lauraodonnell86

Following along!! Safe travels and enjoy your extra days at sea if you get them!

We're getting so tired of winter, the longer out of it the better!

 

As I recall from the roll calls, see you on Freedom January 19' ;p

Yep, we'll be there!

Yep. We'll be in SJU 2 nights before and 3 nights after our B2B on Jewel next winter:cool:

Wow, lucky you!! I guess that's the next step after a B2B huh?? ;p

Jewel still has the fabulous glass staircase, which was removed from Serenade. Sad to see it go.

I'm excited to see it! We were bummed to get booted from Adventure of the Seas but we can't complain because we will still be on a cruise!!

Thank you all for the responses! I'm excited to see Jewel. 2009 was a long time ago and we've been on a couple different ships since then so I can't quite remember what Serenade was like! Can't wait for our cruise in 162 days!

While trying not to sound creepy, I did think of you when I created it. I'll look forward to your report to help us get through the last 100 or so day.

It's funny because last year, my Adventure review is what helped you through the last 100 days!! Kindred Caribbean cruising spirits!

Thanks Bill!

This is the board I was actually looking for last night when I asked about the hot tubs but I couldn't find it anywhere. I knew of the Adventure board (of course) so thought there would be one like that on Jewel but there wasn't! Thanks again for starting this! :D

Hello there knowledgeable people of CC!!

We are going on Jewel of the Seas in January because our Adventure cruises got canceled. :loudcry: We have been on Serenade of the Seas (in 2009) but have never been on Jewel. We are huge fans of sitting in a hot tub in the Solarium every day after being out on the island. I am wondering if there is more than 1 hot tub in the Solarium on Jewel?

If I'm looking at the website right, it seems as if there is only 1 on Jewel. If that is the case, does it get really crowded? On Adventure, there are 2 of them and even with 2, they often get crowded. I'm just wondering as I look forward to our cruise :D Thanks for any info you guys may have!

Let me guess, friends from New Zealand? They're the friendliest!

Actually we haven't met any from NZ! Our friends are from England and Ireland! I'd love to meet some from NZ though, that's a place I've always wanted to visit!

I'm jealous of your B2B on Adventure! We've done 2 of them and absolutely love them!!! You are going to have a wonderful time!!

Yep we do! We've met lifelong friends across the world who we still communicate with. We've actually visited them as well! That it one of our favorite parts of cruising!

We love cruising in January to escape the cold Missouri winters and also our anniversary is January 4th so it all works out well! We also like it because the kids are mostly back to school so really it's pretty much like an adult cruise!

We are booked for Jan 2018 on Jewel B2B (Adventure was canceled :( ) and also Liberty May 2018. We've also got Freedom booked for Jan 2019! Got a steal on the price since we booked so early! Love having cruises to look forward to! :D

I hope you will post a lot from Jewel next year before we go.

I will! We've never been on Jewel so I'm sure I'll be taking all the pics! You'll have to tell me what you want to see so I know what specifically to get. I need to find an All Jewel board like we have the All Things Adventure board.

Loving your review! You're doing great and I'm so happy I can see the pics now :D Can't wait to hear about Curacao because that was our very favorite!!

Hey Bill! Hope you had a wonderful cruise! Excited to see and hear more!

I don't sail on Adventure till April but I am now second guessing my cabin choice! Currently we are a balcony starboard side very forward. But I am wondering if I should of booked port side? My reasoning being that I could sit in the balcony and watch the island go by as we leave each port going down their coastlines. Instead of only being able to watch it for a little bit till the ship turns fully south and I'll only be able to see ocean.

 

Thoughts?

Adventure doesn't always port on port side. It has been different on every cruise at almost every island we've gone to. Also, Port side is the smoking side so depending on if you are a smoker, that could be a good or bad thing for you. We prefer to book on starboard because we don't want to walk through the smoking section to get where we're going. Yes, we can walk to the starboard side but it's easy to forget.

It looks like a lot of fun!

 

About how far in advance do you book private excursions like this? After having done two cruises now we feel more confident to book non-ship excursions but I'm not sure how early is too early to book?

I know what you mean about being more confident with non-ship excursions. It took us a couple of cruises as well to be able to go out on our own. I really rely on Trip Advisor a lot to make sure people have good experiences.

I would say to book a couple of months out. I've been disappointed before by things filling up or selling out on other excursion websites. But then again, there is such a thing as too early. Example: our Adventure B2B for January 2018 just got cancelled because of the dry dock (I'm sure you've heard). So I was glad I didn't have anything booked yet (except airfare :(). Or maybe check the refund policy before booking.

Thanks for all of this information! I have a couple of questions.

 

St. Maarten - did you hire a driver for the day or just take a taxi 1 way to Orient Beach, then another taxi to Maho then back to the ship? We leave in a month!

 

Antigua - We are doing a zipline excursion in the morning, the beach you went to look beautiful! Did you have a hard time getting a taxi back to the ship? do you recall the cost?

Our excusion states 3.5 hours, so I think we will be back to the ship around noon so most likely will have time for a few hours at a beach if we're up to it.

 

St. Lucia - I'm having a difficult time deciding what to do... what have you done here on past trips?

 

Thanks so much!

In St. Maarten, we booked this shore excursion. We have done it several times and have had nothing but great experiences with the company! https://www.shoreexcursioneer.com/st-maarten/beach-bum-orient-maho.html I would recommend it 100 times over! You really can't beat the price and all drinks (alcohol and non) are included!

Antigua - yes the beach we were at was beautiful! No it wasn't hard to get a taxi back because our same driver who took us came back for us at the time we chose! I believe it was $8 round trip a person. But they paired us with a family of 4 so there were 6 of us. It would have been more they said if we had gone by ourselves.

For St. Lucia, I would recommend https://adventuretoursstlucia.com/treetop-canopy We did this a few years ago and it was probably the best excursion we've ever done. The employees are so awesome and take pictures with your own camera the whole time! You can see the great reviews on Trip Advisor! I liked that much better than the beaches we've been to in St. Lucia. But snorkeling under the Pitons is also a great excursion!

I am so jealous of your cruise! I hope you have a wonderful time and let me know if you have any other questions or need clarification on anything!! :)

Download a countdown app on your phone to watch the days go by! And download Periscope and follow all of the RC Periscopers who post live while on cruises and also who talk about cruises all of the time!! :D

Laura,

 

Thank you for the review it is helping me get ready for my Adventure cruise next April!

 

I reviewed treetop zip line on TripAdvisor like you suggested and they look great. I was wondering more about your personal experience with them. Did you just do the zip lining or did you do one of their other offered tours? I'm really interested in the Triple Adventure of zip line, keep safari, and waterfall hike.

 

Thanks for any info you can give!

We just booked the zip lining only tour on the website. We thought about doing one of the other tours as well but we like to get back to the ship around 2 or 3 to eat lunch so we decided to just do the zip lining. But there were others that were doing the waterfall hike and they said it was awesome!

We are going back in January and now you've got me thinking about doing the "Day of Adventure". We haven't really found a great beach in St. Lucia so that might be a good idea :D I hope you have a great time! Let me know if there are any other questions I can answer!

The Jewel is a nice change from the Adventure. (y)

Yeah, we've been on Adventure 4 times and never have been on Jewel. But we love the Royal Promenade and will really miss that. We were on Serenade in 2009 for my first cruise and I loved it! So it'll be nice to be back on that class of ship. I'm excited for a change!

I am sooooo sorry to hear about this. We were supposed to be on Jan 13th and 20th on Adventure and they obviously got cancelled. You are in a much worse predicament than us. But we had just booked our airfare 2 weeks prior. :( So right now, we are trying to figure that all out. The flights have gone up a ton since then so we are waiting to see what we are going to do. Decided to book Jewel for the 14th and 21st. Will miss Adventure though :( Good luck with this and I'll be waiting to see how to all turns out.

We are on the May 13th-20th Sailing, but our flight does not leave San Juan till 2:30 pm. Our plan was to get up, eat a relaxed breakfast at Windjammer then head and drop off our luggage at Barrachina, walk around Old San Juan for a couple hours and then head to airport around Noon. But ...... I wonder if we feel really lazy on that morning, what is the absolute latest we can leave the ship?

Our flight wasn't until 4 or 5 something when we cruised in January. We just found different public areas that we just hung out in until we got kicked out of each one, lol. We ended up having to leave around 10 or so. That was better than our time of 8 something!

We just finished our Jewel B2B a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it. There are some things missing from the experience, but other things filled their place. Hope you enjoy your next cruise!

Hey buddy! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your cruise! You guys should go with us in January :D I'm sure you heard about Adventure dry docking next January so our cruises were cancelled :( I am worried that we're gonna miss the Royal Promenade from Adventure on Jewel but I'm sure we'll make the best of it! We've never been on Jewel but were on Serenade back in 2009. Miss you guys! Tell wifey I said hi!