Jewel of the Seas Panama Canal mini review

[HMSDingy]

I just got back from our partial Panama Canal cruise onboard the Jewel. Before sailing on the Jewel, we've done only Princess. Firstly let me say that the Jewel is a beautiful ship with with open spaces and a breath taking centrum. It was in excellent shape. Let's begin at the...er...beginning.

 

We flew in a day earlier and stayed at La Quinta Miami East. Good choice and great price with a free shuttle to the POM.

 

Embarkation; 15 minutes!! It took us longer to get to the POM than to board the ship. And as promised our cabin was ready at 1:00 PM.

 

Cabin; We had a balcony in the portside forward end of the ship. The cabin was well layed out and comfortable with a small couch and table. Our only complaint with the interior of the cabin is that you could not have both the closet door and bathroom door open at the same time. We made it a habit of calling out before we opened the bathroom door to avoid a collision or worse. We also liked the sliding shower doors instead of shower curtains. The cabin was on deck 7 and we had the longer balcony that came out about 2 feet more than the balconies on the higher decks. We had no obstruction between the railing and the wide open sea. The only drawback was that the yahoo on deck 9 above us kept on flicking his cigarette ashes over the railing. Our neighbours forward of us were also smokers but they had one of those portable ashtrays and never flicked ashes or butts overboard. Inexpensive little device but much courtesy to your fellow passengers.

 

MTD; Once onboard we proceeded to the deck 5 entrance of Tides and the host, Giancarlo from Peru assured us that we would get the table and preferred seating time as requested.

 

Food; We had both our breakfasts and lunches at Windjammers and found both selections to be ample and diverse. We had lunch just once at the Seaview cafe and the sandwiches were great. The food in the Tides diningroom was also good and well presented. Wish we could say the same for the RCI version of espresso. NOT. On the first evening we were served espresso in regular coffee cups, that would make it not a double but a quadruple and then some, extremely mild and bitter espresso and the one evening we ate at Portofino, although assured by our waiter that theirs was better, did not change our opinion of it at all. Same muck but in an espresso cup. We also found the white wine rarely chilled. Marjolito (spelling?) the head waiter explained that the temperature was not properly set in the wine cellar (?) For the first half of the cruise we had one set of wait staff who were inexperienced to say the least. But for the second half we had a young fellow from Costa Rica, Alberto and his assistant, Can from Turkey who were exceptionally professional and courteous.

 

Excursions; We did not do many excursions but the general consensus from fellow passengers was that they were well organised and interesting. Labadee was great with beautiful beaches and the BBQ lunch was not bad as it was assembled by the ship's kitchen staff. One excursion we did do was the beach break at 7 mile beach in the Cayman Islands with transportation and lunch. The beach is beautiful but for an extra $20 per person, I was not impressed with the so called lunch buffet. A choice of hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken and what looked liked canned fruit cocktail for dessert is not worth the money paid for. Once onboard, I wrote out a complaint on the comment form and the next day found a note on my bed with an apology from RCI and a $40 credit on my shipboard account. I only mention this to show that if you are disatisfied with something, don't let it ride for a year before doing something.

 

Entertainment; We went to all of the shows and they were great, especially Gary Mule Deer who was hilarious and the fabulouse tango dancers from Argentina. IMHO Joff was one of the better cruise directors I

we had had.

 

This & That; There was an even number of tuxes and suits on the formal nights. Dress in the MDR on regular evenings ranged from slacks to jeans to shorts. No one was turned away. In fact there was one gentleman, and I use the term loosely, who wore his baseball cap to the dining room. There was a young couple who always sat behind us and usually arrived in jeans, him in a t-shirt her in a hoodie. Regardless of a suggested dress attire or not, do you usually go to a land based restaurant such as Tides in jeans let alone a baseball cap? On deck 12 there was an orange path running around the deck which was used as a walking/jogging path. I found this unnerving for the fact that you could not take a leisurely walk for fear of being run over by the brisk walkers and joggers. Heck I'm pretty active and all for a healthy lifestyle but not at the sake of being rude to my fellow passengers. They would also get upset if your chair dared touch a part of the orange. And speaking of chairs, yes there were the chair hogs but there were ample chairs and we always managed to find one. The deck patrol was never seen to remove towels or scold those that left them. All they did was pick up the empty glasses and debris.

 

Well...that's all folks.

[NorbertsNiece]

Hi,

Thanks for posting your review. Will be doing a similar cruise in March on Jewel. Can't wait!

[Jackboy]

Hi Norbert

 

We're on the Jewel in March but just realised that we're on the cruise after you! Can't wait!

 

Kaz

[NorbertsNiece]

Hi Norbert

 

We're on the Jewel in March but just realised that we're on the cruise after you! Can't wait!

 

Kaz

 

Hi Kaz,

I'm Norbert's niece ;)

Will take good care of her for you.... if you hear screaming prior to boarding that'll be me refusing to leave......

[silentbob007]

I'm on in a little over a week ... can't wait.

[Gracie115]

Nice review, I assume you were in the My Time Dining section since you mention Alberto, the waiter from Costa Rica and his assistant. We had them for all but one night on our 11/7 Jewel Panama cruise and they were great.

 

That orange running track you mentioned on Deck 12 reminded that I couldn't walk on it in my new sneakers cause they would squeak LOUDLY with every step on the track..never a sound off the track though...odd.....had to resort to flip flops to get a quiet walk late at night.

 

Hope you had as great a time as we did, still looking for another Jewel cruise to book!!

[linkerbink]

Thanks for the review....we do the same cruise in April. And yes...the standard "uniform" for men these days seems to include a baseball cap, usually worn backwards, regardless of the scale of the establishment!