Jewel of the Seas Cruise Reviews - Reviews

This was the best smaller ship and the best itinerary we have ever cruised. A million little things went well. Almost none went wrong. Above and beyond our expectations! Thanks to our cabin steward and our concierge. Well done to everyone at RCI and all of the officers, staff, and crew aboard The Jewel of the Seas.

The Transatlantic was an amazing experience. Highly recommend. One week of rest and relaxation followed by a busy week visiting historic places and fascinating ports. Perfect. Stops at Perfect Day, Cadiz (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal), Vigo (Spain) and finishing at Southampton (England). So fun, I have booked another transatlantic for next year (Rome to Bayonne). Hopefully the time changes will be easier. 😆

This cruise was AMAZING! From embarkation, the staff, the ports, and the ship! I was All absolutely Wonderful!

I cruised out of San Diego on the Jewel of the Seas ,stopped at Catalina Island for the day. Next stop San Francisco stayed over night ,then a day at sea and stopped in Victoria B C . The next day Vancouver Canada got off the ship

So overall it was an amazing cruise. The lady I traveled with that had a scooter found it very easy to get around as well. There were plenty of places to just lay around and a lot of activities. Don't skip out on the Main Dining experience also make sure you download the app and you can still get paper cruise compasses just ask your stateroom attendant for them. Figure out what time of day suits you for your stateroom attendant to do your cabin. Book all specialty restaurants and excursions well in advance. Most importantly have fun and do all the stressful planning before you get on the boat have a blast. If you are celebrating like I was I treated myself to a birthday cruise. You can also have Royal decorate your door and cabin yes this is an extra charge but not by much. I had a wonderful time 70's night is always a good time so come prepared with an outfit we also had 2 casual and white nights and dress up night in main dining. Be careful of price gouging on the port shop till you drop you get amazing prices with the outside vendors. The app is always YOUR BEST FRIEND. Look out for duck hunting if you are on Facebook you can always join the group from your sailing I met a few and they are so friendly and down to earth o have friends and they give you the run down on cruises you want to do in the future. MOST IMPORTANTLY HAVE FUN!! MIX AND MINGLE and limit your trips to the casino LOL IJS. Hope you enjoyed this review as much I did writing it and living it onboard of Jewel of the Seas. See you soon onboard a Royal Caribbean Ship. 👋👋🚢

This was our first cruise so our expectations were not too high. However, Royal Caribbean International and the crew/staff onboard the Jewel of the Seas made this trip a fantastic one.

Our stateroom number was 9204 and had the balcony on the Port (left) side of the ship. The room was clean and larger than we expected. Closet space was ample and we were able to store all our clothes in it, plus some smaller items in the six drawers in the table/mirror area. Storage under the bed also made for ample room.  Our room had a small flat screen television as well.

Our Stateroom attendant Garnett was polite and more than willing to assist with anything we needed, although we needed little as he kept the room made up each day and made the obligatory animal figures with the towels we had read about.

The Ship was in great shape considering it has not been updated in a decade.  I didn't see anything out of sorts with the ship. The Windjammer Cafe served a great variety of food items, all hot and fresh. Servers were quick and attentive.  Dinner in the Tides main dining room was great. Our Head Waiter Felix and his assistant Vikram made sure we had everything we needed. They took time to remember hour drink orders and even took time to chat and have some fun. They also sang as a group with the other waiters and assistants each evening. Steak and Lobster the 6th night. Of course this was the night we had a special five course with wine dinner at Chops Grille where Marinette served us a wonderful meal with just the right wines to compliment each course. Nobody missed the steak and lobster. 

We spent time playing bingo each day and one of our friends won a thousand dollars. The others in our group also won smaller amounts. The highlight was one of our couple friend entered the slot tournament and won a free cruise next year on Oasis of the Seas out of Cape Canaveral.

The weather was gorgeous each day with blue skies and sunshine. In Juneau we took the "Best of Juneau" shore excursion and went to see the Mendenhall Glacier as well as took a whale watching tour where we saw Orca Whales and Humpback whales!  The day was finished up when we attended the salmon bake and had a great meal while being able to take photos of a very large and majestic Bald Eagle at the water falls.

There were two formal nights on Day 2 and Day 6.

In Skagway we arrived to blue skies and sunshine. We opted for the White Pass Summit trip and then spent the day walking around Skagway. I will say this. Royal Caribbean talks up the shopping and highlights Diamonds and what not. Many of the gift stores are owned by RCI is what I was told so that made sense why all the expensive jewelry. We managed to find other gifts, but I would have preferred more actually native handcrafted stores. There were a few but not many.

Victoria, British Columbia was impressive. The "Garden City" was beautiful and we spent the morning riding the double decker open top bus tour of Victoria for an hour and a half. We opted out of visiting Buchart Gardens as it was 45 minute ride out of town and would not allow for much time in Victoria. We walked around town for the afternoon, having lunch at the Irish Times Pub and purchasing gifts in several stores.

The last night before returning there was a "Disco Night" in the main atrium. It was a hoot with the staff dressed up in their Disco outfits and everyone having a great time.

All in all it was a great trip and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. There were a lot of children as well as older folks on this trip. I was surprised at the number of small children, but it did not make the trip any less enjoyable except when they were in the adult pool which made it quite loud and not easy for folks to just relax. That was only one day though and the rest of the time it was fine.

In closing, I recommmend RCI and an Alaska cruise if you want a limited stop trip with a few days at sea. This is not a party cruise. Views of Sawyer Glacier were awesome with no clouds at all.

My husband has always wanted to go to Greece as he is Greek. He was a little disappointed with Athens and Santorini. The cruise itself was wonderful. It was July and it was very hot.

Enjoyed my first transatlantic cruise. Enjoyed the ports. I was a solo traveler but was able to join in the activities and have fun. My Time Dining makes it easy to meet new people every day.

Great service from staff from the on-boarding process to the end.  Chefs and Main Dining Room management came to our table in the MDR to inquire about the experience and satisfaction. Captain's welcome event in the Safari Room was very special, good music, good communication with passengers, good libation, champagne.  We wanted to get a photograph with the Captain, but the line was very long.  He is a good successor to the long time RCCL Captain Thor who recently retired.  We enjoyed MDR and Windjammer food, but of course the individual preparation of food in Chops and in Giovanni's was well worth the extra fee.  Our Giovanni's experience was for the Mystery Dinner theater, and with the wonderful performance and social activity kept up with our very high expectation of this event.  We saw management observing and interacting in a helpful way in Windjammer frequently - excellent leadership, not just management from afar - we loved this!  We took advantage of the on board movie theater, but it did not have the selections that were available in the Caribbean; not a negative, but we did not catch up on as many new releases as in our previous Jewel of the Seas Cruise.  Our room steward Oscar was thorough and once we explained our preferences on embarkation day, he met these with amazing consistency. The Bar staff, Louis, Pedro, and more that we cant remember were friendly, efficient and willing to make each transaction memorable.  Finally staff in the Windjammer and MDR; Vincent Verpo, Samvil and Galvin made our meals a reminder of why we enjoy the dining experience on well run cruise ships.  The food quality is important, but the service makes the entire experience a lasting good memory.

This was a dream cruise for us. The Jewel is one of RCL's smaller ships, so not as much to do aboard her as on the larger ships. But the tradeoff comes with the ports you can sail to. Every port we visited exceeded my expectations. I would do this cruise again in a heartbeat!

Overall fantastic cruise. Port stops were incredible and cruise days were filled with fun onboard activities. Booked a sea kayaking excursion in Santorini through Royal Caribbean and it was amazing. Didn’t do an excursion in Mykonos and chose to explore the city and spend some time swimming at a local beach. Took a private tour of Athens and Katakolon with a company called Elite Tours. HIGHLY recommend going this route. The only downfall of this entire cruise was the onboard spa scheduling. Massages were rescheduled last minute and massage and nail appointments started 15-30 minutes late.

Great itinerary and larger than expected ship. Impressed by buffet.

We loved the ports of calls and the times they gave us to explore. It was great as we had plenty of time to explore the islands. Food was meh! The service is slow in the speciality restaurants but the food is amazing. If you can at least try them once during your cruise. The food in the buffet was not great, it lacked flavor and it was always packed, difficult to find a table, the floor was sticky and there were dirty plates everywhere. Disembarking was a nightmare! They made us line up (with suitcases as we were “express” departure) and go in and out of the theater, to then go on some elevators, to then disembark! Once out there were no signs or anything that we had to hop on some buses to be sent to the entrance of the port. Crazy if you need to get to the train or an early flight!

This is a great way to see a lot of ports in a short time. Although, I’ve only cruised 3 times I’m not that impressed with Royal Caribbean. I was expecting more especially in the quality and choice in food. Expecting people to pay for finer dining is ridiculous. That is part of cruising. Also, after charging $14.50 per person per day for tips don’t ask for more.

This was our first cruise as adults. Overall, it was such a fun experience and a great way to celebrate our twentieth anniversary. Looking froward to the next cruise!

The Jewel of the Seas was a wonderful ship. We had an owners suite that was beautiful and had a great floor plan. Bathroom had double sinks, tub, and separate shower. Lots of storage and two closets. Food was very good and the specialty restaurants were excellent. Itinerary was wonderful. Took one excursion through the ship on a catamaran in Aruba. Very fun and saw lots of fish. We have already booked same ship and room for next year!

Chose this cruise based on iternary supposed to be sir yas island, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and dubai. Because of safety issues a month before Bahrain was canceled and a double day in Abu dhabi was added. This was a bit disappointing but worked out just fine as we were able to explore more of Abu Dhabi. We arrived in Dubai 4 nights pre cruise as we live in Chicago where weather could be unpredictable. We arranged this on our own. Check in at the port was super organized but seemed to go very slow because of the health questionnaires . Also be aware they take your Passports away at check in and you pick them up the day before you port in Abu Dhabi which was a terrible feeling . We checked in at 11am and we did get out cards at check in which was nice. We went stright to windjammer and ate. The windjamner has lots of food options. We then walked around. I love smaller ships it easier to learn where your going. What was amazing on this ship that I'm not used to is getting to be able to go to our stateroom at 1pm. We went to our room interior 2v room 9611. It was a great size for us both plenty of storage. What we didnt like was we had a tea pot in our room took up space. Our room attendant was in the hallway Adriana she introduced herself and was superhepful and amazing during our entire cruise stay. She made animals out of towels on some days as well as a birthday cake towel on my birthday. We spent most of our time in the smoking area by the pool bar. Timothy and Jude in the pool bar area are fantastic. They got our drink order right away made us feel extremely special. In the evening we had dinner at 8:30 pm in the dining area our server Davor and his assistant Mo were beyond exceptional. Our dinner always came out quick and on point. Mo after day 2 knew what wine to always bring. This type of dining sevice was the best I've ever had on RC. The first night we had terrible wind causing the ship to be very wobble that night entertainment was a hand balancing act that was superb. The next day going to sir Bani yas island the tender was bouncey and took 15 mins to get over. We booked the safari through RC and really enjoyed it we saw giraffe, cheetahs, gazelle, lots of different birds and animals. It was worth it to us. After we layed on the beach on the free wooden lounge chairs be careful I flipped over. Also what's nice is drink from our drink package could be used here and they provided a buffet lunch. Doha, Qatar, was the next day and RC charges 10 a person to drop you off at a mall in the city center. This was terrible as I needed to be at the Islamic art museum for a tour I booked separately with Falcon Tours. After 35 mins on the bus they finally left after I argued that I didnt pay to sit on a bus but go into town and realized we should have taken a taxi. Also to exchange money we needed a passport and thank god one place accepted the copy we had on our phone. Our tour with falcon tours was amazing. The next day was a sea day which the sun chairs were quickly taken. I'm not sure how they do with a full ship as we had a hard time find lounge chairs and we were half full. The next 2 days were Abu Dhabi we did Ferrari world one day and the hop off and hop on bus the next with the grand mosque definitely visit the mosque. The last 2 days were in dubai. We did some more exploring the free bus takes you to mercato jumeriah shopping mall it's a 30 min ride. It a bus with yellow on top and red on the bottom. We ubered back. Check out was super quick. But a bit disappointing first time we had to leave by 8:30am normally we leave about 10ish. This ship was definitely our favorite with the astounding service we received in every area. Workers here seemed to really enjoy being here. In the windjammer every morning Liu hand sanitizing and Jorge servicing bring our friend a bagel when she couldnt find them. Yes this ship doesnt need renovations badly but I love that its small and easy to get to know people and be serviced like a king and queen

I liked this cruise because everyday you were at a different Caribbean port that I would not see with larger ships. The excursion were good because I had not been to any of the islands. They gave us good historical background for each island with a little taste of the island.

T

the freedom to do what I want when I want. I enjoyed my time on the ship, daily GYM run getting my exercise and then have a wonderful breakfast and then hit the shores daily, the ship is always on schedule and always stable and smooth cruise.

Transatlantic cruises are the best,if you enjoy sea days! Loved The Jewel of the Sea,love the size,love the crew and loved the cruise! Great ports and ship!