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NCL Epic 12/7 Cruise Review

sbrocket52

By sbrocket52,
in Norwegian Cruise Line

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sbrocket52

sbrocket52

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I had a lot of thoughts during the cruise that I probably should have written down and I'm going to try and haphazardly recall now, so maybe this won't be the most organized cruise review and I may ramble or repeat myself a bit, but I'll try and organize it into sections, in no particular order.

 

We just got back from a 7 day sailing on the Norwegian Epic from December 7th through 14th. The current regular Epic itinerary (as I'm sure many of you are aware of) is an Eastern Caribbean itinerary that starts from the Port of Miami, followed by 2 days at sea, a stop in Philipsburg, St. Maarten, a stop in St. Thomas, a final sea day, and then a final stop in Nassau, Bahamas before returning to Miami.

 

I'm very happy to answer questions if anyone has them or if I missed any big topics, so ask away. There are lots of little details that I noticed but probably haven't captured here. :D

 

General

 

This was the first cruise for both myself and my SO, so we were both generally free of expectations from other cruise lines and excited for what cruising had in store for us. We were drawn to NCL's Freestyle cruising concept since we're both relatively young and aren't particularly interested in fixed dining times, strict dress codes, and other such things still common on other cruise lines.

 

We also decided to give one of the relatively recently built mega-ships a try since, again, we weren't accustomed to any particular size of cruise ship and liked the idea of a large ship full of amenities that was new and modernly decorated.

 

In retrospect, I think our choice was a good one. While I clearly don't have any experience with some of the older, smaller ships in NCL's own fleet or in other lines' fleets, I did not feel like the Epic's size was a bad thing. I'm not sure what the passenger load of our particular sailing was, but with two notable exceptions the common areas and venues on the ship did not usually feel packed or crowded. Those exceptions are important, however. The first exception was the Garden Cafe buffet, which was often packed with more passengers than it could handle - I'll go into it more below. The second was the elevators, which usually were an exercise in either "how many people can we cram in here" or other passengers passive aggressively blocking you from getting on. The elevators were also pretty slow to get to you once you called them, just because of how many people they were handling. Expect waiting and crowding on the elevators or, better yet, take the stairs.

 

Dining

 

The food on the ship was, in general, hit and miss. Of course, everyone will have different expectations and, even if everyone had the same expectations, people would usually have different experiences. The quality of the food, whether from the buffet, MDR, or speciality restaurants was very unpredictable. Most nights, the food was good or even better. However, I was left with the feeling throughout the cruise as a whole that I was never quite sure whether my next meal would be good or disappointing. NCL would do well to make sure that they reach a consistent standard for food at all dining venues.

 

Beyond that, I'll go through the specific dining venues that we tried.

 

  • Garden Cafe - The buffet was pretty good in general. We only did breakfast and lunch there, I believe, not dinner. The breakfast spread was the same each morning but there was plenty of variety there. Lunch had many stations that were the same or similar each day and then specialities that were different each day. Not everything was good, sometimes things weren't warm, but on the whole the buffet was good. As I mentioned, though, the buffet was one of the areas on the ship that usually felt overcrowded. The biggest problem was that there never seemed to be sufficient tables, especially with the single people who would take up a 6 person table by themselves. Luckily, as a 2 person group we had less trouble that most, but it was still difficult to find a table and I did not envy bigger groups during buffet prime time.
     
  • Great Outdoors - A more limited buffet, available for (I believe) breakfast and lunch where the Garden Cafe exits into the pool area. Convenient if you want it, but I would recommend sticking with full buffet. You can just carry your plate outside from the main buffet if you'd like to eat in the sun.
     
  • O'Sheehans - The 24/7 dining venue on the ship is a decent place to grab a bite to eat. We had lunch here one day and, though we hadn't planned on it, dinner one night after the closing time for MDRs and the buffet suddenly shifted earlier partway through the cruise. I tried a number of dishes on our visits which were all good: the Mozzarella Sticks were good and served in a neat little frying basket, though they were cold at dinner; the Fish and Chips were very tasty; the Chef Salad was just ok.
     
  • MDRs (Taste & Manhattan Room) - We ate at Taste for dinner 3 nights, largely choosing this MDR over the other since we could be more comfortable and wear khaki shorts (like I said, not much interest in strict dress codes...). We had dinner in the Manhattan Room on our last night, and in retrospect I think it is worth throwing on longer pants to dine there...but maybe that's just the New York Strip steak talking. :D Our dinners at Taste were in general good, although it definitely depended on your choice of dishes. Dinner the first night was not as good as the latter nights. Dinner in the Manhattan Room on the final night was probably our favorite dinner of the cruise. Perhaps the menu was just very good that night (the Tempura Fried Mushrooms were fantastic), or maybe that's a trend worth noticing.
     
  • Le Bistro - We dined in Le Bistro on Day 2. It was good, but I was not blown out of the water and I'm undecided as to whether it was worth the additional cover charge. Mostly, the cover charge got you access to a different and unique menu; food quality, service, etc. were similar to elsewhere on the ship. I had the Salade Gourmande, which was good but small, split the Escargots with my SO, which were interesting but mostly tasted like the butter sauce they were cooked in, and the Coq au Vin, which was again good but nothing fantastic.
     
  • Moderno Churrascaria - I am pretty familiar with churrascarias and perhaps had too high expectations for this venue, having dined many times at Fogo de Chao locations and at casual, local Brazilian restaurants. If you are already familiar with the style and have similarly high expectations to mine, you are likely to be disappointed. Moderno simply can't stand next to restaurants like Fogo de Chao, Texas de Brazil, or even your local churrascaria. The salad bar is more limited, the selection of meats is not as broad, what they have isn't cooked as well (filet mignon shouldn't be cooked well done :(), and the gauchos simply don't compare. That is not to say it was bad though - it wasn't. The service was a bit slow, and NCL could work on training their gauchos better. Please, please, give them much sharper knives - I felt bad for the gauchos serving us struggling to cut the meats with the knives they had. Still, if I ignore the expectations I had, it was a good dinner, and I do think it was worth the cover charge and that I would return. Surprisingly, and perhaps a testament to the room for improvement, the chicken breast was my favorite meat served - it was juicy and very flavorful.
     
  • Sushi Bar - This was a true disappointment, and I definitely would not return. Service, by which I mean the time to make our order, was very slow. When we finally were served the sushi was not good. Sushi rice is a very particular thing and has to be made just so, but they just hadn't gotten such a fundamental thing right. It had a sour flavor that overpowered the other flavors and ruined each of the rolls and pieces of sushi. The fish was of ok quality but not very flavorful. I would much rather have eaten at the $10 sushi buffet near my work. Hopefully this was a unique experience and not typical of the sushi bar, but it was bad enough not to excuse as a one-off issue. I don't think I will risk it if we have the chance to return, which is a real disappointment since I love sushi.

 

Ultimate Beverage Package & Drinks

 

Yes, NCL's Ultimate Beverage Package gets a section all it's own. I spent a good amount of planning time trying to get more clarity about what was and was not included and trying to answer whether it was "worth it" at the steep $49/pp/day+15% price, or $788.90 for a 7 day cruise for 2.

 

In summary, I didn't think it was worth it and wouldn't buy it in the future. The price is simply too high to try and break even over the length of a 7 day cruise. The package has too many artificial limitations that exclude interesting drinks (you'll really start to notice how many $8.75 cocktails there are on the menu) that you'd need to pay full price for, not the difference to the threshold. We definitely ended up drinking more that we naturally would to try and break even with the price. It was nice because it enabled me to try a lot of drinks and wines that I likely wouldn't otherwise have spent the money on, but in retrospect I would rather just buy them individually because it's too difficult to come out ahead on cost.

 

A particular issue for me, which I'm still in the middle of working through now, was that we were informed by our NCL Personal Cruise Consultant that if we purchased the package on Day 2, we would only be charged for 6 days instead of 7. This appealed to me since I couldn't justify the package when, with the already steep price, you also pay full price for the partial embarkation day. This information convinced me to go ahead and give the package a try. Of course, as I'm sure you can anticipate, the bartenders and Guest Services on the ship did not agree with our PCC and refused to honor what he had told us, charging us retroactively for Day 1 after buying it on Day 2. Hopefully between my PCC and Guest Relations, NCL will honor what I was told and have in writing because that left quite the sour taste in my mouth.

 

Quickly, on the topic of alcoholic beverages in general. Many were good, although the story was much the same as the food - inconsistent. There was a lot of variation from bar to bar, or even day to day at the same bar, and it showed.

 

Itinerary & Port Days

 

I liked the equal split of sea and port days. The two sea days at the front end of the itinerary were great for getting into the swing of relaxing and for exploring and getting to know the ship. I would recommend getting up bright and early to beat the crowds on sea days. It was very relaxing when we got up early on the first sea day and had the hot tubs and main sun decks to ourselves for much of the morning.

 

Port days were new to us, of course, and rather than pay for the expensive excursions offered by NCL, we decided to plan port days on our own with the help of some of the great material here on Cruise Critic and just wing it. Bumbling around in a tour group all day didn't much appeal to us, anyway, and we aren't into watersports so that was pretty much out. I'll go through some comments about each of our stops:

 

  • Philipsburg, St. Maarten - A beautiful island and area. We took the water taxi into Philipsburg from the port complex, which I would definitely recommend at the $7 price for unlimited all-day travel. We spent some time walking around the area and along Front Street, marveling at the concentration of expensive jewelry and watches that we wouldn't be buying, also marveling at the low liquor prices that we definitely considered (but then didn't make it back to late in the day), and getting a feel for the area. Roads were packed and difficult to traverse in vehicle, whether in Philipsburg or elsewhere on the island, and I wouldn't recommend driving yourself unless very comfortable with the area. We rented chairs (with some cold Red Stripe beers thrown in) for $20 at Great Bay, along the boardwalk, and spent a number of hours just relaxing in the sun and enjoying the water. We also took a taxi to Maho Beach and watched some of the planes arrive and depart from the airport, and people get blown down the beach by the jet blast, while enjoying tasty but expensive lunch and mojitos at Sunset Bar & Grill. Despite the good day, I think this would have to be the least favorite of our port stops. A video on the water taxi from the ship informed us of how much St. Maarten appreciates the tourism and how their economy relies on it, and it showed in an unfortunate way. We were constantly approached along the beach with offers for local goods or massages or hounded as we left the water taxi for car tours, taxis, jewelry, and more. The worst was that our taxi ride to and from Maho Beach was filled with our driver continually trying to upsell us on a tour of the french side of the island, warning us that we were going to miss our ship because of all the traffic (we were back an hour early). I get that their economy depends on it, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and distracted from the otherwise relaxing day. We wouldn't explicitly avoid St. Maarten in the future, but given an otherwise equal choice we'd pick another port instead.
  • St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands - Easily our favorite port stop of the trip. Again, we decided to make our own plans and it definitely paid off. We rented a Jeep Wrangler from the Budget office that's right next to the dock and made a day out of our own driving tour of the island. We followed a route based on a map from Frommers and it was a fantastic drive. The freedom of driving yourself around on a tour, especially compared to our poor taxi experience the day before in St. Maarten, was great and simply can't compare to the packed tour vehicles we saw plenty of. It was a fun, hilly, winding drive with lots of beautiful scenery, and the Jeep surprisingly sipped gas the whole way - we only used about 2.5 gallons, which was nice given the high gas prices. Driving on the left was new to us but didn't take any getting used to. We drove Fortuna Rd. down close to Botany Bay, taking ample pictures along the way, and then followed that back and along Crown Mountain Rd. to Magens Bay Beach. Magens Bay Beach was a bit crowded with others but worth the visit. We didn't end up getting any time for shopping or walking about Charlotte Amalie, unfortunately, owing to a missed alarm and a late start to the morning. I look forward to visiting St. Thomas again and exploring even more.
  • Nassau, Bahamas - Another missed alarm and a late start cut this day short again (it's vacation, we weren't in much of a hurry to do anything), unfortunately. We spent the time we had relaxing on Cabbage Beach on Paradise Island after a quick (and cheap! $4/pp) taxi ride from the cruise terminal. Didn't get to see much, although Cabbage Beach was very nice and I'd like to visit again. Soft sand that you sunk in as you walked, unlike Great Bay in St. Maarten, and the waves were gigantic.

 

Stateroom

 

We were in cabin 13011, which is a category B2 family balcony stateroom on the starboard side of Deck 13 forward. We had booked a Balcony Guarantee, category BX, rate through Travelocity only a couple months ago since, as our first time cruising, we were unsure about what our stateroom preferences would be. Luck must have been on our side because I was very happy with the cabin we got. It was very handy being only two decks down from Deck 15 with the buffet, pools, hot tubs, etc, which made using the stairs and skipping the elevators easy. Taking the stairs to get to Decks 5/6/7 for everything in the ship's interior was also easy. In the future, if we don't continue to go the guarantee room route, I would probably choose to stay with the higher decks.

 

On the stateroom itself. The balcony, despite not being a "large balcony", was still big enough for me to not want for a larger one. The views from our balcony were great and there was plenty of room to relax on the two chairs provided. I suppose, if you wanted to sunbathe or stretch out on your balcony, you would need to larger one to fit a lounge chair (assuming they would provide one). The stateroom interior was, of course, small, but didn't feel overly cramped. There was plenty of storage and hanging space available for everything and shoving suitcases under the beds helped a lot. The beds were very firm but not uncomfortable, even though I am used to a plusher bed, and my SO enjoyed the firmness. One gripe with the beds is that it's always two, separate beds, and even though the cabin steward can push them into a queen with one sheet over them, you clearly feel the split in the middle and there's a gap where they meet at the top middle. The bed sheets were also too small for a queen configuration, or not made up correctly, and continually came off.

 

I am mixed on the bathroom area. The sink area and counter are fine, although it's a bit odd that they are not without the curtained off area. We didn't have any need for the curtain - we're a close couple - but I imagine only having the curtain would be odd for a family or friends traveling together. The shower was a decent size, despite my initial impression that it looked too small. It didn't feel cramped and there was plenty of room to move around inside it, despite me not being a small man...people of a smaller persuasion should find the shower positively roomy. The shower did have a problem with draining poorly the first few days that mysteriously disappeared. The toilet, on the other hand, was much too small. Like I said, I am not a small man, and the stateroom toilet was no fun to use. If you aren't a small person, anticipate some bathroom acrobatics. :p Also, holy cow is that thing loud when you flush it! Given how loud it is I expected to hear loud flushing at all hours of the day but didn't, a testament to the quality of the sound dampening between rooms and decks.

 

For two close people, it was fine. I would not want to try and squeeze one or two kids, much less another adult or couple in a single cabin. Take the "accommodates 4" with a grain of salt. Even traveling with a friend or someone not a significant other or spouse would, I think, be uncomfortable given the small space and lack of bathroom privacy. For a couple, however, the balcony cabin is just fine.

 

Service

 

Service was decent throughout the cruise. It seemed to improve a bit later into the week, either as we got more used to things or maybe just as the crew got into rhythm. Service was at times spotty, slow, or inconsistent, but the crew was in general very enthusiastic and eager to please.

 

Entertainment

 

We kept with the theme of entertaining ourselves that we did in port for much of the cruise, and didn't end up attending many of the attractions/events/etc. that the cruise ran throughout the day on ship. There were certainly plentiful events, game shows, just plain shows, movies, bingo, you name it available for those who are interested.

 

We did, of course, attend some of the bigger shows. We went to the Blue Man Group show in the Epic Theatre in the evening of our first sea day and it was great. We've seen BMG on land in Boston's Charles Playhouse before, and the BMG show on the Epic was similarly entertaining and engaging. I was a bit worried that the show wouldn't be up to it's normal calibre, given the more generalized venue they were in, but they definitely did it justice. If you're sailing on the Epic, Blue Man Group is a must see.

 

We also made reservations for one of the Second City shows, on Wednesday night after leaving St. Thomas. I was expecting a good show after seeing Blue Man Group on Sunday, which got my expectations up for the quality of entertainment on the ship, and was promptly disappointed. The impromptu comedy of Second City completely fell flat. It was poorly timed and, frankly, painful to watch. After watching one couple walk out of the venue, Headliners, halfway through the show, we also decided that it was a waste of our time and walked out. Having a show so bad that multiple groups of passengers are walking out of it is not what I expect out of NCL and the Epic.

 

We didn't go, but the Ice Bar at $20 per person seems ridiculously expensive. I suppose that's meant to include the price of the 2 drinks you get, which made it make even less sense to people with the UBP who could go anywhere and get those drinks for free/included. Why should I pay $20/pp for the ice bar when I've already bought the UBP and I could instead enjoy a nice specialty restaurant dinner? Didn't make much sense to me.

 

We aren't gamblers, but the Epic Casino sounded like a fun diversion, so I purchased a pair of 2-for-1 slot coupons for each of us; one $20-for-$10 coupon straight from NCL, and another $50-for-$25 coupon from SlotPlayCoupons.com. The Casino stretches most of the length of Deck 6, and you can hear the sound of slot machines throughout much of Deck 7 thanks to the open design of the lower decks. I didn't take note of how many people were smoking, but there were ample air purifiers sprinkled around the Casino and I didn't have any issues with an overpowering smoke smell. We had fun playing on the slot machines, and actually ended up making some money! Well, we ended up with about $105 left over after playing our combined $140 in promotional slot credits, but since I only spent $70 to get those coupons I consider that coming out ahead! :D

 

Embarkation/Disembarkation

 

Embarkation was very smooth. I'm not sure if that's typical or just a reflection of the time we got there, but arrival at the cruise terminal, checking bags, checking in was all smooth. One thing that was a little disappointing is that there was very little direction after we crossed the gangway. We had to hunt down a copy of the Day 1 Freestyle Daily and the ship map over by Guest Services after asking other passengers where they had gotten theirs.

 

Disembarkation was not as smooth. We decided to do "Easy Walk-Off Disembarkation", since the disembarkation packet suggested that this group would be the first off the ship, but mostly because we didn't want to try and keep only what we needed for the morning in a separate carry-on bag and check the rest. That would have necessitated some repacking between the ship and the airport for toiletries, etc.

 

"Easy" Walk-Off Disembarkation wasn't easy, however. Perhaps this is normal procedure, but there was no announcement made for this group. The first announcement that disembarkation would begin started with the first color group. This meant a rush to the elevators as everyone tried to get downstairs, compounding the upward traffic to the buffet for breakfast. In the end, after waiting for about 15 minutes with our bags at the elevators and only seeing two elevators stop, both packed full of people even though we were on Deck 13 (the 2nd to top cabin deck), we hoofed it down to Deck 6 with our 50 lb bags in tow. My arms are pretty sore right now, to say the least. In the future we'll either make sure we're downstairs with our bags well before disembarkation starts, or figure out some way to make packing work and have the porters take the bags off.

 

Summary

 

On the whole, we really enjoyed our trip on the Norwegian Epic and our maiden cruise. I think that I'd like to try one of their even newer ships, the Breakaway or the Getaway, sometime in the future. I do think that I've likely set my expectations for cruises based on the megaship-ness of the Epic, so I'm not sure if I would one of the many smaller ships in NCL's or other cruise lines' fleets - perhaps we'll have to give it a try and see. We also greatly enjoyed the benefits that NCL's Freestyle Cruising affords, whether the freestyle dining, or the more relaxed dress codes, or just the attitude of the crew on the ship. Maybe it's all cruise lines, I'm not sure, but I definitely got the impression of being nickeled-and-dimed by NCL for things throughout the trip, but it wasn't bad enough to make me dislike the trip. I do think this trip has made us fans of cruising, and we're likely to return.

 

If you actually read through what I'm seeing turned out to be a rather long review, or even if you didn't, and have any questions about the Epic or our experience on it, feel free to ask - I'm more than happy to answer. :)

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xcell

xcell

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thanks for the review - we are leaving for the epic next week

 

questions:

 

1. when arriving at the port - did you have to tip anyone? porters that move your bags from the sidewalk to those luggage things

 

2. in st. thomas - how much was it to rent the jeep? did you try to go to st. johns???

 

 

3. how long did it take you to disembark? we have a flight our of miami at 12:40pm...did the ship arrive at 8am???

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sbrocket52

sbrocket52

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thanks for the review - we are leaving for the epic next week

 

questions:

 

1. when arriving at the port - did you have to tip anyone? porters that move your bags from the sidewalk to those luggage things

 

I wouldn't have naturally, but the porter when we arrived actually asked for a tip. I don't think that they are NCL employees, just Port of Miami workers, and had just picked up on the fact that if you mention tips, cruise passengers will probably oblige because they're used to it. There was a lot going on, of course it's up to you to tip or not.

 

2. in st. thomas - how much was it to rent the jeep? did you try to go to st. johns???

 

It was $72 for the day from Budget. That's less than almost any excursion I could find, and it was a lot more fun than a tour on rails. If you're going to go that route, I'd recommend making a reservation online beforehand. We didn't try to go to St. John's. I can't remember completely, but I think there was a sign in the Budget office that said it was fine to bring the vehicles to St. John's, you just had to return it to the same St. Thomas location in the end? You should verify that.

 

3. how long did it take you to disembark? we have a flight our of miami at 12:40pm...did the ship arrive at 8am???

 

Disembarkation was pretty quick, despite the very not fun carrying our bags downstairs. We actually hadn't bought anything in ports so we didn't have any goods to declare, so Customs basically just waved us through. Not sure if that's typical. I think we were off the ship at 8-8:20am ish because we had picked up our Miami rental car by 8:40am. It looked like if you didn't go the "easy" walk-off disembarkation route that bags were ready and waiting to be picked up after getting off the ship, so that doesn't seem like it would take long. Unless there's delays getting the ship cleared or other unexpected delays, you should have plenty of time to get to the airport if you get off the ship in the first color groups, which you can pick.

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jdvmd

jdvmd

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Thanks for your comments! Glad you had a good time.

I do believe your PCC was wrong in telling you that you would not have to pay for Day 1. I have always been told that no matter what day you purchase, you would be charged the full amount so it is best to go ahead and do it from the get go.

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sbrocket52

sbrocket52

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Thanks for your comments! Glad you had a good time.

I do believe your PCC was wrong in telling you that you would not have to pay for Day 1. I have always been told that no matter what day you purchase, you would be charged the full amount so it is best to go ahead and do it from the get go.

 

Yes, and I now believe that he was wrong too, but he still gave me incorrect information that led to me making a purchase I wouldn't otherwise likely have made. :(

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besberry

besberry

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Thanks for this review, I'll be doing the self same itinerary in January. As a solo traveller, I would say, that if I was sitting at a table for six, on my own, I'd be more than happy for people to come and use it too. Especially as there would be five empty seats! By the same token, I'd probably ask if I could use one of the empty spaces, if I saw a couple sat at a four or six top.

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Zeta3

Zeta3

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The Bourne Legacy

A League of Their Own

Pitch Perfect

Smurfs

Thor

The Proposal

The Muppets

Chicago

The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings movie

 

Those are the ones I can recall.

 

also:

 

Serendipity

Skyfall

Odd Life of Timothy Green

Men in Black 3

Music & Lyrics

Here Comes the Boom

Sweet Home Alabama

Grown Ups

Phoebe in Wonderland

Sherlock Holmes 2

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ckk_li

ckk_li

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I had a lot of thoughts during the cruise that I probably should have written down and I'm going to try and haphazardly recall now, so maybe this won't be the most organized cruise review and I may ramble or repeat myself a bit, but I'll try and organize it into sections, in no particular order.

 

We just got back from a 7 day sailing on the Norwegian Epic from December 7th through 14th. The current regular Epic itinerary (as I'm sure many of you are aware of) is an Eastern Caribbean itinerary that starts from the Port of Miami, followed by 2 days at sea, a stop in Philipsburg, St. Maarten, a stop in St. Thomas, a final sea day, and then a final stop in Nassau, Bahamas before returning to Miami.

 

I'm very happy to answer questions if anyone has them or if I missed any big topics, so ask away. There are lots of little details that I noticed but probably haven't captured here. :D

 

General

 

This was the first cruise for both myself and my SO, so we were both generally free of expectations from other cruise lines and excited for what cruising had in store for us. We were drawn to NCL's Freestyle cruising concept since we're both relatively young and aren't particularly interested in fixed dining times, strict dress codes, and other such things still common on other cruise lines.

 

We also decided to give one of the relatively recently built mega-ships a try since, again, we weren't accustomed to any particular size of cruise ship and liked the idea of a large ship full of amenities that was new and modernly decorated.

 

In retrospect, I think our choice was a good one. While I clearly don't have any experience with some of the older, smaller ships in NCL's own fleet or in other lines' fleets, I did not feel like the Epic's size was a bad thing. I'm not sure what the passenger load of our particular sailing was, but with two notable exceptions the common areas and venues on the ship did not usually feel packed or crowded. Those exceptions are important, however. The first exception was the Garden Cafe buffet, which was often packed with more passengers than it could handle - I'll go into it more below. The second was the elevators, which usually were an exercise in either "how many people can we cram in here" or other passengers passive aggressively blocking you from getting on. The elevators were also pretty slow to get to you once you called them, just because of how many people they were handling. Expect waiting and crowding on the elevators or, better yet, take the stairs.

 

Dining

 

The food on the ship was, in general, hit and miss. Of course, everyone will have different expectations and, even if everyone had the same expectations, people would usually have different experiences. The quality of the food, whether from the buffet, MDR, or speciality restaurants was very unpredictable. Most nights, the food was good or even better. However, I was left with the feeling throughout the cruise as a whole that I was never quite sure whether my next meal would be good or disappointing. NCL would do well to make sure that they reach a consistent standard for food at all dining venues.

 

Beyond that, I'll go through the specific dining venues that we tried.

 

  • Garden Cafe - The buffet was pretty good in general. We only did breakfast and lunch there, I believe, not dinner. The breakfast spread was the same each morning but there was plenty of variety there. Lunch had many stations that were the same or similar each day and then specialities that were different each day. Not everything was good, sometimes things weren't warm, but on the whole the buffet was good. As I mentioned, though, the buffet was one of the areas on the ship that usually felt overcrowded. The biggest problem was that there never seemed to be sufficient tables, especially with the single people who would take up a 6 person table by themselves. Luckily, as a 2 person group we had less trouble that most, but it was still difficult to find a table and I did not envy bigger groups during buffet prime time.
     
  • Great Outdoors - A more limited buffet, available for (I believe) breakfast and lunch where the Garden Cafe exits into the pool area. Convenient if you want it, but I would recommend sticking with full buffet. You can just carry your plate outside from the main buffet if you'd like to eat in the sun.
     
  • O'Sheehans - The 24/7 dining venue on the ship is a decent place to grab a bite to eat. We had lunch here one day and, though we hadn't planned on it, dinner one night after the closing time for MDRs and the buffet suddenly shifted earlier partway through the cruise. I tried a number of dishes on our visits which were all good: the Mozzarella Sticks were good and served in a neat little frying basket, though they were cold at dinner; the Fish and Chips were very tasty; the Chef Salad was just ok.
     
  • MDRs (Taste & Manhattan Room) - We ate at Taste for dinner 3 nights, largely choosing this MDR over the other since we could be more comfortable and wear khaki shorts (like I said, not much interest in strict dress codes...). We had dinner in the Manhattan Room on our last night, and in retrospect I think it is worth throwing on longer pants to dine there...but maybe that's just the New York Strip steak talking. :D Our dinners at Taste were in general good, although it definitely depended on your choice of dishes. Dinner the first night was not as good as the latter nights. Dinner in the Manhattan Room on the final night was probably our favorite dinner of the cruise. Perhaps the menu was just very good that night (the Tempura Fried Mushrooms were fantastic), or maybe that's a trend worth noticing.
     
  • Le Bistro - We dined in Le Bistro on Day 2. It was good, but I was not blown out of the water and I'm undecided as to whether it was worth the additional cover charge. Mostly, the cover charge got you access to a different and unique menu; food quality, service, etc. were similar to elsewhere on the ship. I had the Salade Gourmande, which was good but small, split the Escargots with my SO, which were interesting but mostly tasted like the butter sauce they were cooked in, and the Coq au Vin, which was again good but nothing fantastic.
     
  • Moderno Churrascaria - I am pretty familiar with churrascarias and perhaps had too high expectations for this venue, having dined many times at Fogo de Chao locations and at casual, local Brazilian restaurants. If you are already familiar with the style and have similarly high expectations to mine, you are likely to be disappointed. Moderno simply can't stand next to restaurants like Fogo de Chao, Texas de Brazil, or even your local churrascaria. The salad bar is more limited, the selection of meats is not as broad, what they have isn't cooked as well (filet mignon shouldn't be cooked well done :(), and the gauchos simply don't compare. That is not to say it was bad though - it wasn't. The service was a bit slow, and NCL could work on training their gauchos better. Please, please, give them much sharper knives - I felt bad for the gauchos serving us struggling to cut the meats with the knives they had. Still, if I ignore the expectations I had, it was a good dinner, and I do think it was worth the cover charge and that I would return. Surprisingly, and perhaps a testament to the room for improvement, the chicken breast was my favorite meat served - it was juicy and very flavorful.
     
  • Sushi Bar - This was a true disappointment, and I definitely would not return. Service, by which I mean the time to make our order, was very slow. When we finally were served the sushi was not good. Sushi rice is a very particular thing and has to be made just so, but they just hadn't gotten such a fundamental thing right. It had a sour flavor that overpowered the other flavors and ruined each of the rolls and pieces of sushi. The fish was of ok quality but not very flavorful. I would much rather have eaten at the $10 sushi buffet near my work. Hopefully this was a unique experience and not typical of the sushi bar, but it was bad enough not to excuse as a one-off issue. I don't think I will risk it if we have the chance to return, which is a real disappointment since I love sushi.

 

Ultimate Beverage Package & Drinks

 

Yes, NCL's Ultimate Beverage Package gets a section all it's own. I spent a good amount of planning time trying to get more clarity about what was and was not included and trying to answer whether it was "worth it" at the steep $49/pp/day+15% price, or $788.90 for a 7 day cruise for 2.

 

In summary, I didn't think it was worth it and wouldn't buy it in the future. The price is simply too high to try and break even over the length of a 7 day cruise. The package has too many artificial limitations that exclude interesting drinks (you'll really start to notice how many $8.75 cocktails there are on the menu) that you'd need to pay full price for, not the difference to the threshold. We definitely ended up drinking more that we naturally would to try and break even with the price. It was nice because it enabled me to try a lot of drinks and wines that I likely wouldn't otherwise have spent the money on, but in retrospect I would rather just buy them individually because it's too difficult to come out ahead on cost.

 

A particular issue for me, which I'm still in the middle of working through now, was that we were informed by our NCL Personal Cruise Consultant that if we purchased the package on Day 2, we would only be charged for 6 days instead of 7. This appealed to me since I couldn't justify the package when, with the already steep price, you also pay full price for the partial embarkation day. This information convinced me to go ahead and give the package a try. Of course, as I'm sure you can anticipate, the bartenders and Guest Services on the ship did not agree with our PCC and refused to honor what he had told us, charging us retroactively for Day 1 after buying it on Day 2. Hopefully between my PCC and Guest Relations, NCL will honor what I was told and have in writing because that left quite the sour taste in my mouth.

 

Quickly, on the topic of alcoholic beverages in general. Many were good, although the story was much the same as the food - inconsistent. There was a lot of variation from bar to bar, or even day to day at the same bar, and it showed.

 

Itinerary & Port Days

 

I liked the equal split of sea and port days. The two sea days at the front end of the itinerary were great for getting into the swing of relaxing and for exploring and getting to know the ship. I would recommend getting up bright and early to beat the crowds on sea days. It was very relaxing when we got up early on the first sea day and had the hot tubs and main sun decks to ourselves for much of the morning.

 

Port days were new to us, of course, and rather than pay for the expensive excursions offered by NCL, we decided to plan port days on our own with the help of some of the great material here on Cruise Critic and just wing it. Bumbling around in a tour group all day didn't much appeal to us, anyway, and we aren't into watersports so that was pretty much out. I'll go through some comments about each of our stops:

 

  • Philipsburg, St. Maarten - A beautiful island and area. We took the water taxi into Philipsburg from the port complex, which I would definitely recommend at the $7 price for unlimited all-day travel. We spent some time walking around the area and along Front Street, marveling at the concentration of expensive jewelry and watches that we wouldn't be buying, also marveling at the low liquor prices that we definitely considered (but then didn't make it back to late in the day), and getting a feel for the area. Roads were packed and difficult to traverse in vehicle, whether in Philipsburg or elsewhere on the island, and I wouldn't recommend driving yourself unless very comfortable with the area. We rented chairs (with some cold Red Stripe beers thrown in) for $20 at Great Bay, along the boardwalk, and spent a number of hours just relaxing in the sun and enjoying the water. We also took a taxi to Maho Beach and watched some of the planes arrive and depart from the airport, and people get blown down the beach by the jet blast, while enjoying tasty but expensive lunch and mojitos at Sunset Bar & Grill. Despite the good day, I think this would have to be the least favorite of our port stops. A video on the water taxi from the ship informed us of how much St. Maarten appreciates the tourism and how their economy relies on it, and it showed in an unfortunate way. We were constantly approached along the beach with offers for local goods or massages or hounded as we left the water taxi for car tours, taxis, jewelry, and more. The worst was that our taxi ride to and from Maho Beach was filled with our driver continually trying to upsell us on a tour of the french side of the island, warning us that we were going to miss our ship because of all the traffic (we were back an hour early). I get that their economy depends on it, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and distracted from the otherwise relaxing day. We wouldn't explicitly avoid St. Maarten in the future, but given an otherwise equal choice we'd pick another port instead.
  • St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands - Easily our favorite port stop of the trip. Again, we decided to make our own plans and it definitely paid off. We rented a Jeep Wrangler from the Budget office that's right next to the dock and made a day out of our own driving tour of the island. We followed a route based on a map from Frommers and it was a fantastic drive. The freedom of driving yourself around on a tour, especially compared to our poor taxi experience the day before in St. Maarten, was great and simply can't compare to the packed tour vehicles we saw plenty of. It was a fun, hilly, winding drive with lots of beautiful scenery, and the Jeep surprisingly sipped gas the whole way - we only used about 2.5 gallons, which was nice given the high gas prices. Driving on the left was new to us but didn't take any getting used to. We drove Fortuna Rd. down close to Botany Bay, taking ample pictures along the way, and then followed that back and along Crown Mountain Rd. to Magens Bay Beach. Magens Bay Beach was a bit crowded with others but worth the visit. We didn't end up getting any time for shopping or walking about Charlotte Amalie, unfortunately, owing to a missed alarm and a late start to the morning. I look forward to visiting St. Thomas again and exploring even more.
  • Nassau, Bahamas - Another missed alarm and a late start cut this day short again (it's vacation, we weren't in much of a hurry to do anything), unfortunately. We spent the time we had relaxing on Cabbage Beach on Paradise Island after a quick (and cheap! $4/pp) taxi ride from the cruise terminal. Didn't get to see much, although Cabbage Beach was very nice and I'd like to visit again. Soft sand that you sunk in as you walked, unlike Great Bay in St. Maarten, and the waves were gigantic.

 

Stateroom

 

We were in cabin 13011, which is a category B2 family balcony stateroom on the starboard side of Deck 13 forward. We had booked a Balcony Guarantee, category BX, rate through Travelocity only a couple months ago since, as our first time cruising, we were unsure about what our stateroom preferences would be. Luck must have been on our side because I was very happy with the cabin we got. It was very handy being only two decks down from Deck 15 with the buffet, pools, hot tubs, etc, which made using the stairs and skipping the elevators easy. Taking the stairs to get to Decks 5/6/7 for everything in the ship's interior was also easy. In the future, if we don't continue to go the guarantee room route, I would probably choose to stay with the higher decks.

 

On the stateroom itself. The balcony, despite not being a "large balcony", was still big enough for me to not want for a larger one. The views from our balcony were great and there was plenty of room to relax on the two chairs provided. I suppose, if you wanted to sunbathe or stretch out on your balcony, you would need to larger one to fit a lounge chair (assuming they would provide one). The stateroom interior was, of course, small, but didn't feel overly cramped. There was plenty of storage and hanging space available for everything and shoving suitcases under the beds helped a lot. The beds were very firm but not uncomfortable, even though I am used to a plusher bed, and my SO enjoyed the firmness. One gripe with the beds is that it's always two, separate beds, and even though the cabin steward can push them into a queen with one sheet over them, you clearly feel the split in the middle and there's a gap where they meet at the top middle. The bed sheets were also too small for a queen configuration, or not made up correctly, and continually came off.

 

I am mixed on the bathroom area. The sink area and counter are fine, although it's a bit odd that they are not without the curtained off area. We didn't have any need for the curtain - we're a close couple - but I imagine only having the curtain would be odd for a family or friends traveling together. The shower was a decent size, despite my initial impression that it looked too small. It didn't feel cramped and there was plenty of room to move around inside it, despite me not being a small man...people of a smaller persuasion should find the shower positively roomy. The shower did have a problem with draining poorly the first few days that mysteriously disappeared. The toilet, on the other hand, was much too small. Like I said, I am not a small man, and the stateroom toilet was no fun to use. If you aren't a small person, anticipate some bathroom acrobatics. :p Also, holy cow is that thing loud when you flush it! Given how loud it is I expected to hear loud flushing at all hours of the day but didn't, a testament to the quality of the sound dampening between rooms and decks.

 

For two close people, it was fine. I would not want to try and squeeze one or two kids, much less another adult or couple in a single cabin. Take the "accommodates 4" with a grain of salt. Even traveling with a friend or someone not a significant other or spouse would, I think, be uncomfortable given the small space and lack of bathroom privacy. For a couple, however, the balcony cabin is just fine.

 

Service

 

Service was decent throughout the cruise. It seemed to improve a bit later into the week, either as we got more used to things or maybe just as the crew got into rhythm. Service was at times spotty, slow, or inconsistent, but the crew was in general very enthusiastic and eager to please.

 

Entertainment

 

We kept with the theme of entertaining ourselves that we did in port for much of the cruise, and didn't end up attending many of the attractions/events/etc. that the cruise ran throughout the day on ship. There were certainly plentiful events, game shows, just plain shows, movies, bingo, you name it available for those who are interested.

 

We did, of course, attend some of the bigger shows. We went to the Blue Man Group show in the Epic Theatre in the evening of our first sea day and it was great. We've seen BMG on land in Boston's Charles Playhouse before, and the BMG show on the Epic was similarly entertaining and engaging. I was a bit worried that the show wouldn't be up to it's normal calibre, given the more generalized venue they were in, but they definitely did it justice. If you're sailing on the Epic, Blue Man Group is a must see.

 

We also made reservations for one of the Second City shows, on Wednesday night after leaving St. Thomas. I was expecting a good show after seeing Blue Man Group on Sunday, which got my expectations up for the quality of entertainment on the ship, and was promptly disappointed. The impromptu comedy of Second City completely fell flat. It was poorly timed and, frankly, painful to watch. After watching one couple walk out of the venue, Headliners, halfway through the show, we also decided that it was a waste of our time and walked out. Having a show so bad that multiple groups of passengers are walking out of it is not what I expect out of NCL and the Epic.

 

We didn't go, but the Ice Bar at $20 per person seems ridiculously expensive. I suppose that's meant to include the price of the 2 drinks you get, which made it make even less sense to people with the UBP who could go anywhere and get those drinks for free/included. Why should I pay $20/pp for the ice bar when I've already bought the UBP and I could instead enjoy a nice specialty restaurant dinner? Didn't make much sense to me.

 

We aren't gamblers, but the Epic Casino sounded like a fun diversion, so I purchased a pair of 2-for-1 slot coupons for each of us; one $20-for-$10 coupon straight from NCL, and another $50-for-$25 coupon from SlotPlayCoupons.com. The Casino stretches most of the length of Deck 6, and you can hear the sound of slot machines throughout much of Deck 7 thanks to the open design of the lower decks. I didn't take note of how many people were smoking, but there were ample air purifiers sprinkled around the Casino and I didn't have any issues with an overpowering smoke smell. We had fun playing on the slot machines, and actually ended up making some money! Well, we ended up with about $105 left over after playing our combined $140 in promotional slot credits, but since I only spent $70 to get those coupons I consider that coming out ahead! :D

 

Embarkation/Disembarkation

 

Embarkation was very smooth. I'm not sure if that's typical or just a reflection of the time we got there, but arrival at the cruise terminal, checking bags, checking in was all smooth. One thing that was a little disappointing is that there was very little direction after we crossed the gangway. We had to hunt down a copy of the Day 1 Freestyle Daily and the ship map over by Guest Services after asking other passengers where they had gotten theirs.

 

Disembarkation was not as smooth. We decided to do "Easy Walk-Off Disembarkation", since the disembarkation packet suggested that this group would be the first off the ship, but mostly because we didn't want to try and keep only what we needed for the morning in a separate carry-on bag and check the rest. That would have necessitated some repacking between the ship and the airport for toiletries, etc.

 

"Easy" Walk-Off Disembarkation wasn't easy, however. Perhaps this is normal procedure, but there was no announcement made for this group. The first announcement that disembarkation would begin started with the first color group. This meant a rush to the elevators as everyone tried to get downstairs, compounding the upward traffic to the buffet for breakfast. In the end, after waiting for about 15 minutes with our bags at the elevators and only seeing two elevators stop, both packed full of people even though we were on Deck 13 (the 2nd to top cabin deck), we hoofed it down to Deck 6 with our 50 lb bags in tow. My arms are pretty sore right now, to say the least. In the future we'll either make sure we're downstairs with our bags well before disembarkation starts, or figure out some way to make packing work and have the porters take the bags off.

 

Summary

 

On the whole, we really enjoyed our trip on the Norwegian Epic and our maiden cruise. I think that I'd like to try one of their even newer ships, the Breakaway or the Getaway, sometime in the future. I do think that I've likely set my expectations for cruises based on the megaship-ness of the Epic, so I'm not sure if I would one of the many smaller ships in NCL's or other cruise lines' fleets - perhaps we'll have to give it a try and see. We also greatly enjoyed the benefits that NCL's Freestyle Cruising affords, whether the freestyle dining, or the more relaxed dress codes, or just the attitude of the crew on the ship. Maybe it's all cruise lines, I'm not sure, but I definitely got the impression of being nickeled-and-dimed by NCL for things throughout the trip, but it wasn't bad enough to make me dislike the trip. I do think this trip has made us fans of cruising, and we're likely to return.

 

If you actually read through what I'm seeing turned out to be a rather long review, or even if you didn't, and have any questions about the Epic or our experience on it, feel free to ask - I'm more than happy to answer. :)

 

Thanks for the review. I will be sailing on the Epic next month.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

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gwyns

gwyns

Posted
Posted

thanks for the great review - very helpful. Just wondering what car rental company you used that you were able to access it so quickly? I have booked one at the airport that will shuttle us over there. Is there a closer option for a Sunday arrival in port? Thanks.

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