I’ll start with background, then talk ports then the ship.

Our family trip was my 2 sister’s, my brother in law, niece, nephew and our parents. We have cruised before on the Jade, but our parents haven’t ever cruised. We had booked the western Caribbean cruise, which was Roatan Hondorus, Harvest Cay Belize, and Costa Maya and Cozumel Mexico. Due to Hurricane Matthew our itinerary was changed and our first 2 ports were Falmouth Jamaica and Grand Cayman before heading to Mexico. We only did 1 NCL excursion in Costa Maya, the rest we just got off the ship and checked out the ports. Jamaica was a nice shopping port but small. There is usually a sightseeing trolley but it wasn’t running that day due to us being a surprise, which is interesting as we found out Sunday we were going to Jamaica on Tuesday. While we were the only ship in port that day, I still feel they would have had enough time. Since we couldn’t do that we thought to take the shuttle that was $20 round trip to Montego Bay. But when we went there they argued saying the $20 was for the big bus that left earlier, anc we would need to pay more. We finally got a group of 15 together and they agreed to take us for $20 each. Somewhere along the way we went from going to Montego Bay to a private beach called Tropical Bliss we had to pay $5 to get into. We were there for about 2 hours before heading back to the ship for all aboard time. My sister and I felt the $5 was worth it as they had free WiFi. They also had a bar and restaurant. One of the guys in our group had jerk chicken there and said it was awesome.

Grand Cayman was beautiful. We tendered there and got off the ship about 7:15am or so. What they didn’t tell us was most shops didn’t open until 9. But we found a couple open and purchased the souviners we were looking for. We then booked an excursion to swim with sting rays and snorkel at the port for $45 each. We went out in a small bus, there was maybe 20 or so of us, to a small yacht type boat where he took us out. It was a great excursion and I liked being in a smaller group. We saw other boats pull up that had to have 100 or so people in them. It was an excursion approved by the port authority and they got us back for all aboard time of 2pm. Read more