Epic 11/30-12/7 review....

[Kristinemomof3]

First I need to say, my parents took us on this cruise, we'd never been on a vacation like this before, it's just not in the budget. We flew our of Midway in Chicago on Saturday morning, did not have any problems doing this, arrived at FLL and took a shuttle to Miami. My mom had everything set up and it worked perfectly (after we found exactly where the shuttle would be) We arrived at the dock around 11a.m. and lines were kinda long, but not a huge wait, moved fairly quickly. Got our room keys, dd & I were "in" one room and Dh & ds's in another, however, they knew they were sharing a room. 9056 & 9060 were our rooms. At that time we could go to our rooms, checked them out, dropped our carry ons off and then went to the Garden Cafe for lunch. After that we walked around to check things out. Decided to go to CS to see about getting duplicate cards, there was a little bit of a line, but not too bad, just didn't think about it at check in (this was so dh could get into my room without a problem) Sailed away and ds and I weren't doing too well. We had been taking ginger and some stuff that goes behind your ears. I also asked for Dramamine at CS by that evening. Then I ran into my mom and she said she had patches! THANK GOD. I didn't know she did. I put one on and so did ds. (our kids are 12 1/2, 14 ds & ~16 dd. I pretty much had to go to bed by 9, but woke up and felt much better. We had left at 2:30 a.m., so it was a LONG day. Ds was doing slightly better, but did not really eat much until Wednesday?

 

So Sunday we checked out the pools and just relaxed. Sunday night was Blue Man Group. We all loved it, we got there early to sit right in the front row. After that we were going to check out Manhattan room with my family , but it was a longer wait, so we went to O'Sheehans? and got right in. Monday dh & I checked out the fitness center, didn't have any problems getting on machines. Our kids pretty much did their own thing as long as they stayed together. They did go sign up for Entourage, but didn't really go there, our youngest couldn't and he signed up for the young area, but never went to it. They were content to hang out with my brother & his fiance and just with one another. Our daughter had fun at the morning dancing/exercising and the boys were mainly at the pool. Oh Sunday afternoon, we went to some seminar and then Monday was a Diamond seminar and we were to it as well, I had recently lost my diamond, so dh wanted to see what they had to say. He actually won an ammolite pendant and I got it. I had planned to go to the Meet & great, but wasn't 100% so we just took it easy. So then Monday night was Second City. It was ok, the kids thought it was good. Tuesday was St. Martin. We went to Maho beach (mainly cause dh wanted to, I would have rather gone to a nice beach) we took a $2 bus, which was a hoot. People in St. Martin must hate to walk, you would pick someone up and then a block later, drop them off. My kids thought it was funny. The food at Sunset Bar was AWESOME. The waves at Maho were terrible. Really not great for swimming. Oh, that morning we shopped before we went to Maho. Then when we got back, we check out That Yoda Guy and a few more shops. Headed back to the ship as everyone was pretty beat.

 

We mainly rotated eating in the Manhattan & Taste, never really had trouble getting in, sometimes we'd go with my brother & fiance, sometimes we'd just go by ourselves. My parents mainly used the spa all week, so we hardly saw them.

 

In the evenings, we'd watch the movies, we watched Total Recall? & Men In Black 3. Oh also dh & I used the hot tubs and hung out at the FABBA party, whatever night that was.

 

The night of the White Hot Party we went to Legends and then Howl at the Moon. We had a BLAST at Howl. I was kinda bummed that we hadn't gone earlier in the week, if we had, we would have gone back. Dh did not want to go to the White Hot party. He is a contractor/painter and wears white all the time. Plus he's not a big party person, I really didn't care.

 

At St Thomas, we just got off and walked around and then ran into some crazy person that had a puppy and was begging for money for his puppy. He told us that he was from Canada and that his $100,000 yacht sunk in the ocean and he was stuck on St. Thomas. He did tell us to walk up to the bus stop and take the bus to downtown that it was a long walk. So we took the bus and it wasn't that far. After we shopped, (which we had a lovely time, I loved the market there, the people were great and not pushy at all. Dd had her hair braided and there was a gentleman that put hats with dreads on them so I could take pictures. No pressure to by anything at all. Then we walked back. I know, real exciting, but funds were limited.

 

Oh Thursday, we hit the $19.99 watch sale, oh my, that was a crazy time, but everyone except me got a watch.

 

On Friday at Nassau, we got off and checked out the straw market, I hated it, once in a lifetime experience for sure. Went to John waltlings distillery and then to Junkanoo. I knew it wasn't the best beach, but it was within walking distance and ds could snorkel, he had his own stuff and that's all he wanted to do. He found a HUGE piece of glass, so maybe he helped someone not get hurt. I'm talking, it took two hands to carry. DD was finding shells, so she was happy. Overall, was it what "I" wanted to do? No, but we enjoyed the weather and company, so we didn't care. Went back to the ship about 4:00.

 

I have to say, the last night is kinda boring, I wanted another movie, or just something to do, but it was kinda sad that it was the last night.

 

As far as our room attendant, he was great, there were extra towels for my kids, everything was always refilled and made up. We had no problems. Dh told him about some puke that was on the balcony railing (from a previous sailing and the room above us, but we could see it) and he took care of that. We left a bunch of comment cards whenever we would have a great server. Oh Thursday night we went to Moderno and had a great time, our server was awesome and did card trick at the end. Throughout the week we enjoyed talking with everyone where ever we went. We would sometimes sit in the Atrium and listen to music or just hang out at the pool. It was so relaxing. We did go up to Deck 16? a few times where it was quiet. My kids all had a fun time.

 

Some of the things that I did notice, I noticed little details, the hall ways have decorative strips towards the bottom and a lot of end caps were missing. The fake plants in the Garden Cafe were kind of bald from people removing the fake greenery. There was a blind in the garden cafe that needed to be replaced because it was ripped. They were constantly painting to keep things looking nice, which I think is great. You could really tell looking at the Carnival Ships across the ports when we were docked, that there looks to be much wear & tear on them.

 

We carried everything off for disembarking and that wasn't a problem. There's nothing that I would do differently other than I did decide I would prefer to cruise in January or February if I were going in the winter, going in early December has made it hard for Christmas. We had some traditions that we normally do that we didn't do this year and it's been harder to get into the Christmas mood. It took me about a week to get to feeling back into my "normal" routine, mainly because I wanted to be in the warm weather and had to return to cold Indiana. I would cruise NCL again given the chance, I have already decided that DH and I will cruise after the kids are all gone (and I go back to work so we can afford it) I would like to go on the Breakaway (or any other ship that has HOWL) I would said the Epic again if that were my only choice, but I think it would be fun to see what was out there. I would have to make sure I had a patch too, I felt all of the movement and just did not do well with it. Oh, we did go the the Q & A with the captain and enjoyed that and then the Q & A with Blue Man Group and enjoyed that as well. I'm sure there's stuff that I am missing, but anyway, that's long enough.

[boopsahoy]

Glad you had a good time!

[sam7]

Hi Kristinemomof3, Thanks for the review! We go on the Epic in about ten days - right after Christmas, so all your info is great. Especially good to know that we should get to Blue Man Group early. We're going to try to relax but still take advantage of all the stuff onboard. Can't wait!

[Keith1010]

Thank you for your review.

Keith

[SASA13]

Great review and glad you had a good time. I agree with nothing to do on the last night :( After eating dinner and putting out the suitcases, it was just a feeling of sadness knowing the party was coming to an end. We hung out in the casino that last night, and even it was not crowded.

[KirkNC]

Thanks for the report!

[Zeta3]

Thanks for the review. I was a little bored on the last night too until I realized there was a movie marathon playing on the TVs in the cabin with some really good movies. They also had pizza and wings up in the buffet so we got some and just had a pizza/movie night.

[ksimpso3]

I agree with you about cruising in January or February. We too were on a cruise 11/30-12/7/13 (Pride of America in Hawaii), and other than putting the Christmas lights up on the outside of the house, we had nothing done for the holidays. It took me a week also to get back into the swing of things, and now I'm trying to get some shopping done. We left 80's and sunshine to go back to NY with temps in the 10's-20's with snow:(...yuck!!. We took a cruise earlier this year (January 6-13) and I feel that was much better timing...had the holidays behind us.