funpig

Ted

I did not try Ice Bar, but i think i read somewhere 2 drinks are included; don't quote me. I did not go to Howl. Our room had fridge and i believe all rooms have a fridge. We spoke to steward and just placed all the beverages into one of the storage compartments during the whole voyage so we could have fridge space for personal use.

glitter, here ya go (see posts # 10 - 12):

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2212365&highlight=epic

Gal

When I called NCL, they were unable to book for me or to provide me with any correct info. They just told me to go to Guest Services when I got on the ship.

What I did was register on NCL.com and reserved everything online. I went to the Barcelona date and clicked Cirque, the time and our names. If it is free for you, it will show the price as $0.00 per person. If not, sorry.

If you can book the free Cirque, you should try and do it before you board. The Speigel Tent venu for the CD is quite small and will probably sell out quickky. The lineups at Guest Services can be long and slow. The touchscreen devices by the elevator and the mobile iConcierge app can be sketchy (but I would still recommend you download it on to your smartphone or tablet before you leave home or while you still have free wifi).

Our 3 groups of 2 were all able to book the free CD about 2-3 weeks before the start of our cruise. That may because almost everybody was always trying to book the Rome embarkation date which was unavailable. If you can, book the premium and when you go, go early and ask for up top.

FYI, I posted the dailies from our May 13-20 Epic Med trip here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=46637979&posted=1#post46637979

Here is 3 of 3.

Freestyle Dailies 03.pdf

Here is 2 of 3.

Freestyle Dailies 02.pdf

Ace and Peach:

OK. Here is 1 of 3 scans of the pages from the Freestyle Daily.

I have to admit that we were so busy that we never had time to read these while on board. I just stuffed them into our pack.

Freestyle Dailies 01.pdf

Gal:

If you have UDP, the Cirque may or may not be free depending on when you sail. After some certain date, I believe that there is an NCL policy change and the Cirque is no longer included as part of the UDP. If you are entitled to the free Cirque, you can only book it on the embarkation day and not on any other day. What NCL does not tell you is that the embarkation day is the Barcelona day for everybody even if you embark in Rome. So try booking the free Cirque on that day. It took me weeks to figure that out. I had telephoned NCL and our TA to book our free free Cirque to no avail. I only learned this from CC.

I think the Barcelona embarkers get a little bit more special treatment including a big welcome aboard cake at the buffet. I don't recall seeing a cake for the Rome embarkers, but that first night I ate in the Manhattan so I could be mistaken.

I think La Cucina has the best view of all the restaurants. It is located at the very front on the 14th floor with panoramic view. Of course, you can have same view in Garden Cafe one floor above. At lunch, you can pick up food from Garden Cafe and bring it down to eat at the La Cucina tables. If you have UDP, why not book?

I thought that the Manhattan food was good. I believe you can get menus on the NCL site and it should be the same food as the rest of the complimentary restaurants. The band in the Manhattan from 6:30 to 7:30 is worth a see.

The schedule change in Cannes was that the ship leaves one hour earlier at 5 pm than previously scheduled. So I was incorrect. I mixed it up with Palma where we lost 2 hours. For us, we booked a late morning tender in Cannes, made no plans and had wanted to return to the ship early which turned out to be bad luck with the weather. Other people booked excursions and went on a full day tour of nearby cities. With the weather delay, many did not get back on the ship until after 6 pm and the ship sailed about 1.5 hours late.

Agree with all above comments. We just finished our Epic May 13-20 cruise. We had UDP as a free promo. We booked every specialty to take complete advantage of the benefit. It was a real treat. But walking through the Garden Buffet afterwards, we missed out on a roast pig one night and prime rib another. The food in the Garden Cafe is excellent and it is very pleasant eating outside. The Manhattan is more than fancy enough if you want something with a more formal setting.

If UDP was not free, we would not pay for it. We would probably still pay a al carte for Le Bistro because of the excellent cuisine. The Cagney steak was great, but we eat good steak regularly and $30 pp buys a lot of steak. Having seen Cirque, I would probably not pay to see again.

We just came back from our 19 day trip (7 day cruise). We ate huge meals every night on land and sea. Happy to report that I did not gain a pound. I also went in for a blood test and my cholesterol and A1C were still ok. I had an activity tracker and was averaging about 10 kilometres walking each day. On my low activity days, i went for a run or hit the exercise room.

Peach:

1. The Garden Cafe (inside and outside on 15th floor) was open for lunch. We ate there on embarkation. I believe that the Manhattan and Taste complimentary dining rooms are only open for dinner.

2. We used Joe Bananas Tour. The drives between the towns were not very long or tiring. We went to Sorrento first and was basically dropped off to shop on our own for less than an hour. We basically walked just about one block looking at shops LOL. We then went to Positano and was dropped off for a little over an hour. Once again we were on our own and walked down to the beach and then back to the parking lot. As part of the itinerary, we were then driven to a restaurant with a great view over Positano for an nice relaxing lunch. After that, we were driven to Pompei and we had about 2.5 hours to tour it on our own. We had a lot of options. We had a Rick Steves audio. We could have rented an audio guide or hired a tour guide. In the end, we just wandered around on our own with a map. We saw a few buildings and the plaster figures including the famous dog. We saw a brothel and the bathhouse. We were warned not to try and see the amphitheatre because we would have torun both ways to make it back in time for the van pickup. It was hot and dusty, got bored and then we wandered back to the entrance. Pompei is about 50 acres. You could easily spend 4 days there if you want see everything. When walked out of the attraction, I found a cafe with shade, ordered a cold drink, checked my email and waited for our van. The others walked and checked out the souvenir vendors. I heard that the town Herculaneum may be a more interesting substitute. It is much smaller, better preserved and has more luxurious buildings than Pompei. But Pompei is more famous. They don't make movies about Herculaneum. Anyways, as you can see, you cand go at your own pace in each of the 3 towns. If your seniors or kids get tired or bored, you can easily take a break because you are really in control of much of the tour. We had to be back on board in Naples by 5:30. JBL made sure they got us back on time (they want to get paid and not be stuck with us any longer than they have to, LOL).

3. The disembarkation times are the earliest times you can leave the ship. The times are set just to stagger all the people so that there are no crowds. As far as I can tell, they cannot force you off the ship. If you put your luggage out the night before, the luggage will just sit in the tent on the dock. You could choose not to put out your luggage if you dont want the luggage left on the dock and just keep it with you. I would assume that a cabin steward will kick you out of the room at some point because he/she would need to clean it for the next guests. But you could sit and eat in the Cafe or hang out and sunbathe on the deck. We joked that we could probably just stow away on the ship because it would be hard for the crew to find you with all the masses on the large ship.

4. We still got a free Cirque dream dinner (only one night) under our UDP as at the time of our May cruise. I think that at some point (June ?), there will be a change in the NCL policy and there will no free Cirque dinner available.

I am a noob. What are "dailies"?

PS. The Palma shuttle was $12 pp not €12.

We just disembarked from Epic in Rome on May 20. Our original flight out of FCO was about 1:30 pm and we had arranged for Bob's Limo to pick us up at 9:30 am

One or two days before disembarkation, an envelope was delivered to our room with a letter and our luggage tags. The letter said our disembarkation time was 7:30 based upon our floor. There is a disembarkation time set on the half hour. I believe the last one was 8:30am.

We tagged the luggage and left it outside our room at 10 pm the night before. Ours were not picked up until anout 11 pm.

I had telephoned and emailed Bob's Limo to change the pickup time to 8:30 am.

We woke up at 6 am, showered and had breakfast. At 7:30 am, we went to the 4th floor aft and disembarked. We just had to swipe our id cards and that was it. Down the gang plank and a short walk to a large port tent area where our colour tagged luggage was all neatly organized. We rolled out our luggage and were in the parking lot before 8 am. We waited about half and hour and Bob's showed up to drive us to FCO about 45 min away.

When we got to the airport, our 1:30 pm flight was delayed which would have made us miss our connecting flight from london to Canada. British Airways put us on an earlier 11:55 am flight.

PS. For our shore excursions, we mostly did it on our own. We did book Joe Bananas Tour for Livorno and Naples. Would highly recommend.

This was my first real cruise (I did a 3 day re-positioning cruise more than 20 years ago from Vancouver to Los Angeles).

Embarkation and Disembarkation was a breeze. On the last day, we disembarked at the scheduled 7:30 am to catch a 1:30pm flight out of FCO. It turned out our original flight would be delayed more than 2 hours. We were able to book on an earlier flight out at 11:45am when we got to FCO.

For our transfers from Rome to Port and from port to airport, we used Bob's Limo which was €150 for our group of 6. It was great dealing with them. They always showed up a bit early and were willing to adjust the pick up time if we called or email. On the last day, a taxi driver quoted us €240 for the same ride to the airport and i heard a shuttle bus would have cost €75 per person.

Our 3 couples each had a mid ship balcony stateroom on the 12th floor. It was exactly as advertised. We were happy with the room. Only noticeable issue is tha the carpet looked tired which I expect will be changed out in the upcoming dry dock. Also, the toilet flush was very loud.

Our cabin steward Sokkaia was pleasant to deal with. He made some nice towel animals and cleaned and turned down bed without any intrusion or fuss. I had not planned on tipping any more than the mandatory DSC. In the end, we still had a substantial balance in my OBC. I was able to go to Guest Services and to transfer it all to him by signing a gratuity voucher. So it worked out for everybody.

We all had the UDP and we reserved a specialty restaurant, including the free Cirque Dreams Dinner, every night except for the first night when we went to the Manhattan. The Manhattan is beautiful. We generally had dinner at 6:30 pm which is great because after getting back from shore, we had time to shower (and to do daily laundry. Tip: synthetic clothing wash and dry quickly; we always had fresh clothes to wear and no stinky clothes for our 19 day trip), we were famished, it gave us time to catch a show later and still get to bed early so we could get up early and start again.

It is a shame that the band in in Manhattan only plays from 6:30 to 7:30 pm. We would have liked to dance on the beautiful dance floor after dinner and the later diners really missed out. IMO, the best seats for the Cirque Dreams Dinner is up top. There is one performance in which a guy dips himself in a bath and then swings in the air suspended by ribbons. There was a lot of man sweat and drippings flying all over and many diners in the premium floor tables were trying to cover their dinners. Teppenaki cook was entertaining albeit noisy with the clanging utensils. Cagney steaks were largest and best on the ship. Moderna meat was generally overcooked except for the lamb chops which were delicious. Le Bistro had the best cuisine IMO. La Cucina had the best view, but after 10 days in Italy we were bored with Italian food. All our breakfasts and the odd lunch were at the Garden Cafe buffet which was very good. We went to Taste after a specialty dinner just for coffee and dessert and to say we were there; nothing special. We walked by O'Sheehen's every day but never did try it. I believe the same food is available at the Garden Cafe which was so convenient.

I would recommend UDP especially if you can get it as a freebie. We are not big drinkers. My wife and I did get a soda package. In retrospect, it was not worth it IMO. I drank mostly club soda at the dinners. The rest of thd day, the ice tea, lemonade, fruit flavour drinks, coffee and tea were available from the beverage dispensers. For some reason, i was under the impression that these beverages were only available at breakfast and lunch only.

We set up our own shore excursions four our group of six. We used Joe Bananas Tours in Livorno (Cinque Terre €520) and Naples (Sorrento, Positano, Pompei €450) which worked out cheaper than NCL. Joe Bananas is highly recommended. In Barcelona, we pre-booked our admission, guided tour and Tower admission at the Sagrada Familia and easily traveled by metro. The SF is awesome. Later we booked a HOHO bus €27 which is a reasonable but rushed way to try and see a lot of the city. There are 2 or 3 bus companies and each has 2 or 3 loops, but each loop can be up to 2.5 hours. In retrospect i would have preferred to just walk and take the time to just enjoy a few things rather than try and see everything for a brief moment. We visted Palma by a shuttle bus €12. I knew nothing about Palma but enjoyed the visit very much.

Cannes was the only disappointment. This shore excursion was cut short by two hours before the cruise because of scheduling and according to rumors a bad engine. Wead to use a tender. Because of the short time. We had not booked anything. After a few hours,we decided to just go back to the ship early, have lunch and just relax. Unfortunately, the wind and waves kicked up. The ship anchor either broke or bent and the ship began to drift. The ship had to reposition itself and use the spare anchor. Meanwhile we were stuck on shore in a line-up. We waited over two hours before we could tender. The real annoying thing was that there was almost no communication by the ship personnel. If they had told the thousands of people waiting what was going on, we could have all left the lineup in the hot sun and gone back to town for food and drink. And we had bad luck with a boat driver who had to take 3 or 4 tries to dock the tender at the ship in the rough seas. Finally, we had 3 or 4 wheelchair passengers who had to use the power lifts while the rest of us had to wait. Altogther, it was almost 3 hours.

We left Cannes almost 2 hours late. The engines must be okay because we motored it and arrived early in Palma the next day. That night the sea was rough and some in our party got sea sick. My wife and I were the only 2 of our group who attended the Burn the Floor show. The Epic theatre is located the bow. The bow rocked up and down. I could barely walk down the steps to our seats. After about 5 minutes, the show was cancelled out of concern for the safety of the performers. Later that night, our hamper drawer went in and out from the rocking until I got up and secured it. Fortunately, Burn the Floor added a performance the following night for us. It is a great show. I think I enjoyed it more than the Blue Man Group. My wife wanted to see it again.

Overall, we enjoyed the cruise. The dinners were great. I did feel very rushed each day and was glad that we paced ourselves. The Sea Day was a welcome break which is on the latter half of the cruise for us Rome embarkers which IMO is better than the Barcelona embarkers which is their second day. We had done 10 days in Italy on our own before the cruise. I much prefer the more relaxed pace of settling in a city for at least a few days and enjoying the visit, sites, local food and people.

Sitting at Heathrow waiting to transfer to Italy.

I called NCL aout 12 hrs ago before we left YVR. I asked to speak to a "manager". She continued to deny that there is any mechanical issue. She said it was a port scheduling problem. No compensation, but she said we could call to complain after the cruise. I requested that NCL email me directly if there is any more problems or rescheduling. Booking thru a TA certainly did not stop them feom sending me spam emails to book more cruises or to book/pay for packages directly with them.

Now I am miffed. Still no email re May 13 cruise. Just about to fly out to Venice to start our vacation. There are two other couple travelling with us with same bookings. Still no email.

But when i re-checked my vacation summary on the NCL website, the times have changed from this morning. Losing 2 hours in Palma is a major loss. Losing the hour in Naples will affect our booked shore excursion.

I specifically asked the NCL rep this morning if there was something wrong with the ship and she assured me that the ship was fine and it was a port scheduling issue.

Is there any precedent for getting some compensation from NCL?

Thank goodness for CC members for the heads up.

Now I am miffed. Still no email re May 13 cruise. Just about to fly out to Venice to start our vacation. There are two other couple travelling with us with same bookings. Still no email.

But when i re-checked my vacation summary on the NCL website, the times have changed from this morning. Losing 2 hours in Palma is a major loss. Losing the hour in Naples will affect our booked shore excursion.

I specifically asked the NCLrep this morning if there was something wrong with the ship and she assured me that the ship was fine and it was a port scheduling issue.

Is there any precedent for getting some compensation from NCL?

Thank goodness for CC members for the heads up.

I just got off the phone with NCL.

Our May 13th Epic cruise is not affected.

NCL said there is nothing wrong with the boat. She said it is probably because of schedule conflicts with other ships at port. Only some, not all, Epic cruises are affected.

4x6.95x1.18=32.80

Do these changes show up in your Vacation Summary when you login to the NCL.com website?

Which dates are affected?

We are sailing May 13. So far,, no email and no change according to website itinerary.

I wonder if it might be a tide issue for certain dates.

I booked my udp reservations online. When a free Cirque Dreams booking became available, i had to telephone NCL to cancel a conflicting reservation because there is no way to change reservations online.

While speaking with the rep on the phone, i asked what would happen if we had booked more than one non-conflicting reservations on the same night and failed to show. She advised that we would be charged an extra cover charge for failing to show. You can cancel up to 24 hours before. If you show up and eat at the second reservation there would be no charge. Take this info FWIW.

I had to call NCL to cancel a Moderna reservation in order to book a time conflicting Cirque reservation under UDP. At the same time, I asked whether we could book multiple reservations for the same night under the UDP. NCL advised that you could do so as long as you showed up and ate. If you failed to show they would make you pay the extra charge. You have to cancel at least 1 day before to avoid the charge.

I'm interested in knowing this too, I hadn't thought of the reservations first being offered to those embarking in Barcelona if we are embarking in Rome. Anyone know?

What comes first the chicken or the egg? Do Barcelona cruisers embark 3 days before Rome cruisers? Or do Rome cruisers embark 4 days before Barcelona cruisers?

FWIW, we will sail out of Rome in May. We could not book Cirque Dreams for our first Rome night. We could not reserve online, through our TA or by direct telephone to NCL. With about 30 days to go, i found out through another CC thread that we could book CQ on the Barcelona night. Our 3 bookings of 2 people each were able to reserve CQ for free under UDP for the Barcelona night. I dont know what the policy changes are for the cruisers after May.

Just wanted to report back. On our May 20th Epic cruise out of Rome we were able to book the show free on the Barcelona on May 24th. At the 90 day mark it was bookable but not free, but checked about a week ago and it was bookable as free online. [emoji1][emoji1][emoji1][emoji1].

 

 

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We are about 31 days from our May 13 Epic cruise out of Rome. We have been trying for weeks to book the free Cirque Dreams for the first night without success. Today we were able to book CQ for May 17 Barcelona night for free under our UDP. i had to cancel another special dinner reservation by telephone and confirmed with the customer service that the May 17 CQ was indeed free. We have 3 couples with 3 bookings and we were all able to do it.

FYI, I was told by NCL that if you make a reservation under UDP and fail to show, you will be charged the fee for each person in your group unless you cancel the reservation at least 24 hours before. On the other hand if you make more than one special dinner reservation for the same day, as long as you show up and eat, there will be no charge.

3 bookings, 3 cabins, 3 couples. Same cruiise, same price, and same comps (OBC and UDP) added after final payments and after promo started. So if one of us can do it, we all should be able to do so. Just need to talk to the others which way they want to go. Thanks.

I telephoned NCL. They told me it can be done while the freestyle promo is still in effect (3 more days). Now i need to talk to the others in my travel group to see which one they prefer.