Overall a good vacation

Norwegian is overall a good vacation for the money. There are a few areas I believe that the Jewel can use improvement. 

1) O'Sheehan's restaurant on deck 8 is sorely lacking in service and food quality. It was hard to understand low talking wait staff in a busy, noisy atmosphere. The wait staff in this restaurant weren't rude, but not as attentive as I thought they should be. Nor did we feel taken care of. 

2) Room service was so bad. I heard other passengers complaining about it as well. The one time we ordered room service was in the evening around 9pm. We ordered some desserts, which we waited 40-45 minutes for. I ordered chocolate cake and milk. Seems pretty simple, I should've gone to the buffet and gotten my own dessert because I received (40 minutes later) strawberry pound cake!  

3) As we departed the ship on the last morning, it was a good experience, in that we got to take our time, eat breakfast and get ourselves down to the gangway at our leisure. (I've been booted off ships in a rush and with being fed before) When we got into the terminal to wait for our shuttle bus to take us to the airport is when the trouble began. We had paid in advance ($25/per person) for the shuttle bus that, we were told, was supposed to leave at 8am. We were shuffled into one line, then another. Then just ignored while everyone around us was boarding their buses and shuttles. at 8:15a I finally asked if our bus was coming and was told 8:30. I had to get cranky with them and they finally got us onto a bus. Then about 8:45 the bus driver got onto the bus and attempted to get us going....that is when his power steering blew and he had to call his supervisor. Finally, after discussing it thouroughly with his supervisor, at 9am, they took 55 people and all their luggage off the bus and put us all onto another bus. Talk about a stressful morning! Especially when you've got a huge percentage of people that need to check bags, clear customs, and get to their flight on time. I felt like we were ripped off paying $25 each for that! We could've taken a taxi for a portion of that price! Next time we will. 

The cruise staff (entertainment) were pretty cool and very amusing. The cabin was terrific, as was our cabin steward. We had fun in almost all the ports. A couple of specialty restaurants that we visited were very good and very fun. Those were Merderno and Teppanyaki. I highly recommend taking advantage of these two.