This was the least favorite of my 4 NCL cruises (16 cruises total). This ship needs refurb. The carpets in the rooms are terrible. Some of the bad: -Food was cold or cool almost 50% of the time in the MDR. -How many times did the matre d’ speak to us? Zero. In 21 days. But he visited the table next to us nightly. -JC Sanchez cruise director? Rarely left his office. Seen only at the show nightly -debarkation in Seattle took over 2 hours. My friends missed their noon NCL booked flight. -Internet was terrible. Out a solid 48 hours one time. They said they got a new satellite. It was worse after. -Volume of noice was so loud you couldn’t sleep till after midnight. In a “quiet”room -curtains had holes in them and Alaska sun shines 20 hours a day -Menus very repitative on 21 day cruise, and no fresh Alaska salmon?. -Chin Chin was really bad, and the food was half cold. Good: Fee dining was excellent Activities were lively and plentiful O’Sheehans was Great, and the staff and service excellent Read Less

We had high hopes for this cruise. From Tokyo to Seattle! Alaska is gorgeous! Unfortunately when all was said and done it was really "just OK". I won't review NCL specifically here other than to say that since we first sailed NCL 5 years ago we have noticed a steady decline in quality and amenities. Their "chocolate night" is gone. The quality of the food is noticeably lower. Etc. From other cruisers I've spoken with this is not unique to NCL (HAL has been mentioned a few times by people I know). But we sailed NCL, and so that's what I will criticize. The crew was fine. That has been the one constant in all our NCL cruises. They are friendly, helpful, and just generally really nice. No complaints there at all. That said, there were significant organizational problems with disembarking in several ports. In Petropavlosk, for example, we missed our excursion because getting off the ship took over four hours. I knew someone who claims he saw what the problem was, but I won't resort to hearsay since I didn't witness it myself. I will just say there is no excuse for those sorts of delays, and the organizing of the disembarking was a mess. It wasn't as bad in most of the other ports, though Seattle was a nightmare. Again, poor organizing caused us to have a drastically shortened tour of Seattle. We were supposed to see Pike Street and some other locations, but all we had time to do was the Space Needle. No refund, or even partial refund or ship credit, was offered for either of those fiascoes which were THEIR FAULT. The food was very mediocre. Some of it was downright bad. Their eggs Benedict was raw. Not just once, but each of the three or four times we checked it out. A runny yoke is expected, but most of the white was runny too. That's not right. There was a variety of dishes available, but the seasoning was almost always very mild. Mild to the point that you couldn't really tell it was seasoned many times. Even in the premium restaurants (which we ate a few times). All in all, unacceptable. I can't pin this only on the Jewel, or this cruise. As I said, we've sailed NCL several times over the past five years, several different ships, and we've noted the steady decline in food quality with each successive cruise. Unless something changed we probably would not do this sort of itinerary on NCL again. Read Less

We chose this cruise for the itinerary - visiting Japan and Alaska. This was our 11th cruise, all previous cruises with Royal Carribbean and Princess Cruises. The embarkation process in Yokohama took over 2 hours, we had previously experienced 30 minutes maximum on other cruises. The same applied to disembarking we were left mid way on the gangway for 40 minutes with no explanation. The communication on the ship was very poor with instructions often contradictory. We finally met our cabin attendant on the 4th day which is not the usual practice on other cruise lines. The service in the dining rooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner was non existent, orders were 80% of the time incorrectly prepared. The food was tasteless and uninteresting. Free style dining may have had something to do with this as we were not allocated with the same waiters at each meal and there appeared to be no personalised service provided. The customer service staff were sullen and quite grumpy given the nature of their job - to provide customer service. The Asian complimentary restaurant was also very tasteless, we had few meals there to get away from the dining room however we reverted to paying at the Specialty restaurants in a bid to find something of quality to eat. Entertainment in the theatre was just average, the two gymnastic performances were excellent. The plus was the music provided by the bands and guitar player/singer in the various bars each evening. We would definitely not travel with Norwegian again given there are a number of other cruise lines that offer a better experience Read Less