered little content or were very hurried or were truncated because the cruise ship appeared to be late getting into port. The weather was not bad and with built-in sea days we saw no reason for a tardy ship. Read more