We took cruises on big ships before. There are crowd but not as bad as the crowd on Norwegian Jewel. Perhaps because the main public areas like the cafeteria, the main lobby, the pools are not big enough for the number of passengers this ship carries. What we dislike the most is the slow wifi system on board. It was hard to log on or log off, it robbed us many minutes of paid time whenever we tried to quick check emails. Food and service are below average, with the same price, we could go to Celebrity or Holland America and would get a better time.
Embarkation
2 out of 5
About a week before embarkation, Norwegian told us to be at Panama Convention Center instead of at the Amador dock for embarkation process. We took an Uber from our hotel to the place at our appointment time. There were a big crowd so chaotic that we had to wait for a long time before a clerk checked our papers which we already entered all information in NCL app. Then we were herded to buses to ride to the dock. Here we waited in the open to go through Xray machine before getting inside the ship.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
2 out of 5
Food in the two main dining rooms was OK. The description on the menu sometimes did not match with the actual food served. Food in Garden cafeteria is better but the same everyday. Food in Chin Chin and in Moderno is not good. We did not try other specialty restaurants. The best food is in O Sheehan. It opens 24 hours and serves typical bar and grill food.
In general, food offered on Jewel is adequate but not the gourmet kind. They did not serve escargot or crème brûlée as what we had on Celebrity or Holland America.
Onboard Activities
2 out of 5
On board activities are mainly bingo, karaoke and trivia knowledge. No presentation about the ports. Pools are overflowed with people. Hot tubs are full with kids. The best time to use the pools is when the ship at port.
Entertainment
3 out of 5
All shows at nights are good. The same comedian performed for 3 days. On the 3rd day, he repeated the same jokes!
Service and Staff
2 out of 5
Waiters and our room steward are nice but not friendly or attentive. Cabin was cleaned once a day. Other personnel performed adequately.
Ship Quality
2 out of 5
The ship is clean enough, promenade deck is spacious. The cafeteria is too small for the number of passengers the ship carried. At sea days, there is no seats left.
Public bathrooms are small, some had no paper towels.
Cabin / Stateroom
2 out of 5
Our inside cabin is the smallest of all the inside cabins we had. The queen bed filled up the room with about a foot clearance on each side. No room at all for a table or a small couch. The night lights protruded on to the bed. With no headboard for the bed, we had to be careful not to bump our head on the square corners of the night lights.
Ship tip
Don’t cruise with Norwegian unless you like crowd overflowed in the pool areas, in the cafeteria at lunch, noisy kids in hot tub, so so food and not friendly personnel.
I'm doing this one right now. It definitely has its good and bad points but I'd say it averages out with all the other basic lines at this point. At this point it seems like all of them have dropped all pretense of providing either a luxury or premium experience. Finding that convention Center entrance was aggravating but otherwise the boarding didn't go all that bad for us. believe me, I've had much, much worse experiences trying to get on a ship.
Thank you for the review. Holidays and school vacations have lots of kids. Kids are typically on the fon and or ipad/tablet somewhere between 23 hours, 60 minutes and 24 hours a day. Result: slowed down internet, not that it is ever fast on a cruise ship.
Personally, I pay a bunch of people a bunch of money so I don't even have internet when we cruise. 😁
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