Norwegian Epic 3/16/19 Mini Review

[laurenfl15]

Just got home from the 7 day Epic cruise out of Port Canaveral. I am a big cruiser but this is my first time with Norwegian. It was also the first time we braved it with our two kids- ahhhh scary!

 

Pre-trip: After doing “once you go balcony you can’t go back” we downsized to an interior this time. Cabin 14007. I’m not a big main dining room fan so we booked specialty restaurants ahead of time. Thank goodness! Even though we book months in advance generally 9:00 or later was only available.

 

Cabin: Cabin was awful.  Partially our fault because we shoved four people into a very small interior. However… It became clear that there is a employee hallway behind our headboard… like clockwise at 2:00am every morning  that insanely loud sound of moving machines was behind the headboard.  I don’t think I got a good nights sleep the whole time. 

 

...  and let’s talk the bathroom set up that everyone already knows about. How awkward is it to try to rush taking a #2  because your husband is coming back in five minutes and you’re in Clearview behind a smoky glass screen. 

 

Comparisions/the crowd:

 

 This was a sold out spring break cruise. But you surprised me most? The college kids behaved-  I have never seen larger group of baby boomer partiers.   We have done carnival quite a bit and I’ve never seen anything like this. That’s not a bad thing… We had a blast… I was just surprised. 

 

Food:  I love the variety of restaurants available… I hate how hard it is to get reservations. We all have agreed that compared coming up on the buffet is lacking.  I missed guys burgers and carnival pizza.  That being said… I was amazed at the lack of lines based on the number of people on the ship. I never got frustrated at the buffet which is not typical. 

 

Loved the noodles restaurant, o’Sheehan’s  was very convenient with no weight ever.   Talion restaurant was surprisingly disappointing.  Moderno  it was good not great. Had the steakhouse booked for the last evening… But honestly we were so stuffed with food by that point that we canceled. 

 

Ports: Tortola, st. Thomas, great stirrup cay

 

 Can we all guess if we ended up going to great stirrup Cay? LOL… I didn’t have my hopes up based on former post in the forum… And I was correct. Canceled 

 

 We loved Tortola. Beautiful.  Booked a excursion through Norwegian to Magens Bay in Saint Thomas.  It. Was. Terrifying.  I know it’s a running joke about how scary foreign taxis are… But the shuttle they hired to take us was the scariest experience ever. Everyone in the cab was terrified. Magens Bay... meh.  It’s beautiful don’t get me wrong but we just preferred to Tortola

 

Cabin Seward:  he was great. Can’t complain. It is amazing how hard all the employees work their butts off.  The only bad thing… Which was not his fault… we reluctantly sent out very expensive costing laundry service...And they lost four pieces of our clothing and gave us four pairs of some other poor mans boxers LOL.  Took multiple phone calls and finally a visit to the front desk before anyone would communicate with me at all. I still never heard a “ official“ response… But I noticed a $140 credit on our account. It would have been nice to have someone call me to discuss the resolution. 

 

Kids Club:  The kids love it… They had tons of great activities and we are very happy with it. The downside is they were very strict about not having your kid crying etc. I mean… I get it. But our little one mentioned she was tired one night and we were in the middle of the Teppenaki Dinner.  Second the filet plate we got a call that we had to pick her up immediately. Of course she was bouncing off the walls when we got there. I absolutely understand the need for Parents to not be selfish and pick up children who are extremely upset… But come on… You can’t have 15 minutes?  

 

Disembarkation:  oh man… Today was a nightmare. Apparently they were trying a new facial recognization system in Lieu of a full customs deal with. Well… Apparently it didn’t work. This led to 4000 extremely upset people and me watching about a dozen man almost fist fight.  It was no order… I was complete chaos. We spent an hour in a line that it ended up we were not supposed to be in (  even though that is when we were directed by the staff )so we spent another good hour and a half going to proper direction. I witnessed an employee saying “sir you can hit me but I need you to keep moving“ 

 

Multiple people wrote #epicfail on the gangway dust.

 

Overall:  May get the wrong impression about it… But I loved it. The variety of restaurants, entertainment, kids club, And the leniency on the alcohol package LOL… I would definitely cruise again.  My kids had a blast. Staff was great “washy washy happy happy!”- come on some of you must know about the garden cafe greeter haha.

 

[voyager1964]

Thanks for your review!

How was the embarkation on your cruise? Which time did you arrive in port? Do you think the embarkation for the next cruise was delayed because of the customs mishap?

 

TIA

[laurenfl15]

33 minutes ago, voyager1964 said:

Thanks for your review!

How was the embarkation on your cruise? Which time did you arrive in port? Do you think the embarkation for the next cruise was delayed because of the customs mishap?

 

TIA

 Yes… I would absolutely think embarkation of the next cruise was delayed because of the shenanigans this morning. It was a mad house. 

 

 We arrived at port at around 11 AM last Saturday and it was relatively painless. The only issue was they didn’t leave port until about 9 PM due to “scheduled maintenance“

Edited March 23, 2019 by laurenfl15

[Roxybee12]

I was on the epic and disembarked today.  I walked off. Left my cabin @ 7am to get in line.  I had no issues.  At Orlando airport and check in before 9am.  

 

[laurenfl15]

11 minutes ago, Roxybee12 said:

I was on the epic and disembarked today.  I walked off. Left my cabin @ 7am to get in line.  I had no issues.  At Orlando airport and check in before 9am.  

 

Yeah must’ve occurred right after you got off… I didn’t really care… I’m pretty easy-going.  But let me tell you there were thousands of unhappy passengers. 

 

 Like I said above… A crew member had to say to a man “you can hit me you can Yell at me but I want you to keep moving“... this was a lady crewmember by the way. 

Edited March 23, 2019 by laurenfl15

[Sand and Seas]

Can you tell us more about the Magen's Bay excursion?  What was it about the taxi ride?

We were thinking about going to Magen's Bay on next cruise.

 

They used Facial Recognition to disembark the Bliss earlier this month and it worked great.   So sorry to hear your disembarkation was so horrendous

[CruisingNole]

3 hours ago, laurenfl15 said:

 

 

 Like I said above… A crew member had to say to a man “you can hit me you can Yell at me but I want you to keep moving“... this was a lady crewmember by the way. 

 

Are you serious?

[teach/2/cruise]

Hi wondering if you saved any of your Cruise Dailies from your Epic Cruise.  I would love to see them as we are sailing in approx. 2 weeks.  thanks in advance.