Jewel of the Seas: Sanitation Record & Health Report

Let's talk about Jewel of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's 2004-built Radiance-class charmer that just came back from a 2024 refurbishment looking (and apparently scoring) like it's never heard of a norovirus in its life. A single CDC inspection on the books, dated June 5, 2026, and it walked away with a 99 — which also happens to be its all-time average, five-year average, and lowest score, because when you've only been inspected once, math gets very generous. Still, a 99 against a fleet-wide average of 96.7 and median of 98 (across the 162 ships we track) is nothing to scoff at, and the 100.0 Food Safety Score earning it a "Spotless Galley" grade means whatever's coming out of that galley is basically operating-room clean. With only one inspection logged, there's not enough history yet to call a trend one way or the other — this is a ship that's shown up exactly once and aced the test, not one with a track record of consistency.

At 90,090 tons carrying just 2,144 guests with an 859-person crew, Jewel is a mid-size, almost intimate ship by today's mega-ship standards, and a 2024 refresh means the bones are old-school Meyer Werft (Papenburg, that's the good stuff) while the finishes should feel current. We don't have outbreak data available for this ship right now — the CDC's outbreak database is currently unreachable on our end — so we're not going to pretend we can vouch for a spotless outbreak history either way. Take that as a "we genuinely don't know" rather than a red flag.

Who it's for: cruisers who want a smaller, more manageable ship without sacrificing on cleanliness, sailing conveniently out of Tampa or Fort Lauderdale, and who appreciate a freshly refurbished interior on a 2004 hull that clearly still knows how to pass inspection. Who should skip it: anyone who needs a decade of sanitation data before they'll set foot on a gangway — with just one inspection on record, Jewel's file is thin, even if what's in it looks great.