Review: Epic from 12/7-12/14 cruise

[BurtonRiderT6]

I'm not going to review the ports as they are all subjective as to what one does there, we had a great time at all the ports.

 

This review is all about our experience with the ship/staff/service and isn't a reflection on NCL as a whole. Just our experience, it may appear negative but you remember the bad more than the good typically.

 

Balcony Stateroom: When we first got in the room it appeared really nice.....once we started to unpack is when some things went down hill. Not sure how so much sand got every where, sand on top on the back of the couch area where the phone goes was covered. We saw on one of the towel hooks was a hair-tie with a nice little assortment of hair with it. We were in a family balcony and as we went to the closet area we noticed a strand of hair hanging from the ceiling of the pull out bed. The documents that NCL sends to passengers were left in the room from the previous cruise, those passenger were not aware of the rules regarding the bringing of personal irons on board. So with that said we were kinda grossed out, we removed things with toilet paper as the tissue box was empty. Then with a wash cloth and some shower gel I started to scrub down the room. After all that we finally felt we could relax and pour a drink as we bring our own soda on board. My girlfriend ask me to check the ice and we had chunks in our ice bucket that weren't exactly frozen and neutral smelling. At this point we decided to head to guest services. We get down there and I asked the guy if he'd like some ice and opened the bucket, he appeared grossed out too and called the supervisor for our area (which was just the steward for our room as it turned out) to meet us in our room. The thing that got me was he asked if I we would like to take our chum bucket with us, as if we enjoyed the initial trip from deck 14 to 5 with it. Needless to say the overall the room appeared to have had the bed made and that was all, very surprising as all our other cruises the rooms have been in such pristine condition that I wonder if it's only because of the size of the ship and limited time to clean that maybe they were undermanned or something. Our tissue box was refilled on the last day of the cruise as were some female trash bags other than that the room was clean for the rest of the cruise, not sure if it was him or us though.

 

Entertainment: This was kind of a let down in quantity not quality, we went to the Blue Man Group, Legends in Concert, and a bunch of other shows. It seemed like on sea days there was less stuff to do than on the smaller ships. They didn't have much going on during the day, the pool area was packed with adults and kids, the adult pool surprised me....I didn't think so many people could fit into it. I felt like the amount of things to do during the day revolved around the Casino on this ship. Now the Blue Man Group was absolutely awesome we tried to go again but were unable to since we had already been and the seating was standby for those that fail to appear for their reservations. The Legends in Concert was really good, my only gripe is that at 30 years old I shouldn't be older than one of their "Legends." Needless to say when she came to the stage I was wondering why? Good performances by all of them though. The other shows/game shows were good but the area they were held may be questionable.

 

Lounge reviews: Absolutely terrible, the Bliss lounge is where they hold most of their game shows like The Dating Game, The Perfect Couple, Quest, Etc. If you're not one of the first 15 people in line then you will not have very good seating. This ship NEEDS a Spinnaker Lounge or something of similar size. The Bliss lounge is too small a venue for some of these shows. The EPIC Theatre appears a lot smaller than theatres on the other smaller ships.

 

Food Service: No need to review the actual food as it's subjective, we had no problem with the food. The service was hit or miss, our first night we went to O'Sheehan's bar side to get some wings and a burger. We sat there for about 15 minutes before someone approached us, they had walked by us about 5-6 times before stopping. Then they got our order wrong, 2 wings 1 burger, got 2 burgers 1 wings. Didn't bother saying anything as after she dropped off the food we didn't see her again. We ate at the MDR a couple times and the service was fantastic one night and not so much another. We ate at Moderno one night and our server was awful from the start, we didn't say anthing but a different server came and picked up our table after 10 minutes and was fantastic, she recieved a tip. Other than those two instances everything else was pretty much good, we ate at the Noodle Bar and watched the chefs prepare our food. The service at the buffet was good, I was asked many times if I would like a drink (non-alcoholic) but the girlfriend was already getting us drinks but I did see many elderly people take them up on the offer.

 

Casino: I was a bit disappointed, all the digital table identifiers were covered with a laminated paper identifer. Had two $5 BJ tables that paid 6 to 5. Was told I had to play a $10 table to get the 3 to 2 payout which is understandable, only problem was there was no $10 BJ table, $5 or $15+ for BJ. All the other tables were $10+ which surprised me since it's the "Biggest at Sea". The last Sea Day they removed the signs and I found many more $5 tables. Needless to say after I lost my casino budget I didn't bother playing anymore. I expected the casino to be Epic, not so much.

 

Overall: We kind of felt like the ship was undermanned for the mass of people on board and with that, the quality service we're used to took a step backwards. Not sure if it's like this on all "mega ships" or not but we will probably stick to the smaller vessels for now. We did have a great time and didn't want to leave but we had to.

 

Oh yea, the bathroom layout in the stateroom is really odd.

[anandaindonesia]

Thanks for sharing.

[Knightcruiser]

I was on the same cruise as BurtonRiderT6 and agree with his assessment. While we had a good time cruising with 2 other couples, I was disappointed in the quality of food, service and entertainment on the Epic (with the exception of the Blue Man Group).

Have cruised on the Dawn twice and the Star once and the Epic did not compare favorably for me. The ship was massive in size with way too many passengers to be serviced properly by the amount of staff on board. Service was exceptionally slow in the dining rooms. The one exception was Moderno in which we had the best meal and service of the cruise.

The elevators were jammed during meal hours and the pool deck was overflowing with passengers during our sea days.

Was also unhappy with the layout of the ship that forced one to traverse the casino in order to get to your destination. I am sensitive to smoke and while the filters did a fairly good job, it wasn't enough to stave off allergy attacks. Will stick to smaller ships in the future.

[xcell]

so im curious...what happened to your room? did they apologize or at least clean it up better? did you find the room attendant better for the rest of the cruise or a let down???

[Kristinemomof3]

Wow, we were on the week before and had great service & a fantastic time. Our room was spotless.

[xcell]

What room were you in? Hope not to get that room attendant.

 

 

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[BurtonRiderT6]

We were in room 14092, it's a voyage in itself to get there. It's on the port side but you have to walk down the starboard side to get to it.

 

As far as what they did for the room? Nothing really, they apologized and the steward wrote a note apologizing. Other than that there wasn't much change. We tend to keep our rooms pretty tidy since it's such a small space to begin with (in regards to a bedroom at home), so he didn't have to do much. We had already scrubbed down the areas we felt could use a little extra cleaning power, I'm sure he would have if we asked him to but it was a peace of mind thing. Knowing it's been done is better than having doubt.

 

Another thing we noticed was that on all our previous cruises, our steward knew our names and greeted us everytime he saw us. This steward just said "Hi, Enjoy your day." It just didn't feel as personable as the other stewards we've had. Needless to say tipping is optional and we tend to leave a $40+ tip in the cabin when we leave but unfortunately for him he will only get the tips from the DSC.

[Keith1010]

Thank you for the review.

 

Keith