Review / Travelogue: Norwegian Jewel Nov 15-22, 2014 (Trujillo!)

[tpear3]

Enjoying your review and pics! We leave Dec 20th from a town north of Conroe so I enjoyed hearing about your stops at our local spots. Did you bypass the construction by taking 1314 to 59?

[The Mister]

Enjoying your review and pics! We leave Dec 20th from a town north of Conroe so I enjoyed hearing about your stops at our local spots. Did you bypass the construction by taking 1314 to 59?

That's exactly what we did. :)

[The Mister]

Woohoo! I finally finished another section of my review!

 

The Ship Itself

 

As indicated at the bottom of my posts, I have been on two cruises – this one and the Carnival Liberty last fall. So I can tell you about the layout and features of the Norwegian Jewel in comparison. Obviously for those sailing out of Houston/Galveston, recall that the Liberty is a sister ship to the Carnival Freedom (both Conquest class), which arrives in Galveston in February. So the comparison may be more relevant in that context.

 

(1) The layout of the Jewel is definitely more practical. Here is an anecdote that will be familiar to many who have been reading these forums for any length of time:

 

The Liberty, as we discovered last year, is like its sisters in the Conquest class as well as the Dream class, in that the MDR floors do not flow through. Furthermore, there are a couple of important locations – the kids’ club in particular – that are on upper floors, which are not continuous (they have a fore section and an aft section). So my wife, toward the end of dinner, got lost trying to get from the Silver dining room (aft, lower floors) to the kids’ club (forward, upper floor). She tried to head in the right direction, but got stuck at the golden (midship) dining room, then took the elevator up, got herself turned around, headed aft, and ended up wandering aimlessly for about 20 minutes, no thanks to the crew that she happened to run into, who couldn’t seem to give her directions that made any sense in her increasingly agitated state. Thankfully, once she actually made it there, the counselors in the club had pity on her and didn’t charge extra for the late arrival to pick up the kids.

 

Where was I? Finishing up dinner in the MDR, which had gone rather long, with the rest of our group, completely oblivious to the ordeal until I got back to our empty cabin and wondered why my family wasn’t back yet.

 

No need for such confusion on the Jewel, as the layout is definitely easier to understand than the Liberty. At no point did my wife get desperately lost. Every deck from 7 to 13 goes from forward to aft unconfusingly, and we had no reason to go below 7 except to leave the ship when in port, or above 13 ever.

 

Here are a few pictures of my son running around on Deck 13 on the first sea day. That day was VERY windy, and he was having fun with the sensation. My wife came back with some of the worst tangles in her hair in a very long time :) :

 

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2014 by The Mister

[The Mister]

The Ship Itself, continued

 

(2) I do have to say, though, that in my wife’s and my opinion, the Carnival Liberty is a more beautiful ship in many ways. That’s not to say the Jewel is ugly. It’s certainly a very nice ship. But, just to list the differences:

 

(a) The Liberty has a much more impressive atrium. The Jewel just has the lobby, O’Sheehan’s and a big screen TV. It’s nice looking, though.

 

Here’s a picture taken on Sunday, obviously during the part of the day when a football game was NOT being shown:

 

(b) The Liberty and other Conquest class ships have a superior aft vista. The aft of the Liberty’s Panorama deck is simply breathtaking, and provided for so many beautiful photo opportunities last year.

 

The Jewel, on the other hand, has the Great Outdoors. It’s certainly a relaxing alternative to the hustle/bustle of the main buffet, but it’s just not set up as a place to hang out, take pictures of your loved ones (or trade cameras with others to actually be IN pictures with your loved ones) in front of a beautiful sunset shining over the wake of the ship, etc. Even the aft of the deck above is dominated by the sports court.

 

© The MDRs on the Carnival Liberty are more grand. Granted, the Tsar’s Palace is very elegant – I did enjoy the one meal I ate in there, but it’s clear that Norwegian focuses more on the sheer variety of alternative “freestyle” dining options (premium and otherwise), in contrast to Carnival, which have plenty of complimentary options for lunch but only a few for dinner. As a result, their MDRs are obviously a Big Feature, whether you are dining traditionally or YTD.

 

(Sorry, we didn’t get pictures of the MDR.)

 

(d) The theater on both ships is about the same. I cannot compare shows, as we didn’t go to a single show on the Liberty (just wandered in a couple of times during presentations), and we made it to only one on the Jewel, Luminescence, which we thought was pretty good. Well, *I* thought was pretty good. My wife had to leave with my daughter, who was too busy misbehaving to enjoy more than the first couple of minutes of the show. My son, who was exhausted from that day’s port activities, fell asleep a few minutes after that. I should have taken a picture. :) FYI, Luminescence is the Cirque-style show on the Jewel.

[The Mister]

The Ship Itself, continued

 

(3) The pool deck, in general, is better on the Norwegian Jewel. Two decent size pools, one of which is adult-only; several hot tubs, etc. The Liberty, on the other hand, has a tiny pool and larger Hairy Chest area. Based on my two cruises, the Jewel’s pool area was used more for general relaxation and aquatic fun (though with the requisite fun silliness occurring around the stage at various appointed times), whereas the area on the Liberty was focused more on said silliness (Hairy Chest, movies on the big screen) and as a “tanning deck”; the pool just seemed like an afterthought to us.

 

I should add, though, that the water slide on the Liberty is better than the one on the Jewel. Granted, my son and the other children had plenty of fun on the Jewel’s slide, but they apparently had just as much fun getting stuck halfway down than the actual sliding. The Liberty’s slide is a better design, and no one ever got stuck while we were on, as far as I know.

 

The next cruise we take, we’d like to pick a ship that has a bona fide water park, like the Carnival Magic or something like that. Though we may wait until our daughter is tall enough to partake.

 

Cold and dreary on embarkation day:

 

Kids testing out the pool chairs (still embarkation day):

 

Better picture from Sea Day #1:

 

DD4 in the little kids’ area:

 

DS9 being silly in a hot tub:

 

DS9 coming down the water slide:

Edited December 2, 2014 by The Mister

[The Mister]

The Ship Itself, continued

 

(4) Food / dining: On the Carnival Liberty, we did not eat a single meal in a specialty restaurant. Our dinners were exclusively in the MDR (though kids ate in the buffet and were in the kids’ club while we ate), and breakfast and lunch were in the various walk-up venues – Lido buffet, fish n chips (I loved the ceviche options there), Blue Iguana (tortillas rancheras for breakfast!), etc. On the Jewel, nearly every onboard meal we ate was in the buffet – it’s just easier for us that way, as neither of our children can sit still in a traditional restaurant for various reasons. On Sunday morning I took my son to the MDR for breakfast, and one dinner we went to Chin Chin and ordered from the sushi menu (and barely got through it, no thanks to the kids).

 

From what we have gathered from both cruises, the overall quality of the food is more or less equal across both ships, though with significant differences in arrangement. The most obvious and well-known difference, of course, is that Norwegian has invested in a much greater variety of specialty restaurants, whereas Carnival has strived to maintain that variety in venues that do not charge extra.

 

Furthermore, the buffet arrangement is different. Many have commented that the Jewel has food stations, arranged to help prevent backups from long lines. I agree with this. The Liberty does, in fact, have longer lines in the Lido buffet due to the fact that the food is set up cafeteria-style. You basically have to stand in the line for everything in order to get to the one thing you want, and butting in line would be rude. If you didn’t want to wait in line, you had to show up at non-peak times. Jewel’s stations are much more conducive to a simple walk-up, even during the busiest times.

 

On the other hand, we found the Jewel’s seating arrangement in the buffet area to be a bit *less* convenient. I couldn’t tell you definitively whether there was actually more or less seating, but it certainly wasn’t the most convenient arrangement. The Jewel’s buffet seating is like a galley. At one end was the seating closest to the food stations, and the tables continued all the way aft to the Great Outdoors, which served mainly simpler food (sandwiches, simpler casseroles) during the off-hours. This was particularly inconvenient because of my bad foot. On many occasions, in order to secure a table closer to the food, we ended up showing up a few minutes before the buffet opened.

 

In contrast, the Liberty’s buffet seating is all together. We never found it necessary to find seating out of sight of the food stations last year.

 

(Sorry, we didn’t take pictures of the food. ;) )

 

OK, that's as far as I've gotten this time. Next, I'll have to decide whether to post my thoughts about Splash Academy or start reviewing the ports...

[The Mister]

Dailies, etc

 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention:

In case you missed it, I started a different thread HERE to post (a) the dailies, (b) the Splash Academy schedules, and © the Banana Coast flyer.

[Rudyard]

Great review. I'm getting to relive my trip from a few weeks ago :D

 

those of us who had pre-purchased showed our parking pass and were waved right through. On-site purchase of a parking pass, however, took at least a couple of minutes per vehicle, causing significant delays in the parking process. In addition, there are only two drive-up kiosks through which all vehicles must pass. Hopefully they are able to expand on that in the future.

 

That was the only thing that bugged me about the parking their. I had pre paid, and had one of the parking lot employees take my receipt and give me a hangar saying I had paid, but I still had to wait behind two cars that were paying. I'd like to see one booth for people who have pre paid. Other than that I loved the flow and layout of the lot and how easy it was to get in and out.

[Cruise Lovin' Gal]

Great review! Makes me even more excited for our upcoming cruise!!!

[It's a Ship!!!]

This is a great review. I'll be on the Jewel a week from today. When you did the parking, did you drop your luggage off first, or did you just carry it with you after you parked?

[The Mister]

This is a great review. I'll be on the Jewel a week from today. When you did the parking' date=' did you drop your luggage off first, or did you just carry it with you after you parked?[/quote']

The drive is set up such that you drive past the drop off area on your way around the loop to the parking area, so it was easy to drop off our checked luggage with minimal fuss (aside from the fuss of half the guests arriving at the same time that we did :)).

[B&P!!!]

Great review! All the info I need for my cruise next month! I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

[Kymnotkim]

I'll be subscribing since I'm going on both the Jewel and the Liberty next month. Thanks for the comparisons.

[The Mister]

Great review! All the info I need for my cruise next month! I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

You're welcome. My apologies for the lack of updates. It's a combination of busy at work, a really good book that I'm reading instead, and general laziness. I hope to make another contribution sometime this week.

I'll be subscribing since I'm going on both the Jewel and the Liberty next month. Thanks for the comparisons.

Lucky you! :)

[Susie51]

Thank you for your review of your Jewel experience. I returned on Dec; 6 from our cruise on Jewel. We had very nice weather until fog caused us to return to Houston early.

[The Mister]

Apologies again for not keeping up with this as much as I was hoping. Here's another installment:

 

Splash Academy

 

The manager of Splash Academy on the Jewel is called Dynamite. The other male counselor’s “name” is Jukebox (he manned the sign-in much of the time, wears stilts, and is a fun guy all around), and many of the female counselors had Disney princess names like Bella, Snow and Ariel.

 

The counselors themselves were fine, and the events were fun, and our daughter did great the whole time, but we had the following issues that mostly affected our son:

 

(1) The room itself is loud. I don’t mean the kids. They are going to be loud at times whether you want them to or not. I’m referring to acoustics. One of the walls in the bigger room (and at least one of the smaller rooms) is entirely floor-to-ceiling windows. So the sound of the room, as the sound bounces around, is a lot like a gymnasium, each high-pitched shriek enhanced in a rather shrill way.

 

Most children do not care, and they associate such an acoustical environment with fun and physical activity. However, most autistic children and some others have sensory processing issues. For a child with sensory issues, being in such a shrill and loud environment, with children randomly shouting and counselors attempting to shout directions over them, is like having an erratic fire alarm going off in your head.

 

For our son, this meant he could only stand to be the room for about an hour at a time, at most.

 

Thankfully, in the evenings, they cover the windows with drapery-like murals in the style of whatever that night’s activity is. At those times, the room’s acoustics become noticeably less shrill.

 

The rooms are also, for the most part, completely open space, with few places to sit. This open-ness adds to the loudness of the room.

 

In contrast, Camp Carnival on the Liberty has rooms that are covered not with windows (though there are a few), but with bookshelves and cabinets (and a few bare walls). From an acoustical standpoint, bookshelves are the polar opposite of floor-to-ceiling windows. Such a room is calming and soothing for any child, never mind those with sensory issues. That’s not to say that the children don’t get wild or don’t have a lot of fun. Children manage that regardless, and they did. It’s just that when the children get rowdy in Camp Carnival, there’s less of a tendency for the noise to become overwhelming.

 

I should also note that the shelves weren’t necessarily filled with books, but with other supplies.

 

We were NEVER called – not even once – because our son wanted to leave Camp Carnival. We came to get him when we chose, every time. The only time they called us was when he had an accident. We brought him a change of clothes and he was fine again. For hours.

 

I am fairly certain that the above acoustical concern carries across all Jewel-class ships (you may want to double-check deck plans for the others if you are concerned), and that Camp Carnival on all Conquest-class ships have a similar layout to that of the Liberty.

[The Mister]

Splash Academy (cont.)

 

(2) On the Jewel, unlike the Carnival Liberty, there is no place for children to rest. Any time you are in Splash Academy, you are expected to play, play, play. If you are tired, your parents are contacted.

 

Many – even most – children adjust to the “cruise ship schedule” just fine. They play with the kids, and the fact that they are on vacation with others having a grand old time keeps them going. Not our son. If anything, he became even MORE of a morning person than usual. There were a couple of mornings when he got up at 5:00am, ready to get ready and do whatever came next. (This was convenient when we wanted to have an early tender, but it didn’t always work out because our daughter is a night-owl and we wanted to give her enough sleep to make it through the day.)

 

By the time we were done for the day, whether in port or at sea, our son was ready for bed. One night, he even went to sleep around 6:30 he was so exhausted. That was definitely a port day – I think it was Trujillo.

 

Back to the club – I asked a couple of times about this. The second time, on a sea day, I asked if there is any way they can make some sort of arrangement, as we were hoping to have just ONE date night and actually sit down and get SERVED for dinner without getting interrupted. Jukebox replied, “Sorry, we just don’t have the space for it.”

 

So I lost my penchant for proper grammar and spelling and wrote a long, rambling and unnecessarily insult-filled complaint to John Heald and then ... Wait, sorry, wrong cruise line. ;)

 

Anyway, we sucked it up and went to the buffet. Again. And decided that for future cruises, that would be non-negotiable, which means NCL is probably not for us.

 

And then, 45 minutes later, Jukebox called. The boy was done for the night.

 

In contrast, on the Liberty, Camp Carnival is arranged with a space in the younger group’s area that, in the evenings, is set up with a TV (the kids remember watching some of the Ice Age movies), mats and pillows for a quiet evening for those who don’t want to PLAY PLAY PLAY. This space is available for those in the older age groups as well. Sometimes our son would make it through the activities until we picked him up; other times we would find him asleep (or nearly so) on a mat.

 

As I posted above re: the first point, even in the evenings we were NEVER called – not even once – because our son wanted to leave Camp Carnival. We came to get him when we chose, every time.

 

I imagine the other Conquest-class ships are set up the same way, but you may want to double-check. I am unsure whether this is the case on other Carnival ships, and I am also unsure if it is still the case now that they have rolled out Seuss At Sea.

Edited December 11, 2014 by The Mister

[buddyjo143]

Enjoying your review. Will be sailing on the Jewel soon. Can't wait to hear how you liked Banana Coast.

[dadof2boys]

That's a bummer to hear that about the kids clubs. We have always loved Carnival's kids programming, but on out most recent trip (last month) aboard the Magic, we were not fans. The space was what you described on the liberty, however the programming had switched over to the new Camp Ocean. So what we thought was going to be an upgrade ended up being a downgraded experience. The kids still had fun, but just had their fun spending ALL their time with us! [emoji12]

[SucalT]

Can't wait for the rest of your review. We will be aboard on Jan 3!

[DrFootball]

Very Good Review[emoji4]

As for splash, I'm a retired Teacher(26 years) and helped my parents raise an Autistic Brother. They can easily cover half the windows to reduce the issue of Audio process perception in "spectrum" kids. Keep writing. I'm a 5 time Cruiser and two Time NCL, and my next three cruises will be the Pearl for a Music Cruise( Cruise to the Edge out of Miami) and two Jewel( Pacific Mexico and Alaska)out of LA & Seattle. I was an East coaster until 3 yrs ago, Now I'm in high Desert of Northern Arizona so all the cruises are west coast now. Imagine a 12 Year Military Aviation Vet who hates long flights?!! I'd rather spend the time at sea...

 

 

Retired from solving other People's Problems

CWO-4 US Army Retired/Medical

NSDQ!!!

[The Mister]

Very Good Review[emoji4]

As for splash, I'm a retired Teacher(26 years) and helped my parents raise an Autistic Brother. They can easily cover half the windows to reduce the issue of Audio process perception in "spectrum" kids. Keep writing. I'm a 5 time Cruiser and two Time NCL, and my next three cruises will be the Pearl for a Music Cruise( Cruise to the Edge out of Miami) and two Jewel( Pacific Mexico and Alaska)out of LA & Seattle.

I officially envy you!!! I am a huge Prog fan and Yes was my gate(ofdelerium)way band. :) I'd be going myself but my wife would be miserable. One of me is enough, I guess. ;)

 

As for accomodations, no offer was ever made to accomodate him in any way, despite his obvious sensitivity to the noise. It seemed they cared more about making sure the rest of the kids were having enough noisy fun.

 

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the review. Life is getting in the way. I have some bits written up for Cozumel and just need to upload and organize the pics. Belize is going to be VERY photo-intensive.

Edited January 8, 2015 by The Mister

[dadof2boys]

Looking forward to more.

[panamahansen]

Enjoy your reviews. Going on this cruise feb21 with (2)grandparents, (2) parents and (1) 2 year old. I'm the grandpa

[panamahansen]

Enjoy your reviews. Going on this cruise feb21 with (2)grandparents, (2) parents and (1) 2 year old. I'm the grandpa.