One of the best cruises I've taken!

This is my 7th cruise and one of the best I've taken. This was my first cruise with NCL and first to Alaska. We had a balcony room on the port side and it was clean and spacious. The Jewel Class ships have great bathrooms with a separate toilet stall and a shower with serious water pressure. The staff were all friendly and accommodating. The food was excellent-with the possible exception of O'Sheehans. We ate at O'Sheehans twice, once just for dessert and once for dinner. The dessert was excellent but the dinner (seafood basket with an appetizer of mozarella sticks) came out cold.-everything was cold. La Cucina and Moderno were probably our favories. The steak in all the restaurants was excellent. The performance at Teppanyaki was really good and the fried rice was good but not my favorite restaurant. We ate at the buffet for breakfast and lunch and one dinner and it was always good. We usually sat outside at the Great Outdoors for fresh air. 

The shows on the trip were all excellent. There were two that I wouldn't have taken my young children to because they were slightly explicit but still PG-13. 

Getting on and off the ship in port was very easy with the exception of some difficulty with customs in Victoria BC. We just waited awhile for the line to go down and then got right off. If we had had an excursion planned right at scheduled disembarkation we would have missed it because we were about 2 hours late getting off the ship. I believe all the people who had shore excursions through the ship were accommodated. I special touch this line did was offering hot chocolate, water, and cookies when we re-boarded the ship. This was really nice because many of the ports were chilly!

On this particular cruise we didn't use the gym or the spa but toured them both. The gym was small and didn't face the bow of the ship (on the Explorer of the seas the treadmills all look out enormous bow windows so you get amazing ocean views while exercising!) but it seemed adequate. They had several great classes offered like yoga, spinning, and a suspension (TRX type) class but for a fee so I didn't do them. They also had some classes offered on cooking, pizza making, and cupcake decorating but again for a fee so I didn't do those either. We had plenty to do even on the days at sea without having to pay additional for classes but it was nice they offered them. Back in the day I remember those types of classes being free but it seems like more and more cruise lines are charging for that kind of activity.

We loved all the ports we went to and our only complaint is that we would have liked more time in each but that is the nature of cruising in Alaska. 

I also really enjoyed cooler weather cruising, it was a very different experience from the caribbean cruises I've taken in the past. 

Overall I loved this cruise and would definitely cruise again with NCL although our next cruise is with RCI. I don't know that I'd cruise Alaska again just because I want to explore the state more thoroughly.