Indykitten

Day 6

Another lazy day at sea of breakfast, reading, looking for whales, lunch, liquor. The Waves bar is usually pretty crazy but at this point they knew me by sight and when I sat down with a coffee cup they'd just top it off with Baileys automatically. Thanks, Jean-Pierre! By now I'd finished a book or two and we were hitting the library for me to get a new one. Nice place, very quiet as a library should be. Selection was adequate, check out was easy.

It's funny the things I'd thought we'd do on the cruise vs the things we actually did. I thought maybe we'd play trivia but that never happened. The atrium was usually CRAZY and loud.

I was starting to have more positive interactions with fellow guests, as well as more negative ones. We'd run into people, they'd order something interesting at the bar (like cider and Fireball), I'd enquire, they'd let me taste it.... I learned that coconut rum and orange juice > a mimosa. I'd also leaned that some people just...suck. Way too few please's, thank you's and excuse me's. Or pardon's, if you are European. I witnessed some people being incredibly rude to the the crew and this crew bent over backward with a smile on their faces. Not the best of humanity.

The hotel industry has a term, "Special Snowflake". It refers to member of their loyalty program with status who are overly demanding, entitled and rude. I can only assume the cruise industry has a similar term and I'm curious to know what it is. I wanted to ask a crew member but I knew they would be way too polite to tell me! Because I saw an awful lot of special snowflakes on this cruise. To put it bluntly, I saw a lot of people who wanted Cunard service at NCL prices.

I've always thought that travel is a valuable part of opening people's minds, exposing them to new cultures, new people, new experiences. It gives you a world view, gets you to think. When I expressed my disappointment in my fellow passengers to our new friends, they agreed but shrugged and said "But you'll get that anywhere". The problem was, I haven't gotten that anywhere else - not to this extent. The problem with cruising is that yes, you are traveling, but you can still travel in your little bubble if you want. Other than a little multi-cultural interaction with crew you can still eat the same food you eat at home, speak your language, do the same things you do at home, just on a ship. You don't even have to ever get off the ship if you don't want to. Which I know is what some people LIKE about cruising. It's comfortable. NCL (and I assume, the other lines) want you to be happy, so they go crazy trying to make sure if you can have everything just the way you like it at home.

I've been following since Nov. 15, but today's post just really got me chuckling! I love your sense of humor, your writing style, and the useful information that you have been providing. (I love Sally's review as well. But we won't be in any kind of suite when we go on the Epic, so I find your info more relevent to our situation.) Thank you, and Sally, for your diligent efforts.

Aww, thanks, glad you like it. I'll try to offend someone with upcoming Day 6. :p

I love Fireball. Never had fireball and cider; sounds delicious. Great review!

So, according to the Scots, you pour your hard cider into a glass (it was Strongbow on the ship) and pour a GENEROUS shot of Fireball into it and drink. Like Autumn in a glass, baby. Also, Milan made us some shots with Fireball and other things that I don't remember.... Milk? Pineapple? My brain is pickled now. I still have flashbacks of Milan strutting through the bar, "Did someone say SHOTS?!?!?!" This is what happens when everyone has a beverage package.

I can't tell you how I look forward to your post. If we met on a cruise we would be in trouble having way to much fun. Continue to enjoy. I am going 2/4/17 on the Escape Can not wait. We went on the Getaway in May the H2o bar was our favorite. Have fun!!!

 

 

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Aww, shucks, thanks. :D I'm glad you're enjoying my little travelog. I've never written one before, but I've always found others' helpful. I'm jealous of your upcoming Escape adventure. I have a ship-crush on the Escape!

Enjoying your review very much so far Indykitten. I've done the Epic once before and am headed out again on Nov. 19th. I should be finishing my packing now as a matter of fact! :rolleyes:

 

Here is that work around you were looking for:

 

Coffee Pod Replacement Filters for Coffee Pod Brewers - Make Your Own Disposable Pods - 200 Pack By Simple Cups https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A89H6X2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_In7kybC560JTF

 

I won't need them this time, we are sailing in one of those suites complete with Nespresso machine. :D

Thanks, saved for next time!

how do you register to win the officers dinner?

There was a raffle, you sign up at guest services desk.

Day 5

Went to the How to Run a Floating Hotel Q&A in the morning. Very entertaining and informative if you're interested in how the ship runs. Several people wanted to question/complain about corporate policies, itineraries, etc. I thought, "you know they just drive the ship, right?". I get it, people aren't happy about how much the internet costs or that there aren't enough cruises out of their home ports. But the captain can't really address that, now can he?

Discovered Spice H2O after lunch. And now I need a liver transplant. So we're not really pool people. A lot of resorts have swim up bars and we've been known to frequent those but I need some shade and Waves was too loud for us most of the time with the entertainment going on there. But Spice is in a quiet zone and the bar staff there is AMAZING. We would just sit there and watch them work (ok, and drink). They really hustle. I never thought a pool bar would feel like home but this was the bar that resonated with us. We were like Norm in Cheers. Met many friends there, adored the crew. You could find us there every day after lunch. I'm sure they were sick of us. The smoking sometimes bothered me, I do wish there were more non-smoking places outside.

Also discovered, I think on day 2, that most bars had Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin' in the bottle. We love craft beer, it's huge in the midwest, and we'd kind of reconciled ourselves to not being able to get any unless we went on the Escape. Finding this was a huge and pleasant surprise. Thank you, Beverage Director! Please keep stocking this. I think we drank every bottle on the ship.... Not that that kept us from from drinking cocktails and sampling all the European beers at least once. What's a vacation for, after all?

So I look over and we've almost missed our lunch date because my hubby is drinking fireball and cider with a Scottish couple. Ok, stumble down to O'Sheehans which is predictably packed. Find our new friends which ended up being the best part of our trip. Lovely people and really, isn't that what travel is for? I mean, that and the drinking, as indicated in the above paragraph.

I think we had dinner at Manhattan this night. One night in Manhattan I had a fantastic vegetarian risotto. So good that when it came time to switch dinners with hubby I didn't want to give it up. I begrudgingly did. Grabbed a cocktail and went to the see the hypnotist show. Meh. Not our thing. Others seemed to really enjoy it, though, so this was just personal preference. A few more cocktails and we were ready for bed.

Day 4 - Tenerife

Up early and a quick breakfast in the buffet. Tried to watch as much of the docking as we could. Got off the ship quickly and a had a bit of a panic moment when we turned the wrong way. 10 minutes late but we met our tour, and thankfully were not the last to arrive.

We actually found this tour from the roll call page and it was fab. Such a short time there but we took a mini bus up to the top of the volcano. Going to the top of Mount Tiede was amazing, it looks like the surface of mars. Surreal. Wound our way down and stopped at a little town to look at buildings and architecture. Weather was perfect, warm but not hot. And none of the overwhelming humidity we'd have in Puerto Rico a week later.

I think this was the part of the cruise that was hard. I would have loved 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months in Tenerife. The culture of Europe but the relaxed attitude of the islands. Without the grit that the Caribbean has. Someday.

Back on the ship and too spent for anything but the buffet. Was this seafood night? Can't recall. One night during the first week we walked in and there was a WALL OF SHRIMP and cocktail sauce. Actually better than the shrimp cocktail at Cagneys. Cocktail sauce was too sweet for me, I like mine with horseradish but that's a personal preference. Shrimp was amazing and I think I had an entire plate for dinner.

I will say, one small complaint was about the info in the Freestyle Daily. I wish they'd list the dinner specials for the buffet and O'Sheehans every day. It would make it soooooo much easier to plan. Otherwise I'd have to remember to look at the little table signs in the morning in the buffet. And we never did have dinner at O'Sheehans. Once I saw a sign saying it was prime rib night but any other night it was too much trouble to hunt for the info. Maybe a screenshot of the menus and specials on the TV? The first week I was all about weighing my options for dinner. By the second it was like, ugh, deck 6 is awfully far away to go look at the dining room menu....

Did not get picked for the Officers dinner. Bummer.

Haha I pushed the wrong key. I am looking for information on The Vibe????

 

 

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I believe Vibe is called Posh on the Epic. It's a private area you have to have a keycard to access. Since our transatlantic had very, very few kids on it, I didn't see the need for a private adults only area. Technically Spice H2O is supposed to be adults only during the day, and it's public.

There are two elevators in the Great outdoors. The port one goes up to Posh, you have to have a special keycard to get up there. The starboard one goes up to deck 18 which is also quiet and nice. Just not, as I would assume....posh.

But I'm sure someone who's used it can give you better info!

I'm so sorry. I was in the American line, and although it was very long, it went quickly. We had two boarder agents that barely glanced at my passport. I heard it went very, very slow for the crew also, and most of them never got to get off the ship.

Honestly I think the problem is that there were four very large ships that arrived in San Juan that morning and too few boarder agents. Not that I'm excusing them, but I don't think it was NCL's fault. Customs and immigration could do with a better process.

On day 3 we had a strike of luck and met someone (at a bar, obviously) that would become a good friend. We made lunch plans to meet up with her and her husband on day 5.

It was dress up or not night and I was psyched! I'd stuffed a cocktail dress into my little suitcase and by golly I was going to wear it! Unfortunately our afternoon siesta lasted a bit long and we just made it into the Manhattan room to see the end of the Burn the Floor, uh, floor show. Dinner lingered and even though we skipped dessert I missed meeting the captain. My fault for taking too long to get fluffed up, as my new Aussie friends would say, like a dollybird. Live and learn.

I know people love NCL for their casual freestyle approach to dress codes. I almost never get dressed up at home (I wear a uniform at work) so it's a treat for me to dress up a little and go to dinner. Our usual resort routine is to play until mid afternoon, go back to our room shower/nap/whateves and then throw on a casual dress and go out to dinner. I discovered that my appetite for this is exactly 8 days. After 8 days if we didn't have specialty dining reservations I was like, "eff it, lets go to the buffet". I did enjoy being able to eat wherever and whenever we liked, this was more like the resort style I was used to. Not sure I would have liked "traditional cruise style" with assigned times and table. This would be fine if you enjoyed your table mates or potentially disasterous if you didn't.

I think we wandered around, had a few drinks and listened to some music, wore out early, missed the Night Out party and fell asleep early.

Day 3

Breakfast in the buffet again. This time we went downstairs to La Cucina to eat. Which I selfishly hate to even say because it was blissfully quiet and calm. We actually ate breakfast here every day, which is not what I'd planned. I thought we'd switch it up with a few breakfasts in O'Sheehans and Taste, but honestly we fell in love with the view. We'd sit just above the bridge, looking out over the bow. We settled into a routine on the ship. Breakfast and coffee here, reading, watching the ocean for hours. There was a core group of us that were there everyday, although it definitely became more popular and louder as the cruise went on.

We saw so much wildlife. Lots of dolphins and pilot whales along the Spanish coast. What I think was a pod of north atlantic right whales. One morning I'd been reading for a couple hours and when I looked up an entire pod of small dark dolphins were crossing in front of the bow. I'm like "look, dolphins!". My husband, annoyed, had been watching for hours and nothing, I glance up from my book and they magically appeared. Later on, in the middle of the Atlantic we'd see hundred of flying fish, popping up out of the water and flying 10, 20, 30 feet before splashing back in. I really wanted to see a larger whale breach but maybe another trip. I'm told Alaska is the place to go for that. Although we are headed to Hawaii soon during migration season, so fingers crossed.

Too engrossed with my dolphins and book, I totally spaced the cabin crawl. Dangit I wanted to see some of that sweet, suite life. Next time.

Maybe half the time we'd have lunch in the buffet. Mostly, again, because of the view. We tried O'Sheehan's for lunch a couple times and Shanghais. Never made it in the noodle bar as it was always packed. But really we just wanted the view. Also I wanted (needed) the vegetables. The constant restaurant food of a vacation can be fun for a while but ends up wearing me out. And most of the menus were lacking on the veggies. The buffet had an awesome salad of the day station where it they would toss together different ingredients for you and most days it was delicious. The regular salad bar was also good. So I used the lunch buffet as a way to get in my veggies. There was also a marinated veggie dish with in the buffet some days that was delicious and I may have to recreate at home.

I'm really enjoying your non-haven non-posh review. I may have missed it, and if so I apologize, but what cabin were you in?

10296. Standard balcony B6 category, I believe. Port side, aft.

We bring Starbucks instant via packets....use the hot water from the coffee maker. Easy and tastes great.

The Via? That's actually a great solution and takes up hardly any room. I am currently drinking what is possibly the most traveled coffee ever. Grown in Sumatra, roasted in Amsterdam, purchased by myself in Barcelona, traveled across the Atlantic and flown from Florida to Indiana. A bit of a waste of valuable suitcase space.

Yay, Madame Michelle. I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation. I did as well.:)

I am enjoying your review, and your writing style is refreshing. You tell it like it is ("phone booth toilet" - hilarious).

 

In January, we sail on the Epic for the first time, and any helpful hints are appreciated. Re: coffee pot - I was planning on bringing my own favorite coffee and the 4" filters. Would that work?

 

The constant complaining from other passengers really irritates me too. I love your solution. I plan fully utilize the drink package!

No, the coffeemaker in the poor people's cabins is a single cup that uses a pre-filled round pillow-looking pod of coffee grounds. Not like a Keurig cup and a normal filter wouldn't work. Maybe someone here has figured out a workaround??? I have faith in you, Cruise Critic-ers. If someone has reverse engineered a solution, they've posted about it here.

speaking of taste, did you try the potato skins with crab. i was shocked it was real crab, not the fake red and white kind. we ordered a few more

Nope, for some reason that never made it onto our plates. Hubby and I usually order different things and then trade halfway through, that way we each get to try more. But even doing this there was WAY more food on this ship than we could try.

Enjoying your review so far! I also posted a review of my first cruise (also on the Epic!) and actually it seemed very welcome in that people are sick of hearing those who have been on 8000 cruises nitpick everything and moan about the free-flowing champagne stuffed lobster they got in 'the good old days'! So I'm sure everyone is looking forward to reading about your perspective too :)

 

I also like the Canary islands, I've been to Lanzarote once and Tenerife twice for land based trips, and enjoyed our cruise stop in Tenerife as it was the opposite side of the island from where I have been before! Looking forward to hearing about what you got up to on your port stops.

 

If you like craft beers maybe you should spend one of those future cruise credits on the Escape!

Squish, your review was incredibly helpful to me in planning this trip. And also so entertaining to read! I see that you're booked on the Escape now. The District Tap (and the waterfront) calls to me but I'm afraid we'd never leave to see anything else!

It was Halloween so I put on my cat ears for the day.

Off to the CC meetup. Hubby is not the social animal I am so he took his binoculars and book back up to deck 18 forward to look for dolphins and such. I enjoyed meeting some of the officers, and regretted that hubby did not attend, as he would have enjoyed that. We were both fascinated by the "ship" aspect of the cruise, how it is run, etc. It really is an amazing operation. Anyways, Richard the hotel director cracked me up when he said that they definitely read CC but sometimes didn't think they were on the ship. Boy would that become evident to me later. Some people are not happy unless they are complaining.

No recollection of lunch whatsoever. I know we stopped by the bridge viewing room, as we did every day, to check out the radar and AIS. Hubs and I are learning to sail so we geeked out about the boat stuff. In fact, the reason I chose this cruise as my first is that sometime we hope to do this crossing in our own sailboat so we thought it'd be interesting to do it first in a big ship.

I had made absolutely no plans for the evening, no dinner or entertainment reservations. Tonight was going through the Straights of Gibraltar and we didn't want to miss it. I was afraid we wouldn't make it as we'd left BCN a bit late and then the time change. But I have to give the captain credit, we hauled butt to make it there before sunset - 24 knots! And it was an amazing view, our first glimpse of the African continent and the rock itself.

Dinner at the Manhattan room. Hubby decided to be a good sport and donned his Halloween costume - bunny ears to go with my cat ears. Ugh, why did I not take pictures of everything?? Oh well, I was trying to live in the moment, phone off, disconnected. Don't remember what we ate, it certainly wasn't bad, but not amazing either if I don't recall. Apps came very quick, main course was a little delayed but my water glass was always full, so waitstaff service was good.

We went to the comedy magic show in Headliners that night which was quite entertaining, and I even drank less this day.

Day 2

Woke up and hubby made us coffee in the dinky coffeemaker using the pods which we sipped on the balcony, watching the Med slip by. Coffee. Yeah, about that. I'm pretty frugal in most things but we live by the motto that life is too short for cheap coffee or cheap beer. So in a moment of duh-speration I spent way too many Euros in Barcelona for a bag of ground Starbucks Sumatra, thinking we could find a way to brew it on the ship. Incorrect and next time maybe we'll bring a french press. We asked our steward if there were any filters we could use but alas the answer was no. We even considered slicing open a pod and replacing it with the good stuff. However we heard the ship ran out of pods and honestly it was too much trouble to try. We were on vacation after all.

I heard lots of complaints about the weird cabin design. It was ok. Separate shower and toilet was a bit weird. Would have preferred a proper door instead of pooping in a telephone booth. For couples I think it's fine but I could see how it would be awkward for others or difficult with more than 2 in a room. Separate sink seemed totally normal to me as that's how almost every hotel room in the US does it.

Up to the Garden Cafe for some breakfast. Just like a resort the breakfast buffet is the same every day, although this one was pretty extensive. I had my first of many made-to-order omelets. Oh those yummy bright orange egg yolks from Europe, full of good for you Omegas. I like to start my day healthy and then crash and burn on booze and bad decisions.

Sat outside to eat at the Great Outdoors. This gets pretty crazy at breakfast and lunch, but sometimes you want to see the water and feel the breeze. My biggest complaint about the Epic (said by so many on CC, so it's not like I didn't know it going in) was the lack of outdoor spaces. I'm no sun goddess, I just burn and feel miserable, but there were some shady spots available if you're willing to look, or stake it out early and then never ever leave it like it is your childhood teddy bear.

OP who told you that you had no right to do a review. i hope not the jerks on this forum. some just love to impart their words to build post counts and be negative towards others. it's their hobby.rather than post answers to questions they post things like ' why don't you just search for yourself'

 

so if you run into any of them, just ignore :)

 

you mentioned nachos in taste but did you have osheehans? i was very disappointed in those with their liquid cheese. if you ever are in bermuda go to the swizzle in and get those nachos. dang they were good

Lolz, well I didn't keep track of who was CC or not, lets just say there was a couple times that I complimented the service and was told that basically I didn't know better because it was only my first cruise. Some people. I swear if heard the word "PLATINUM" one more time I was going to bash my skull in on a bulkhead...

But yeah, nachos. O'Sheehan's sucked, Taste was acceptable. Steak fajitas in O'Sheehans were also not bad. Maybe order both and do some magic? Actually, the one thing I really, really missed on the ship was Mexican food. One day for lunch there was a Mexican buffet in the Great Outdoors that was really, really good with steak fajita meat and grilled peppers. I ate the crap out of that. Thanks for Bermuda rec. We had nachos in Cocoa Beach at Coconuts when we disembarked and those were pretty delicious!

LOVE that you're doing this. I feel badly because my time is spent in only a few places onboard, and my blathering doesn't give a true picture of the whole cruise experience.

 

When I started cruising, I went to the shows, trivia, checked off half of the items on the daily, but I've become boring in my old age :)

 

Can't wait to read more, and I agree, anyone telling you not to do the review are not worth listening to.

Oh good, I'm sorry, I certainly don't want you to think I was putting down your review - it was great! Just a little light hearted ribbing. :D The Haven will most likely never be in my future and I'm okay with that. I bring the good time with me wherever I go.;)

Question is would you go on another Cruise????

 

 

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Short answer? I hope so since I bought two deposits!!:D

Long answer is it will definitely be itinerary-based decisions for us. I think Alaska and Panama canal are made to be seen from the water. Maybe the baltic, too. I loved the sea days on the transatlantic, so relaxing, I read 4 books! I don't know if a Caribbean or Med is in our future. Port days just felt rushed and I could have stayed in the Canary Islands for months. But maybe that aspect was worth it, for now I know I want to return to Tenerife! I have two vacations currently planned, Cuba and Hawaii - both land-based.

TL;DR: Cruising will likely not be "our thing" but it will be one of the things we do along with our other adventures.

Cirque Dreams & Dinner is a dinner show. They serve a prix fixe menu during the show. I think all the others are stand alone shows. Burn the Floor and Priscilla are definitely not food related. Teppanyaki isn't technically a show but it is entertaining.

Cocktail time! Up to O'Sheehans to check it out. Went fine, it was still a bit quiet. Had a cocktail or two. Unfortunately O'Sheehans turned out to be one of my biggest disappointments for the cruise, somewhat due to my own expectations. I fully expected it to be my favorite place on the ship, the place that felt like home. The hubby and I love craft beer and hanging out in our favorite pubs at home. We are sit at the bar, chat with the bartender people and not table people. We tried it several times but it just never felt comfortable to us. Too loud, too close to the casino, barely no windows, too busy, and service was never as good as other places. Honestly I think they were just understaffed and over-customered most of the time.

So off to explore more of the ship. We walked around for a while, figuring out where things were and then finally up to the pool deck to see the port and the water. Found deck 18 forward, which gave us a fabulous view for sailaway. Sailaway was delayed just a bit as they were still provisioning. Still an amazing experience watching Barcelona fade away in the distance.

Dinner was in Wasabi that night. As my hubby said, "The fish isn't getting any fresher, it's not like they're trawling lines off the back of the ship". Wow. Blown away. Best meal we had, and we had many good ones. For some reason we were the only guests eating there that night, although I never saw it busy. Probably due to the a la carte pricing. We had a 6 meal UDP so we gladly paid the upcharge. Everyone from the hostess, our waitress and the sushi chef were fantastic. Recommending rolls to us that seemed to never stop. I'm embarrassed to say I can put away quite a bit of sushi. And the shaku shaku cocktails were also one of my favs. Later on I may have realized I had one too many.

And that brings us to Howl at the Moon. Lots of fun, have been to piano bars before and these two were very talented. Sipping yet another cocktail. So yeah, I knew the demographic of this cruise would trend older than myself and that does show itself in the music requested and played. I got a little bored, so if you were there, I was the drunk girl dancing to Lady Gaga.

End of first day. This will likely not be a day to day review, unless I can get my hands on my husband's log. Lets just say some of the days started to blend together after a while. :D