Our Epic first time cruise- photo review- 3rd Jan Canaries/Spain

[cincicruisers]

Enjoying your review. Looking forward to the rest.

[Quilting_Cruiser]

Some of you might be aware that there was a thread on here recentley asking if they could do 'no butter' in the Teppanyaki, and I asked if they would do a rice with no egg. Responses varied from 'sure they will' to 'if you ask you are delaying the meal and ruining the other diners experience'. I can confirm that they will happily prepare rice without egg. I mentioned it when they took my order, and the chef just cooked me a seperate portion of rice before he dealt with the main lot for everyone else. It delayed the meal maybe about 5 minutes, which I'm hoping everyone was cool with. I was polite and waited to eat my rice until everyone was served, and it was still lovely and hot. However asking for no butter or no soy may be more difficult as they put that on everything.

 

 

I missed the thread you reference and find it rather funny that people actually commented that it would disrupt other people's enjoyment if someone asked to have their food prepared the way they prefer it. LOL. What about people with allergies? And, as far as asking for no soy sauce, it actually isn't a problem. When I sailed on the Jade about 15 months ago, I ate gluten free and soy sauce is not gluten free, so they prepared my rice and main dish before the rest of the diners' dishes. It delayed the meal by more than five minutes, and TBH it didn't cross my mind to feel bad about that! :eek: Of course, I could have been more considerate of the other diners and gotten really sick from eating the soy sauce! LOL.

 

 

 

After dinner we had Priscilla booked! We turned up in fairly good time and got seats near the front. This show is fantastic! F and I are huge fans of musicals and west end shows, so we are pre disposed to love it, but it was just fantastic. The singing, dancing, costumes, sets, all amazing. I won't say too much about it, just make sure you see it!

 

Others have said that NCL is pretty brave to choose this as their show on the Epic and I agree. While I would have thought that most people nowadays are very open to all lifestyles and sexualities, there's always those you're going to offend. One sail away (Maderia I think) I was sat by myself (F was having a nap) and I got chatting to an American couple and their daughter who must have been about my age. It was a nice conversation until we got onto the shows- I asked them if they had seen Priscilla and the response was 'heck no, we don't want anything to do with them drag queens and them gays!' :eek:

 

Lets just say I ended that conversation pretty quickly (and thanked my stars that F wasn't there as he would definatley have called them out on it rather than running away). But it just goes to show that Priscilla was not appreciated by all on board. You will have also heard it's not suitable for kids- listen! It's not! There's swear words, kinky outfits and multiple sex references and jokes. I was shocked by the number of young kids that were stubbonly present in the audience. It's like the parents thought 'this show is included in our cruise fare so we are going to see it, even if it does traumitise my 7 yr old daughter!' You're probably safe with teenagers but obviously this is your judgement. Maybe watch the movie first to get an idea of what the show will be like if you have kids and aren't sure!

 

After Priscilla it was time for bed, as in the morning we were actually going to be in port! Hopefully!!

 

I'm SO looking forward to seeing Priscilla! Like you, I love musicals, so I'm sure it'll be a ton of fun. I actually have reservations for it on two different evenings--that's how excited I am! Sorry about the intolerant, closed-minded Americans you ran across. I promise you that many of us aren't that way at all. :o

 

Looking forward to hearing more. Loving every word! There are only 38 days to live through until I board a plane for Barcelona!!

[lujaha]

Hi, and thank you so much for your brilliant review. We are off in the morning on said cruise! Done it before on Jade and Spirit, so Epic will be a completely new experience I think. Looking forward to Priscilla, my lovely cruise agent says it's fantastic and so do you. Although we are in our late sixties, can't imagine it will offend us!! I do hope you will have the opportunity to cruise in a balcony or at least ocean view in the future. Nothing like lying on your bed watching and hearing the ocean. Will be checking for your posts for the rest of today. Almost time to check in. Good wishes to you both for your future together, I'm sure it will be great.

[SquishTheWhale]

I missed the thread you reference and find it rather funny that people actually commented that it would disrupt other people's enjoyment if someone asked to have their food prepared the way they prefer it. LOL. What about people with allergies? And, as far as asking for no soy sauce, it actually isn't a problem. When I sailed on the Jade about 15 months ago, I ate gluten free and soy sauce is not gluten free, so they prepared my rice and main dish before the rest of the diners' dishes. It delayed the meal by more than five minutes, and TBH it didn't cross my mind to feel bad about that! :eek: Of course, I could have been more considerate of the other diners and gotten really sick from eating the soy sauce! LOL.

 

I'm sure it would have disrupted their dinner a lot more if you had eaten the soy and then been sick on them... :p it wouldn't have crossed myind either if not for that thread! There are some very opinionated people on here making some strong comments about how daring to ask for any variation of the Teppanyaki meal is basically ruining the entire evening for the rest of your table and you are a terrible person if you do it :rolleyes: But in reality nobody cares. My view was that I'm paying for this meal, so I will ask and see if I can have some rice I'll actually eat.

 

I'm SO looking forward to seeing Priscilla! Like you, I love musicals, so I'm sure it'll be a ton of fun. I actually have reservations for it on two different evenings--that's how excited I am! Sorry about the intolerant, closed-minded Americans you ran across. I promise you that many of us aren't that way at all.

 

What surprised me the most is that they said they were from San Fransisco- I wonder how they cope living with 'all them gays'!

 

I am loving your review. Your half eaten bean of shame was priceless, how were you to know. Green beans are eaten whole.

 

I know right! Not just me being totally thick then!

Edited January 23, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[SquishTheWhale]

Hi, and thank you so much for your brilliant review. We are off in the morning on said cruise! Done it before on Jade and Spirit, so Epic will be a completely new experience I think. Looking forward to Priscilla, my lovely cruise agent says it's fantastic and so do you. Although we are in our late sixties, can't imagine it will offend us!! I do hope you will have the opportunity to cruise in a balcony or at least ocean view in the future. Nothing like lying on your bed watching and hearing the ocean. Will be checking for your posts for the rest of today. Almost time to check in. Good wishes to you both for your future together, I'm sure it will be great.

 

Thank you for your lovely good wishes :) I hope you have an amazing time!

[funnybunny70]

Loving your review ! We go on board on the 24 Feb for the same cruise and it will be the first time on NCL ( we've only been on Cunard ) so looking forward to it . Many Thanks

[Quilting_Cruiser]

I'm sure it would have disrupted their dinner a lot more if you had eaten the soy and then been sick on them... :p it wouldn't have crossed myind either if not for that thread! There are some very opinionated people on here making some strong comments about how daring to ask for any variation of the Teppanyaki meal is basically ruining the entire evening for the rest of your table and you are a terrible person if you do it :rolleyes: But in reality nobody cares. My view was that I'm paying for this meal, so I will ask and see if I can have some rice I'll actually eat.

 

 

Yes, opinions do run rampant on here. I guess you have to expect that on a public message board, especially when the posters are anonymous. But, sometimes these closely-held beliefs are really quite funny. I'm following a thread now where the OP is wondering if she can bring more than two pieces of luggage and she's gotten everything from absolutely yes to she stupid and needs to learn how to pack to she's being completely inconsiderate of the hard working crew! LOL

 

 

What surprised me the most is that they said they were from San Fransisco- I wonder how they cope living with 'all them gays'!

!

 

Ohmigosh. Their daily lives must be a horror! LOL.

 

 

 

 

I know right! Not just me being totally thick then!

 

No, I think you were just being totally thick. ;);):p

[Newcruiser34]

Hi Squish!

 

Thanks for this review! I've just came across it today and I'm loving it! So informative, honest and funny like others have commented!

 

My husband and I will be going on our first ever cruise on the 6th March sailing and we are really excited! It's so nice to read your review from a first time cruisers point of view as I find the more seasoned cruisers reviews tend to miss out some details or can be a little on the negative side.

 

Can't wait for the next instalment! :D

 

Carreen

[kathybelcher2433]

How funny! I was following the same forum when the guest was simply asking about the strictness regarding numbers of bags brought on board. She was totally reamed with judgements about how many bags she was bringing. Why on earth would anyone 1. Care? And 2. Comment? This sums up my love/hate relationship with the Internet!

[Newbcruiser1]

Great review! Following along! :)

[solorizor]

Brilliant review will be on her in10 days [emoji38][emoji38][emoji38][emoji38][emoji38]

[RosieCanberra]

I am loving this review Squish, thanks so much. Looking forward to the next instalment.

Cheers

Rosie

[SadmanCruiser]

What an excellent review Squishy - love your sense of humour!

 

Can't wait for our 21 nights in 9 days time.

 

Pete.

[grovesteve]

Love your review so far (especially the photos and all the food porn :)) - hoping to catch as much as I can before we board on February 14th! Thanks so much for taking the time - I know it's a lot of work.

 

Love your review also. This will be my third time on the Epic. I didn't know about the hidden staircase. I will be sure to try and find it. Hope to meet you Floatyourboatsince 2003 at the meet and greet.

Steve R.

[SquishTheWhale]

Thanks for all the nice comments and thanks to all who are still following along!

 

I realised that I forgot to mention something about Priscilla- we were sat 4 rows from the front and in row 2 and 3 there were two (I think Russian) ladies who appeared to be trying to 'save' about 10 seats each on those rows. Several people tried to go and sit there but the ladies were sat with their arm blocking off the entrance of the row so people didn't seem brave enough to challenge them. Eventually a Scottish couple came to the row and asked one of them to drop their arm so they could get by. The Russian lady refused, so the Scottish couple barged past her and pushed her arm aside so they could sit down, and snapped at her 'You aren't allowed to save seats! If you have a problem then go tell the staff and they'll tell you the same'

We were worried it might get nasty for a moment but the Russian lady retreated to sit her with companion and they stopped blocking off that row too, which then filled up pretty quick. They did put some coats on a couple of seats to continue to save them, and guess what, their party never even turned up. Can't believe some people think it's okay to try and reserve two whole rows of front seats! Glad they got put in their place.

 

Anyway, lets continue!

 

Day 5- Finally a port!

 

We were woken up early again by the vibration of our cabin as we docked, but it was a lot less intense then when we were trying to dock in Morocco. We were pretty excited about finally visiting a port, but as we had a decent amount of time in Las Palmas (which is where we were!) we didn't rush off, probably walking off around 9.30am.

 

Land ahoy! The view of Las Palmas dock.

 

We didn't have a tour booked, but had a vague plan to walk to the beach, or maybe get a hop on hop off bus. The HOHO goes from just outside the port, however this was the queue:

 

 

So we decided against that! When you get off the ship you will find yourself with a large shopping mall to the right, and a green area where the HOHO bus goes from on the left. Cut straight across that area and you will see a Science Museum (you can't miss it). If you follow the road to the right of that (just keep going straight) it will take you straight to the beach!

 

But first, on the way you get a nice view of your ship:

 

 

And there's a cool recreation of Christopher Columbus's ship

 

 

The large building in the background is the shopping mall.

 

Then if you follow that road I mentioned you reach the beach! Which is really quite beautiful:

 

 

 

As you can see it may have looked a little overcast but it was hot enough for people to be sunbathing!

Edited January 25, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[SquishTheWhale]

If you take that street I mentioned to the right of the science museum, then you'll come out in the middle-ish of a very long curved bay. You can walk all the way along to both sides, which will take a while as it's very long! But that's exactly what we spent a very enjoyable 3 hours or so doing. It was lovely to stretch our legs after 4 days on the ship, and I can't think of many things more pleasurable than strolling along a beautiful sea front in the sun!

 

At several points along the beach there's information points with maps, and also toilet blocks, which is great as you never have to go far to find one! They also had some kind of sand castle festival going on, which was free to enter and they had some pretty cool sandcastles

 

 

We walked to the right first, which is towards the rockier end of the beach. It's still a lovely walk though with lots to see!

 

 

F thinking he's really brave walking out onto the rocks... he wasn't so cocky when a wave almost got him :p

 

 

It's paved like this the whole way so a really nice and easy walk. We walked really far to the right until we hit lots of apartment blocks, and then I was getting a little hungry so we headed back to a bakery where I had previously been lusting after the window full of donuts (F wouldn't let me buy one as it was before lunch.) We saw two of these same bakeries along the front (amongst many other eateries), they have black painted fronts but I can't remember the name. We got two sandwiches, two smoothies and a donut for the grand sum of 11 euros- about £8, so total bargin. You'd pay that for just the smoothies in the UK.

 

We both got serano ham and brie sandwiches, which they heated up for us.

 

My donut, which got a little melted as it was next to the hot sandwiches

Edited January 25, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[FloatYourBoatSince2003]

Love your review also. This will be my third time on the Epic. I didn't know about the hidden staircase. I will be sure to try and find it. Hope to meet you Floatyourboatsince 2003 at the meet and greet.

Steve R.

 

Nice to hear from a fellow roll-call member!

 

Squish your pictures are a great help for planning! Thanks again.

Edited January 25, 2016 by FloatYourBoatSince2003

[SquishTheWhale]

We then walked allllll the way to the left! Once you go past the beach area that I posted the pictures of, you walk round a little curve and then you hit the surfers beach. There was so many surfers, from classes of beginners to pros riding the big waves. It was great entertainment to just sit and watch them! It seems like surfing is big business in Las Palmas.

 

If you keep heading that way eventually you will reach a this statue. That's as far as we walked, but it does go on and on!

 

 

Once you reach this statue, you will be right next to a BIG shopping mall. We went in to buy some water and I was practically dying to go shopping and take advantage of that weak euro, but F only let me go in one place and then declared that 'we aren't here to shop' and dragged me out :mad: We did get some ice cream from a place right by the entrance though, and F promised me that if we had time I could visit the mall by the port :D

 

So after eating our ice cream and watching the surfers some more, we walked back to the middle of the bay where the street that cut back towards the port was. I'm sure there were many other streets that also cut back through, but we were sticking to what we knew! On the way we saw lots of nice cafes and snack bars, and I pointed out some guys recieving some really tasty looking burgers. So as soon as we get back to 'the street', F announces that he is hungry. After we have just walked about 2 miles past ALL the food places. My feet were hurting and I was so not in the mood to go on a wild goose chase, so I pointed out the burger king over the road and stipulated that I was going to walk as far as that burger king and not one step further. After some grumbling about how he could eat burger king at home and how he wanted something 'authentic', F agreed to be satisfied with that.

 

One thing you'll know if you've ever visited Spain before (same applies in the Canaries and also places like Cyprus)- people do things slowly. You get served in shops and cafes as slow as the staff like, and breaking off to chat with their co-workers for 5 minutes in the middle of taking your order is totally normal. I get it, it's a more relaxed pace of life, but it can be pretty frustrating when you're standing in line wanting to order and you also only have about 3 hours left on the island. Anyway, F had his burger king by the sea, and by the time we were done it was only about 1.5 hours until all aboard. We had thought about riding a circuit on the HOHO bus, but the hour spent in burger king had kind of killed that idea, so we walked back to the port with the intention of checking out the shopping mall and then getting back on board nice and promptly.

 

For any shoppers among you, definatley visit the other mall by the beach. The one by the port is kind of lame. It's a huge and modern mall, but there's lots of empty units and it felt a bit dead- we couldn't really find anything of interest. So I was a bit miffed that I missed out on the good mall! However it does have a large supermarket which we used to buy some suncream, and that sells everything from cosmetics to cookies, so if you need anything then that's your spot! The mall also has quite a nice terrace with a view of the port.

 

After checking out the mall it was about 30 mins to all aboard so we headed back to the ship!

Edited January 25, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[papcx]

but F only let me go in one place and then declared that 'we aren't here to shop' and dragged me out :

 

 

I officially have a new hero.

[SquishTheWhale]

Hey, I just realised that since my PC got upgraded at work I can now access Flickr, so I can hopefully give you more regular updates in my lunch hour!

 

Day 5 continued- back on board!

 

After checking out the port shopping mall and stocking up on sun cream (we didn't expect such good weather!) we got back on board a good half hour before all aboard. I'm not a fan of cutting things close, and I liked to be within striking distance of the ship at least 30 minutes before all abord and an hour before sail away!

 

H20 before sail away

 

We headed to H20 to watch sail away, but F decided he wanted to hit the basketball court (for about the 5th time this cruise) so we went up to the sports deck, where you still get a good view for sail away. We never joined in any of the 'parties' on the main pool deck, you get a much better view from back here! I amused myself with watching pier runners while he played around.

 

 

I don't know if it's because it was our first port, but there was loads of people running up the pier at 10 minutes before sail away. They also did an announcement looking for a german passenger, and we ended up sailing a bit late so I don't know if they were on board or not! By the time we sailed it was dark and getting a bit chilly, so we watched for a little while and then went to get ready for dinner, which was booked at Moderno.

 

I've heard a lot about the salad bar at Moderno and how people rave about it, and would go back just to eat the salad bar. I had high expectations and sadly I was a little underwhelmed. Apart from some parma ham and stuffed peppers I didn't really see how it was different from most other salad bars. I had a little of it but F didn't have any, as he had 'eyes on the prize'.

 

I don't have a pic of the main menu but it's widely available online. To start you also get these little cheese rolls which are so yummy when they are warm. They might have been my fave part of the meal!

 

 

They took our order for sides, and the way they asked it seemed like we could only choose one each- I was under the impression they just bought out all 4 for you to share! We dithered ordering and eventually they did offer to do that. The sides were OK, I liked the garlic mash a lot but the rice was just plain rice, and I'm not a big fan of plantains.

 

 

As you probably know, they also give you a little card which you turn to green for 'please bring me meat' and red for 'so full, no more meat!'. They do bring a pretty continuous stream of it to the table until you turn to red! We got off to a little bit of a bad start as the first thing they brought was chicken wrapped in bacon which was so dry we couldn't eat it. But then they bought over sausages, which were really good! The meat continues, with pork, lamb, steak, seafood... the ones I enjoyed the most were the kind of square chunks of seasoned beef. F really loved the steak.

 

I have to say I can't rave about Moderno. Maybe it's because I don't like rare meat, but apart from one or two of the meats offered I wasn't blown away. F however ranks it as one of his fave meals on board, so maybe it's just me being picky again!

 

One thing we did love was the grilled pineapple. Oh my it's so good! My mouth is kind of watering just thinking about how sweet but sour it was. We kept asking them to come back and give us more pineapple lol.

Edited January 26, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[SquishTheWhale]

After the meats and pineapple they have a dessert menu- I've not seen this posted before so here you go:

 

 

None of these desserts really appealed to me so I don't know why we bothered, but we did order the rice pudding and the coconut flan.

 

That's the rice pudding, sorry for the terrible picture.

 

 

And the flan. Both were icky in my opinion, and even F wouldn't eat the flan. Just not our taste I guess!

 

After dinner we went to check out our photos in the gallery. I haven't mentioned this yet but we were having an increasing problem with other people's photos being assigned to our cabin. I would say that by the end of the cruise we had maybe 40ish of us and 30+ of other people assigned to our cabin. This isn't an issue if you look at the printed copies in the folder (they don't put the not-you ones in there), but if you use the computers our screen was flooded with pics of strangers! At first it was kind of funny- we would log on each day and see who had been assigned to us today! But then it started to hack me off. We spoke to the staff and they said it was 'normal for 1 or 2 bogus photos to end up on your account, just ignore them'. When we told them we had loads they were a bit shocked but said they couldn't do anything about it. Why oh why is there not just a button that you can push to say 'this isn't me' and remove that photo? Grr. I think the photographer in the teppanyaki was messing with us as a lot of the photos of strangers were from the teppanyaki. It got to the point where whenever we saw someone having their photo taken we eyed the photographer suspiciously in case they were keying in our cabin number lol.

 

Anyway, rant over. But sort it out NCL!! That night we didn't do much except pop into Howl at the moon, as we had an early start the next day for our excursion to Tenerife!

 

Also I think I forgot to post the dailies for day 5:

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[SquishTheWhale]

Day 6- Tenerife

 

It was a fairly early start today as Tenerife was the only port we had booked an NCL excursion! We had booked to go to Loro Parque, which is a wildlife park in Puerto De La Cruz. It was around £50 each to go through NCL, but there isn't really a viable way to DIY it short of renting a car, and I'm not conviced that would have saved any money, as the tickets cost £26 anyway. I did read a review from a lady on an MSC cruise who did the trip on public transport for around 10 euros each (plus the ticket), however that involved a shuttle, tram, bus and a taxi each way so I'm not sure that the hassle and risk of something going wrong is worth the few pounds saved!

 

We were due to meet at 8am in the Spiegel tent, and arrived 10 minutes early. I was impressed that we were actually walked out at 8am- I expected that we might be waiting around for ages on latecomers, but either everyone was accounted for or they actually mean it when they say 8!

 

However we did end up waiting 15 mins or so for the bus to go once we were sat on it. But soon enough we were off! They told us it was an hours drive but it was more like 40 mins, which was good, and we got some nice views of the island on the way. So we arrived at the park about 9.20am, which was a nice early time considering we didn't have a long day in port.

 

I don't want to start a debate here about wildlife parks/that documentary involving orcas, but in my opinion I was blown away by the wonderful animal habitats, the cleanliness, conservation information and the way the animals were looked after. It knocked any UK wildlife park out of the park. We heard that it was an expanded parrot park and didn't expect a huge amount, but Loro Parque is seriously world class in every aspect. As well as the animals, the landscaping is beautiful- you feel like you're walking in a tropical oasis.

 

Before I get ahead of myself, here's a couple of pics of the entrance

 

 

 

One of the best things at the park is the penguins. They have this most amazing enclosure with real falling snow and a moving walkway which takes you round the whole thing. Again, we were blown away! I've never seen anything like it before.

 

 

 

They also had the most adorable baby penguins being looked after in a seperate area

 

 

F absolutley loves penguins- for his birthday last year I surprised him with a penguin feeding experience at a local wildlife park. So you can guess that we spent quite a long time in here!

Edited January 27, 2016 by SquishTheWhale

[boobschein]

Squish your reviews are great, thanks.

But I didn't see you mention the PRESUMED MURDER lunch show.

Was it available?

[SquishTheWhale]

Squish your reviews are great, thanks.

But I didn't see you mention the PRESUMED MURDER lunch show.

Was it available?

I never saw that one in the dailies- maybe it's not on the Epic?

[trinitytrees]

Thanks for lots of very useful information, I don't know how you retained so much information, great review. We sail on Epic in March, sailed with NCL before but on Jade, looking forward to going. Keep up the great review, like episode of a soap! :)