Our May 31, 2014 cruise to Alaska on the Jewel

Our May 31, 2014 cruise to Alaska on the Jewel

At first I wasn’t going to write a review, but after reading some of the other reviews, I decided our experience was a little different from the others so here it is.

A little background first. This was our 10th cruise to Alaska on NCL but our first on the Jewel. We live about an hour’s drive from Pier 66 and the Bell Street Terminal so cruising to Alaska is very convenient for us with no airfare and no hotel to book.

Our previous cruise to Alaska was only 8 ½ months prior (September 15, 2013) on the Pearl. We had invited our adult daughter to join us for her very first cruise. But because of bad weather, rough seas and low visibility, excursions were cancelled and we missed our stop in Ketchikan. So, we wanted to give her another chance to see Alaska so we booked this cruise.

We arrived at the parking garage across the street from Pier 66 about 11:30AM and waited for the shuttle van to take us and our luggage to the terminal. We dropped off our luggage and headed to the VIP/Suite check-in area. There was quite a large group waiting to be escorted into the terminal building and to the VIP lounge. Once we got to the lounge the check-in process went very quickly and we were escorted onto the Jewel about 12:15PM.

Our Haven Suite was already cleaned and ready for us so we were escorted right to our Suite #14512. We had stayed in a Haven Suite on our 2 previous cruises on the Pearl so we knew what to expect. We enjoy the quietness and solitude away from the crowds.

For those who might be interested, I have posted the Freestyle Dailies from our cruise:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2054620

I'll start off by showing pictures of the Haven area.

14th Deck Elevator Landing

Looking down the Haven Suites hallway from our suite

Our Haven Suite

The entrance to our Haven Suite with the sofa in the living room made up into a twin bed

A few more pictures of our Haven Suite

Living room area of our suite (and balcony)

Living room area of our suite with the door leading into the main bath and bedroom

Bar area

Flowers, chocolate-covered strawberries and a fruit bowl to greet us in our Suite

Main bathroom and bedroom

And more Haven Suite pictures

Closed door between living room area and main bedroom and bathroom

Curtain closing off the main bedroom area viewed from the living room

Main bathroom

Toilet area on the immediate right with the shower door next to the bath tub

Floor to ceiling window in the shower

I love those showers! There's just something about showering in the middle of the ocean.....but the window covering just doesn't make me feel so good about showering in port! :eek:

Great pictures, thanks for posting. Will be in the same suite in August!

Thank you so much for the beautiful pictures! We are sailing the Jewel in February, excitedly looking forward to our first stay in a Haven suite! I can't wait to see and read more! :)

and a few more pictures of our Haven Suite

the second bedroom

the second bathroom

the sofa in the second bedroom made up into a double bed. You can see where the twin-size bed pulls out of the wall.

the sofa in the living room made up into a twin bed

The twin-sized bed in the living room was not very comfortable. Beside being very narrow (and short) it was worn enough so that it felt like you were rolling out of bed. We fixed that by placing pillows under the side edge of the mattress so it leveled out the bed.

Nice pictures Sandy! Looking forward to more of your thoughts.

The Courtyard area was a nice place to read, relax or swim. The only bad thing about it is that you don't have any views of the water or beautiful scenery.

or even take a nap--

We enjoyed the buffet "pre-breakfast" set up in the Courtyard every morning--coffee, tea, assorted fresh fruits, juice, ice water, Danish rolls, muffins

We were the 3rd cruise after the Jewel’s dry dock in San Francisco. I guess I was hoping for more in the way of updates and expected her to be in excellent condition, but we found the Jewel to be starting to show her age. There was new carpeting in the heavy traffic areas, but she didn’t seem as in good condition when we were on the Pearl last year—and all the stuff they had up on Deck 14 didn’t help the situation. I guess they were in the process of installing “scrubbers” which are in the smokestack area. But it looked like a “junkyard” and prevented us from being able to leave the Haven’s private viewing deck via the outside stairs or doors at the end of the hallways.

I would be very disappointed at the sight of the materials and equipment associated with the scrubber install. I do quite a bit of work in an industrial environment. The sight of all the hoists, welding leads, cylinders, super-sacks, scaffolding, scrap metal, ventilation tubes, and on and on... would certainly take me right out of vacation-mode. You just posted four pics of what I go on vacation to get away from. What a shame.

That right there is simply something that passengers should NOT see. The untrained eye might freak out and think there was a major incident that just occurred on their sailing.... jeez louise...

We were the 3rd cruise after the Jewel’s dry dock in San Francisco. I guess I was hoping for more in the way of updates and expected her to be in excellent condition, but we found the Jewel to be starting to show her age. There was new carpeting in the heavy traffic areas, but she didn’t seem as in good condition when we were on the Pearl last year—and all the stuff they had up on Deck 14 didn’t help the situation. I guess they were in the process of installing “scrubbers” which are in the smokestack area. But it looked like a “junkyard” and prevented us from being able to leave the Haven’s private viewing deck via the outside stairs or doors at the end of the hallways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How tremendously disappointing!! We never went to the sun deck so we didn't see all of that. :(

Thanks for the report!

How tremendously disappointing!! We never went to the sun deck so we didn't see all of that. :(

I'm thinking it was all removed by the time you cruised. The Captain had indicated we would be docking port side for the first time in Seattle on the 7th. It was something to do with the large crane and I assumed it would be removing all of the "garbage". When we looked out our balcony we could see the large crane with a number of dumpsters next to it. Once all the luggage and food and other supplies were loaded, I'm sure the large crane went to work filling up those dumpsters.

The view from our 14th deck balcony.

We were docked portside, but I think it was to load the scrubbers. We were delayed sailing out by about an hour and the loading of the scrubbers was the explanation given. They certainly could have offloaded the garbage as well though.

I was happy they docked portside as it gave us a tiny sneak peek into our villa. ;)

Thanks for your review and nice photo's.

After exploring our suite we headed down to Moderno’s for lunch. It was a little after 12:30PM and Moderno’s was very crowded. The hostess said they didn’t have a table available for 3 and did we want to wait about 20 minutes. Since there were several tables for 2 still empty, we asked if they could put 2 of them together. So they did that and we were able to sit down and order lunch. Service was good but we were rather disappointed in the food. Our shrimp cocktails were delicious but the rest of lunch was just “so-so”. My daughter’s burger was on the small side with very few fries; my husband’s French dip was all alone on the big plate (no fries or anything else) and had more onions than meat; my grilled asparagus & prosciutto was lacking flavor and the asparagus wasn’t really “grilled”. This was our only lunch in Moderno’s. We enjoyed lunches in Tsar’s Palace and O’Sheehan’s on the rest of our cruise.

Wow - sorry to hear the food in Moderno's wasn't up to the normal standards. It will be interesting to hear from others if this is also their experience on cruises after yours. We have always loved the B & L in (formerly Cagney's) and are expecting it to be just as good as usual when we go in September.

Enjoyed your report.

Keith

We ate there the first day for lunch too and where among the first to be seated. The aspargus app was the same for the same for us. My fish sandwich was perfect, well what I got to eat of it. My daughter said the hamburger was ok, she did get fries with hers. My youngest inhaled her chicken then took my sandwich and ate it. It was also the only lunch we ate in there.

Wow - sorry to hear the food in Moderno's wasn't up to the normal standards. It will be interesting to hear from others if this is also their experience on cruises after yours. We have always loved the B & L in (formerly Cagney's) and are expecting it to be just as good as usual when we go in September.

We did have 5 great breakfasts in Moderno's but I guess the menu for lunch just didn't appeal to us. Although if our first lunch there had been outstanding, I'm sure we would have gone back.

We decided we liked the larger and more varied lunch menu in Tsar's and O'Sheehan's was another good choice for us. In O'Sheehan's we usually had a table by the window with great views and the food and service were very good.

By 1:30PM we were done with lunch and ready to explore the Jewel and take pictures of Seattle from the ship. Our lifeboat drill wasn’t until 3:15PM.

View from our balcony. You can see Seattle's Great Wheel along with Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field.

Another view from our balcony. You can see the Golden Princess and the Volendam at Pier 91.

Seattle's skyline with beautiful blue skies.

Another view of Seattle's skyline.

More exploring of the Jewel--

Fyzz Lounge

Magnum's just outside Le Bistro

Spinnaker Lounge

More of Spinnaker Lounge. A great place to read and relax when no activities were taking place.

Yes, people were swimming at 2:30 in the afternoon before the Jewel left Seattle. It was about 75F outside.

We met in O’Sheehan’s as our “lifeboat station” for the drill. It only took about 15 minutes then we were back to exploring the Jewel.

Atrium area with Carlo's Bake Shop on the left area of the Java Café.

Enjoying the Great Outdoors area

After the lifeboat drill, the Sailaway BBQ got going

We were a little late in leaving Seattle, but finally at 4:25PM we pulled away from the pier

Good-bye Seattle!

About 7PM we went down for dinner in Azura. Even though they were crowded, we got right in and had great service. We were in and out of there in less than 45 minutes. The food was very good and we ended up eating at Azura 4 nights during our cruise. This evening all 3 of us had the "Chef's Regional Specialty" which was blackened Alaskan salmon. It was very good!

I did attempt to take pictures of the menus and this is about the only time they came out.

This was available every night--

This changed every night--

And desserts were on a separate menu. The first 3 changed every night, the rest stayed the same.

The Golden Princess ahead of us around 8PM

The Westerdam catching up to us