Rogueperson's **LIVE** Jewel of the Seas 9/14/2023 - 9/28/2023.

[Rogueperson]

14 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said:

I have dismembered this room in the memory of meeting you again.

 

It will take at least three days for you to be in my good graces.

 

You may pet me now.

 

🤣

Apparently, he stole the remote and has been turning the TV on by himself while we were away.

 

The mess is ours.  Can’t blame him

for it.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Rogueperson

[Engineroom Snipe]

6 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

Apparently, he stole the remote and has been turning the TV on by himself while we were away.

 

The mess is ours.  Can’t blame him

for it.

I know.

 

But I was channeling my inner dog.

 

Good to be home!

 

Thank you for sharing ALL of your vacation with us.

 

😇

[little britain]

Heading north towards Halifax.

 

There appears to be a younger demographic on this cruise, even a few more kids!

I’m not sure what they did in Bayonne but you can now hear the Captains address in the corridors and the Wi-Fi seems to be much better!! I noticed a different log in screen when I created my account - I swear it didn’t say this last week (STRM) ?

 

 

[Rogueperson]

30 minutes ago, little britain said:

Heading north towards Halifax.

 

There appears to be a younger demographic on this cruise, even a few more kids!

I’m not sure what they did in Bayonne but you can now hear the Captains address in the corridors and the Wi-Fi seems to be much better!! I noticed a different log in screen when I created my account - I swear it didn’t say this last week (STRM) ?

 

 

Its possible that with so many Pinnacles, the bandwith on the ship was stretched to its limit.  Do Pinnacles get free wifi for the entire voyage?  

 

I'm only guessing as I do not have much IT knowledge regarding networking and Wifi.  I can appear competent, but I accept that my knowledge has a limit in this area.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Rogueperson

[little britain]

56 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

Its possible that with so many Pinnacles, the bandwith on the ship was stretched to its limit.  Do Pinnacles get free wifi for the entire voyage?  

 

I'm only guessing as I do not have much IT knowledge regarding networking and Wifi.  I can appear competent, but I accept that my knowledge has a limit in this area.

215 Pinnacle on this cruise! 
Yes we get free Wi-Fi for whole cruise 

[Another_Critic]

3 hours ago, little britain said:

I noticed a different log in screen when I created my account - I swear it didn’t say this last week (STRM) ?

 

 

I wonder if they are preparing to transition back to the Surf / Surf & Stream tiers?

[Rogueperson]

Good morning from...bleh, who cares now...🙄

 

I'm here sitting in my office going "wow, its over now".  I've looked forward to that cruise for so long as I booked in March of last year.

 

Pre-cruise.

 

The memory of last year's drive up to Bayonne was still fresh in my mind so i made some modifications and this time, everything worked out absolutely perfectly.  As you've seen, we stayed at the Embassy Suites, which overall, I think i liked a little better than the Springhill Suites I stayed last year.  Being across the street from the Mall and Starbucks was probably the cincher, but leaving at 3pm as opposed to 6 pm made all the difference in the world.

 

Embarkation.  Super easy.  12 minutes, door to ship.  We had the earliest timeslot when it opened, which was 12:00.  I was on the ship by 11:50.  My driver called early and really picked us up at about 11:00 and I worried it was too early, but with traffic, it actually worked out well.

 

Onboard Activities

 

Most of the onboard activities did not interest me this time around.  My wife is the trivia junky, but only if she has knowledge of the area in question.  I did find the "prizes" to be interesting.  Apparently, you got coupons, and if you won enough coupons, you can turn it in for a prize.  I only briefly saw the prize list.  Its not that large and I remember seeing 10 points = a backpack, but from what i heard, it was a crappy one.

 

Food.

 

Those of you who have followed me before.  The pictures do get repetitive.  As a repeat cruiser, I'm remembering the dishes more and more.  My big complaint really is not for me, but my wife.  She is recently Glutten free and now has a nut allergy.  The problem is she also can not tolerate artificial sweeteners.  Her choices of desserts were...ice cream.  When Royal decides to make glutten free desserts...they use..almond flour. 

 

I was very worried about the changed menu that was announced in the beginning of the year.  I am pleased to say, that the quality of food was not affected.  Now, that's not saying much because the food hasn't improved.  Its stayed the same.  There maybe less choices, but its the food you're used to.  The one hit that affected me was Escargot.  You only saw one picture of it, but rest assured, I had 2 helpings of it every night it was offered.  Previously, i would have done that for every night of the cruise, but it appeared maybe 5 times over the course of this last cruise.  Its kind of a blessing and a curse for me.  Curse, because i don't get it, but blessing those two appetizers got to be allocated elsewhere.

 

Funny note, on the last night of the cruise, the table next to us came over and said "holy crap, where the hell do you put it all.  We saw you every night just putting it away!!!".  I probably averaged 3-4 appetizers, 1-2 entrees and 1-2 desserts.

 

Bottom line for food.  It was sufficient for my taste.  There is one unknown.  The food in the MDR and the Windjammer is institutional.  That's the best word for it.  The ship cooks 20K meals A DAY!!!  Its a factory, not a kitchen.  The food feels like it.  Someone said to me the food is missing soul.  Its not bad.  Its just missing something.  Substance?  You definite feel different when eating on land.

 

Chops.  I only went to Chops once.  It was delicious.  Absolute 180 from the last time I ate at Chops on Jewel.  That meal was pretty much perfect.  Here, I do believe Chops is worth the upcharge as the steak we had was delicious.

 

Izumi's.  We did the Sake Sushi lunch pairing.  I still think Izumi's is too expensive for what you got. That lunch was over 100 bucks including gratuities.  This one is better than the normal Izumi menu, but that's my opinion, that its overpriced and you absolutely do not get what you're paying for.  

 

Ports:

 

Portwise, this was an AMAZING itinerary.  Definitely bucket list.  However, Greenland is a one and done kind of thing in my opinion.  If I go back, due to like the arctic repositioning this ship went on before our cruise, I'd do it, but I won't go again just for Greenland.

 

Manhattan.  I know this is not technically a port of call and Royal will only do this again if something forces them.  But I thought porting in Manhattan is awesome.  The only downside.  Bring lots of money.  Its not cheap.  There is SOO much to do in Manhattan, its insane.  It was totally anxiety ridden with so many choices especially when we had less than 24 hours to decide what to do as none of us knew we were going to Manhattan until 11pm on Tuesday for a Thursday departure.  In the future, if time permits, I think we will make NYC a stop prior to boarding in Bayonne and budget that out as well.

 

Nuuk.  This town reminds me a little bit of Juneau, Alaska.  However, I didn't feel the town was very welcoming.  The boat tour we did was great and our tour guide was amazing.  It had the same feel as Alaska where it felt untouched by man.  However, after the tour, we went into town, and it felt less welcoming.  Even though most everyone in town here spoke English, the signage did not include English, so it was difficult to navigate on your own.  I feel bad for those people who came into Nuuk with no excursion in mind.  We generally love just exploring, but given the language barrier and also, cultural one, made it difficult even for us.  One of the issues, is that the buildings look alike.  I could not tell if it was private property, or a storefront.  If the door had operating hours, it was a little difficult to figure out if it was a public door, or a back door.  Also, the locals seem to keep to themselves here unless they were specifically tourist oriented.

 

Qaqortoq.  This was my favorite.  The town was very welcoming.  It was much easier to figure out what was a store front and what was private property.  Everything is fairly close by and the locals were very friendly.  The people who worked specifically with tourism spoke English, but the normal population may not.  We have a little difficulty trying to get Acetaminophen because a: they sell medicine behind the counter, and B: the guy behind the counter didn't speak English and couldn't figure out what we wanted.  It was interesting. One note.  And this is probably the only thing against Royal Caribbean.  There is a tour that I debated and eventually discarded because it was a $309.00/person tour to the Hvalsey Church Ruins.  Its about a 2 hour tour.  We had friends do this and they were very angry about it.  It was not a tour.  It was literally a boat ride back and forth.  $309/person is one of the highest tour prices i've seen.  For a two hour boat ride with no informative narrative.  Once they got to the ruins, it was a self-guided tour.  When they complained to the tour guide, they said Royal only paid them to shuttle people to the island.  The independent boat drivers were charging 100/person for tours.  I felt that Royal is taking a big cut from the locals and sticking it to the passengers.

 

Nanortalik.  We had no excursion here.  There were only 2 offered if i remembered correctly, and one sold out quickly and then bugged out.  It was too short here, but the town is very small.  You can walk the entirety of it in 30 minutes.  I liked this town for a different reason and I'm insane, i know it.

So Nanortalik makes me feel like this is a town out of H.P. Lovecraft.  Innsmouth.  The locals, were somewhat standoffish.  They appeared to go through an act for the tourists, but we had to leave at 1:30.  Why?  Because something is coming out of the ocean after dark and we don't want to be anywhere in that area when that happens.  I'm a Lovecraft fan.  Hence, why i'm insane 😛

 

St. John.  I wish we had more time in this town.  We barely had enough time to get poutine, souvenirs and get screeched in before we had to go back to the ship.  It was slightly longer than Nanortalik, but not too much longer.  I felt like we barely scratched the surface on this one.

 

Service.  The crew was outstanding.  I have No complaints with the crew and the service.  I should say that every crew member did their very best and it showed.  I thought the Cruise director did the best she could with the situation in hand.  Talking to one of the crew the night before debarkation.  We made a remark about the entitledness on this cruise and they told us that they were warned before the cruise that this would be a difficult cruise.  I kind of understand why Kat stayed on script and did not wander far from the generic.  I thought personally, she was a wonderful person. 

 

The wifi sucked.  When it worked, it was great.  But on this cruise, it was the most inconsistent of all my cruises and the inconsistency outweighed the previous slowness of even the non upgraded (non O3B) ships.  

 

The ship itself.  Two things I had not foreseen.  1 is the lop sided tier that favored Diamond and above.  The second was a more personal matter.  Because this was a primarily indoor cruise, the ship felt overly loud.  On previous cruises, it was easy to find a quiet spot.  Here, it was impossible.  The Safari lounge, the aft lounge on Vision and Radiance classes, I have found previously to be a nice quiet spot for much of the cruise.  On this cruise, that was not the case.  The Pinnacles had their happy hour there every day.  And there was a lot of things going on there like Bingo and Art Auctions.  The Schooner Bar was overly loud and hopping, as that was the 2nd common area for activities.  There was always some music or activity in the Centrum that resonated up the levels due to its open air.  Solarium was the only "outdoor" venue that was enclosed so that was a popular place to hang.  They actually opened up the 2nd floor of the MDR for additional seating because the Windjammer was used for gaming as tables because very scarce on the ship.  All these issues to me made me a bit overstimulated near the end of the cruise and I had issues trying to decompress.  After 14 nights, I admit it was starting to get to me and combined with the lousy inconsistent internet, I was actually glad for this cruise to be over.

 

Otherwise, I loved the Radiance class ships.  

 

Disembarkation.  - yeah.  My ship to door was 24 minutes, which is average.  BUT, that time does not include the waiting to be let off the ship.  I made it to the street at 10:50pm.  This is the latest I've ever gotten off a ship.  We sat in the centrum and then the next cruise waiting for that line to move.  It was only when the line started to move, did we disembarked the ship.  I would say this is the worse disembarkation ever, but this was all CBP's fault and not Royals.  They suspended disembarkation right after we finished breakfast at about 8:30am.  Resumed at 9:45, but then quickly suspended it again.  There were 4 agents working the ship.  No facial rec.  I looked at my last live thread and they did not use facial rec last year either, but they had it.  It was used as a support stand for the customs agent.  Not sure if we couldn't use it because of Greenland, or because it crashed, or because it just never worked.  

 

Overall impressions.

 

Despite the issues, I met some really great people on this cruise.  Each port, despite its issues, were an adventure I loved.  The serenity in each of these ports (except for Manhattan) was awesome and amazing.  The extreme luck of seeing Northern Lights for at least 5 nights in a row was awe inspiring.  The whale sightings were an added bonus.  I had an interior room, and although it has its issues, was perfectly fine.  I slept so well in that room and I'm totally relaxed.  This cruise is in my top 3.  Which now stands like this 

#1 my wedding cruise Carnival Pride in 2015

#2 my NYE Grandeur cruise 2014/2015
#3 This one.

#1 will always be #1 and #2 will be hard to beat.  But this one was definitely a contender.

so thus ends my 14 night adventure to Greenland.

 

Next cruise, will also be a first.  Will be my first Virgin AND Transatlantic cruise.  Another 14 night.

 

I do plan to do a live thread there.  So, I hope everyone enjoyed this thread.  I am absolutely humbled that just looking at the thread now, I have had 33K views.  Thank you for reading along.

 

I want to do a major shoutout to @little britain for contributing her images and comments.  Its always interesting to see different views on the same cruise as some of you may have remembered with the two live threads on Enchantment I did before and the sharing of the Live thread I did with @FionaMG.

 

Again, thank you all.



 

 

 

 

 

[Rogueperson]

Oh, one major thing I missed.

 

MDR menu.  This cruise, they added an Indian option on the menu every night.  This is ALWAYS a good option.  The dish regardless of the name, will look similar like this.  

 

The only difference is the type of meat they use and the sauce will change slightly.  But its the same.  But its ALWAYS good.  This is the best upgrade on the menu despite the downgrade of choices.

[bunzini]

On 9/28/2023 at 10:01 AM, Rogueperson said:

 

Rumors all over the place.  4 agents doing the entire ship.  Greenland is the reason we can’t use facial rec.  Jewel doesn’t have that capability.  I’m going to go with Aliens.  Yep.  Aliens

I do not think that Greenland is the reason.  We were on the sailing before you and also visited Greenland and we had a quick disembarkation AND facial recognition was used.

[DragonOfTheSeas]

I am sorry to hear that the disembark was slow.  We are doing a B2B in Oct/Nov.  and I purchased train tickets for 11 am.  All of the people n the East coast board said it would be easy to make that. 

 

I took a similar itinerary in 2019.  We went through customs/immigration at our first US stop.  That would be Portland for us.  I hope that happens again. 

[BND]

46 minutes ago, DragonOfTheSeas said:

I am sorry to hear that the disembark was slow.  We are doing a B2B in Oct/Nov.  and I purchased train tickets for 11 am.  All of the people n the East coast board said it would be easy to make that. 

 

I took a similar itinerary in 2019.  We went through customs/immigration at our first US stop.  That would be Portland for us.  I hope that happens again. 

Just because this debarkation was slow does not mean ours will be.  We've gone out of CL multiple times (EX, Anthem and XSummit) over the last 10+ years and have never had the issues this cruise had.  

[perfect match]

Thank you @Roguepersonfor an excellent review. Thank you also to everyone else on this sailing who also contributed. I’m not going to mention any of your names because I don’t want to leave anyone out, but all of your contributions made this review stand out in a really good way. 
 

I hope everyone who was heading home has arrived safely. 🚢 

[lazydayz]

12 minutes ago, perfect match said:

Thank you @Roguepersonfor an excellent review. Thank you also to everyone else on this sailing who also contributed. I’m not going to mention any of your names because I don’t want to leave anyone out, but all of your contributions made this review stand out in a really good way. 
 

I hope everyone who was heading home has arrived safely. 🚢 

+1

[FionaMG]

Thanks again for sharing Rogue and of course for tagging me at the start, which is always highly appreciated 😊.

 

And I'll add my thanks to yours to @little britain and all the others who chipped in. It definitely made me remember our joint live on Navigator back in 2018. I'm glad you enjoyed this one much more than that one!

[little britain]

8 hours ago, bunzini said:

I do not think that Greenland is the reason.  We were on the sailing before you and also visited Greenland and we had a quick disembarkation AND facial recognition was used.

When the b2bs disembarked there were only 2 agents…

It was a staffing issue. 

[L454S]

12 minutes ago, little britain said:

When the b2bs disembarked there were only 2 agents…

It was a staffing issue. 

 

When we finally went through, there were 4 working agents and lots of people still behind us. We thought having a 1 PM flight out of EWR was LATE!..............We did make it with a little to spare.

[DonnaMarieNJ]

I had the same issues, but most of my time waiting was on the ship.  Once let off, process was smooth, including customs, porter, finding my luggage.  Could that be because I had the key?  It was my first time purchasing.   Or was i just lucky?  I had a taxi waiting for me outside.  All i saw was $$$ stacking up.

[Rogueperson]

10 hours ago, FionaMG said:

Thanks again for sharing Rogue and of course for tagging me at the start, which is always highly appreciated 😊.

 

And I'll add my thanks to yours to @little britain and all the others who chipped in. It definitely made me remember our joint live on Navigator back in 2018. I'm glad you enjoyed this one much more than that one!

Not to besmirch that cruise, which was in no way bad, however, that's a low bar there.  I would consider that the worst cruise I've been on. 

[little britain]

38 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

Not to besmirch that cruise, which was in no way bad, however, that's a low bar there.  I would consider that the worst cruise I've been on. 

Curious minds want to know what was so bad about Navigator in 2018?!?

[Rogueperson]

2 hours ago, little britain said:

Curious minds want to know what was so bad about Navigator in 2018?!?

I got food poisoning from the beef Carpaccio.  Took me down for a couple of days.  when i came back up, maître de insisted i go to medical.  They tagged me with Norovirus and quarantined me for an additional 24 hours.  Imodium would have fixed me up quicker had I had it with me.  Now i take it with me on every cruise.  Total, I lost 4 days on the cruise and Curacao.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Rogueperson

[FionaMG]

48 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

 Imodium would have fixed me up quicker had I had it with me.  Now i take it with me on every cruise.

 

Me too! I'm glad to say I've never needed it (touch the proverbial wood) but definitely to have it and not need it than the other way round.

[Jasukkie]

Just want to tag on here rather than starting a new thread. This was as close to a perfect cruise as I could imagine. 

 

The excursions were magical and while they were very expensive, I have no regrets. For people doing research for future Greenland cruises, book those iceberg tours as soon as you can. By the time your cruise comes around you won't remember the money you paid for them six months before. 

 

We did the Hvalso Viking church excursion which was $309. Yes, a ridiculous price. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm glad there wasn't a tour guide. It's a quiet experience. There are enough signs to tell you what you are looking at. It's so rare to be in a place where you can't hear a single man made sound. I would have liked more time but I also understand they have to balance that with no facilities on site.

 

It's hard to describe time on this sailing, the days flew by, yet I also felt like I had been onboard for a month or two. Weird to be back in the real world now.

[babchia]

@Rogueperson, this is Jim using Karen's account.  We met and talked for a while during the unofficial Meet & Mingle.

 

Anyway, we both got Covid at the end of the cruise and missed the last two days Dinner Menus from the MDR.  I have already downloaded your images.  I am planning on scanning all of my hard-copies of our Cruise Compasses and include images of the 14 dinner menus into an entry for the RC Blog Cruise Compass section of their website.  May I use your two images?

 

Thank you.

[Rogueperson]

28 minutes ago, babchia said:

@Rogueperson, this is Jim using Karen's account.  We met and talked for a while during the unofficial Meet & Mingle.

 

Anyway, we both got Covid at the end of the cruise and missed the last two days Dinner Menus from the MDR.  I have already downloaded your images.  I am planning on scanning all of my hard-copies of our Cruise Compasses and include images of the 14 dinner menus into an entry for the RC Blog Cruise Compass section of their website.  May I use your two images?

 

Thank you.

Of course.  Technically I don't own any of these images once i post them here, I think.  But thanks for asking.

 

I got the cruise compasses images and will post them here once i figure a way to turn them into images, and not pdfs.