About These Pictures

The pics you'll find throughout this review were taken with a Nikon D50. Many were taken using a circular polarizing lens. By clicking a thumbnail, you'll access a larger version of that picture.

Overview

This was our first vacation taken on a ship cruise; after some discussion and much research on the Internet, newsgroups, message boards and talking with folks who had gone before us, we decided to take an eight-day cruise of the Eastern Caribbean, using Royal Caribbean International.

Royal Caribbean (RCI) features ships in six size classes. The ship we chose, the Jewel Of The Seas, is in the third largest class, with a gross tonnage just over 90,000 and a passenger capacity of 2,500. It's a very new ship, it's maiden voyage taken in May 2004.

Our cruise would take us to five Caribbean islands; Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Thomas and Paradise Island in the Bahamas, home to Nassau. There would be two full days at sea, with four of the five stops sandwiched on consecutive days between.

Weather

The weather during this cruise was as near perfection as it needed to be. It was sunny to partly cloudy and warm (highs in the 80's) on every day other than the second day, which was our first full day at sea, when it was rainy off-and-on, windy and in the mid 70's.

In Antigua, it was the hottest, reaching 88 degrees. Even with this, the easterly breezes off the ocean kept the humidity down, so it was fairly comfortable. It sure beat the hell out of Duluth's temps in the 40's which we usually "enjoy" in late April.

Food

You have some outstanding dining choices on the Jewel Of The Seas. The customary option, the Tides restaurant, was one we didn't even take advantage of. Once we'd found the Windjammer Cafe, we were hooked and didn't stray from this very good buffet-style eatery very often.

The Seaview Cafe is another choice which we often enjoyed. We liked having the option of going here at 9 or 10 p.m. for a quick "snack" of a cheeseburger, french fries, onion rings, chili con carne or a Cuban sandwich, all of which we sampled. They also made one heck of a good chocolate shake at this eatery.

Jewel Of The Seas has two specialty restaurants; Chops, which is a steakhouse, and Portofino, which specializes in Italian fare. Since my wife celebrated her birthday at sea, we went to Chops one night. I'll talk more about this choice later, but it's an incredible restaurant and one not to be missed if you sail this cruise ship.

We tried Room Service on our first morning there and were less than impressed. While it's nice to have a meal delivered to your stateroom without charge (other than the tip), the food choices are nothing special and the quality could have been far better.

Food Rating: 8.

The rest of this cruise review takes place in chronological order, broken down into the individual days.

Getting There

As usual, the flights from Duluth to Minneapolis and from Minneapolis to our final destination (in this case, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) were uneventful. When it comes to flying, uneventful is always good, especially in light of 9/11. Those fears haven't totally dissipated.

The one small detail I'd forgot to take care of regarding the flights was to have our travel agent secure a window seat for myself. This is something I rarely fail to do, and I have no idea how this slipped my mind on this occasion. As a result, I was in the middle of three seats. Not totally necessary to have; it's just my personal preference.

I had to feel sorry for the poor lady who was sitting next to me on the Mpls-Ft. Lauderdale flight, as she was on the second of four flights for her on this day. She'd gone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Minneapolis; after this flight, she was to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta and from there to Columbus, Georgia. That couldn't have been fun for her.

Anyway, we arrived in sunny Florida just before 3 p.m. The room we'd booked for Friday night (Holiday Inn Express) had a shuttle available to take us from the airport to the hotel; we just needed to call them. Here was where things got screwy; first, when we used the pay phone to call the hotel, it told me it required a 10-digit phone number including the area code. Interesting in light of the fact that this hotel was less than five miles from the airport. But no big deal until I dialed the 10-digit number and received a recorded message that the area code wasn't needed and to redial the number!

Second, when we found the courtesy phone and used the preprogrammed number to call the Holiday Inn Express, another recorded message told me that if I knew the room number I wanted to call, to enter the room number, or to dial "0" to talk to the operator, I realized that the courtesy phone didn't have a numeric keypad to enter my selection. At this point, you could say I was fairly pissed off at the whole mess; we ended up taking a cab ($16) to the hotel. When I explained the situation to the registration staff, I got the standard "sorry". But we were still out the money. Be mindful of this if you book this hotel. There are two Holiday Inn Express near the airport. This one is on State Highway 78.

In addition, there is a serious limitation of decent restaurant choices nearby. This was another drawback to the hotel. Throw in a bed which was too hard and you have the following: Rating: 2

(1-3) Views from and inside our room at the Holiday Inn Express in Fort Lauderdale.

Day One--Setting Sail!

The reason I gave the Holiday Inn Express a "2" rating instead of a negative number was this; they provided free transportation to Port Canaveral, where the Jewel Of The Seas awaited. They got us there by 1 p.m., and the line of passengers had already formed. Checking in went extremely smooth, and having our Set Sail Pass pre-printed on my personal PC before we left for our trip made things all that much easier. The process couldn't have been simpler, and the next thing we knew, we were aboard the ship and on Deck Five! From there, it was a quick elevator trip to our stateroom on Deck Eight, at the aft (back end) of the ship.

There were many first impressions created when we first entered our stateroom. The first was that this room was small, but we were used to lodging in land-based hotels. We were prepared for this somewhat, but seeing it for the first time was still somewhat of a surprise. This impression was offset by having a very nice-sized balcony (easily enough room for both of us to sit out there and enjoy the sights).

Our Stateroom Attendant, Cody Rooplal, did a fantastic job. Twice a day, he'd turn down the bed; the room was constantly kept in a very clean condition. Our bucket of ice (as it turned out, wasn't used very often) was kept filled with ice. He was very friendly and was genuinely interested in how we were doing, seeing if we needed anything, had any concerns, etc. His attitude and care of our room was one of the high points of our first (but not last by any means) cruise.

After getting acclimated to our room, it was time to explore this large ship. First thing first, however; we needed food! We decided to skip dinner at the Tides dining room and instead found our way to the Windjammer buffet on Deck Eleven. There was already a good sized crowd assembled here, but we were still able to find a table fairly close to the many islands of food which awaited. We gorged ourselves, after which we purchased soda cards for the cruise. With a 15% (mandatory) gratuity added in, each card cost $55.20 and afforded us unlimited fountain soft drinks for the duration of the cruise.

Next came the required muster drill of all passengers at 4:30. After putting on our life vests and wandering down to our muster station on Deck Five, we basically stood in line for a half-hour while awaiting the arrival of those who were tardy or confused or just didn't think punctuality to be a virtue. Finally we were released, and after grabbing my Nikon, we headed to Deck Twelve to take pictures. When we left the dock, I didn't even realize it at first; that's how large the ship was and how smooth the departure was!

There was a slight motion detected from the ocean as we headed out; I've never suffered from motion sickness but my wife has on many occasions. One of our primary concerns was how she would handle the movement of the ship in the ocean, so she'd stocked up on transdermal patches designed to combat the effects of motion sickness. As it turned out, they were never needed. That was, again, a testament to how smooth the Jewel Of The Seas was.

It became quite windy on this first evening; we were heading east at 20-25 knots (roughly 23-29 mph) and the wind was from the east as a similar speed, creating an "apparent wind" (which was what it felt like on the unprotected upper deck of the ship) of around 50 mph. It made for some interesting walking on the jogging/walking track on Deck Twelve!

After the Florida coastline was out of sight, we stopped down at Schooner's Bar for a few soft drinks. The atmosphere here is pretty nice, and we'd be making several visits to this bar during our cruise.

We found the Seaview Cafe later that night; they are open during the mid to late afternoon hours and then reopen from 9 p.m.-1 a.m. It's a great place for a late night snack, which was needed since we skipped dinner on this day. Overall, a very good start to our cruise.

(1) View from our stateroom balcony while in Port Everglades (2-3) From Deck 12 while departing Port Everglades

Day Two--At Sea

Sea Days are those days when you can relax, enjoy some sun and work on those tans, go shopping, explore the ship, do whatever you want to do. We decided on the sun, but for other than the first hour, the sun wasn't cooperating today; rain ruled most of the day. We were also heading into a very strong wind, and one of my favorite caps became a casualty of this wind, flying off my head, up and over the top of the ship and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the neat things we found out today was that when you go to the Windjammer, you don't have to eat your food there. We noticed others had taken their trays from this restaurant to other areas of the ship. We hit the place again for lunch today; they offer a nice assortment of sandwiches, hot food, salads and desserts as part of their midday fare.

The fitness center was another place to explore and we found our favorite cardio machines to work out on for over an hour during the early evening. Not much else to do here on such a rainy and windy day.

Tonight was the first formal night, but not having anything formal to wear (and more importantly, not having any desire to dress up), we went to Caffe-lattetudes, drank some Mocha and watched others milling about in their finest. To end the day, we found out just how private those balconies can be.

(1-2) Two nice pictures of the sunrise from our balcony

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last updated may 10, 2006