Epic 1/9 San Juan RT - On board now

[HugeMuscleGeek]

On Epic now. Ship seems to be only half full. No waits for dinners or disembarking for shore excursions. 
 

Burn the Floor is going on at night, but no Priscilla (cast members ill with you know what). 
 

Check in took about 90 minutes from when we arrived at noon. Luggage drop off at pier (make sure taxi/Uber drops you at Epic. Our Uber driver insisted on dropping us at RCL saying there was one drop check in place for both ships. He was wrong), then bus to Sheraton for Covid-19 test, then bus back to pier for security screen and check in. No lines except for initial luggage drop. You can speed things up a lot by making sure your NCL luggage tags are already applied. 
 

No skipped ports so far (Aruba and Curiçao), but Grenada is limiting us to pre-booked NCL or “official” tour excursions. They are also allowing limited taxi service to the beach, but that’s it. 
 

Everyone seems to be masking except while eating, drinking, or in the pool/hot tubs). There’s one large group onboard who’s been warned a few times about masking and not overfilling the elevators though. 
 

Looks like there were a lot of upgrades to the Haven (our area).  At sea day had a very full courtyard area, but still distanced enough. 
 

I’ve uploaded the first four Freestyle Dailies below. 
 

Here’s hoping for an relaxing and uneventful rest of the voyage. 

NCL Epic Jan 9 2022 Freestyle Dailies Days 1-4.pdf

[itsnotjustme]

Thank you for the info.  Sadly, I am cancelling for the 16th on Epic.

[Renews]

Thanks so much for this info! Sailing on the Epic on January 30. 

[Alan C]

Hopefully we are sailing on 2/20 for this route.  Thanks for sharing. 

 

[portofrome]

Thanks for the infos. Have a great cruuse!

[vacation44]

Thank you for your report and enjoy the rest of your sailing. 

[pandncruisers]

Thanks for the dailies and the report, we are on b2b 01/23 & 01/30 and getting pretty excited. 

[janroatan]

Aruba > have you been informed if passengers can get off ship, shop port area?

[itsnotjustme]

1 hour ago, janroatan said:

Aruba > have you been informed if passengers can get off ship, shop port area?

I hope so - they were there a couple days ago!

[CruisingNCLHokie]

Thanks for the info, sailing on the Epic on 2/13... 31 more days... cannot wait...

[sarr7]

This is fantastic to hear that your sailing is largely uninterrupted! Can't wait to hear more about how the rest of the stops go. 

 

17 minutes ago, CruisingNCLHokie said:

Thanks for the info, sailing on the Epic on 2/13... 31 more days... cannot wait...

We're also on the 2/13 Epic sailing! Hoping by then that - even though Omicron will clearly still be around - cases will have started officially dropping by quite a bit. Rescheduling for any other later date sent the price about $2k higher for our group, which just didn't make sense - so unless things drastically decline, we'll be there! 

[CruiseMH]

Thanks for the on board info.

I`m on the epic on 23rd(if all works well).

I just studied the freestyle dailies and it seems that only Manhattan room is open for dinner, Taste seems to be closed completely.

Very interesting,so number of guests really seems to be far away from full capacity.

 

[janroatan]

Interesting about only Manhattan being open for dinner, I have pre-booked dinning fir our March 6, with a few nights in the Taste dinning room.I wonder if i should book all Manhattan instead?

[luckyinpa]

id love to hear from someone who got those super cheap haven cabins. the 2 brs were going for insane pricing. hope you enjoy!

[itsnotjustme]

We had a Haven 2BR at 2,799 per person (Epic 7-days) for the first two people.  We were a family of 5, and all told we were down to about 1,500 per person.  Our TA is cancelling now.

[HugeMuscleGeek]

14 hours ago, janroatan said:

Aruba > have you been informed if passengers can get off ship, shop port area?

Yes, you could get off and port shop in Aruba. 

[HugeMuscleGeek]

4 hours ago, luckyinpa said:

id love to hear from someone who got those super cheap haven cabins. the 2 brs were going for insane pricing. hope you enjoy!

The Owners Suite is awesome. We got 17007, so we’re looking forward to the ocean instead of back to the deck. 
 

Haven service is top notch as always and worth it. 

[HugeMuscleGeek]

Grenada today with a late start, around 12:30pm. Lines were longer getting off the ship. People were crowding in elevators, even though we told people trying to get on we were full. Very rude. 
 

Grenada is only letting you leave the ship if you’re on an NCL tour, another official local tour, or want to take a taxi to the beach. People trying to leave on their own are turned back to the ship (including some of the rude elevator stuffers earlier…karma, I guess). On tour, masks are on the entire time and your hands are sanitized at each stop. We did the Range Rover tour, which was very thorough across the entire island. It’s like sitting on benches in the back of a pickup truck, just so you know what to expect. 

Double check your account to make sure you’re getting any Lattitude discounts you’re supposed to get on shore excursions. The in-room ordering system doesn’t automatically apply the Lattitudes discount. The $50 shire excursion credit on gets applied AFTER you return from an excursion too. 
 

Dinner at La Cucina was good. I don’t eat veal, so they converted the veal Marsala into chicken Marsala for me. I also don’t care for tarragon, so they substituted the tarragon lobster sauce with a nice marinara sauce on the shrimp ravioli. 
 

We decided to take dessert back to the room, so they had the butler bring it up. This is great when you want a little breathing room after a full meal before tackling a delicious dessert. 
 

We were really only interested in seeing Priscilla, so our after dinner times are spent on in room dessert and streaming movies. We upgraded to the full streaming internet package and connected my laptop to the TV in the living area. If you’re going to do this, bring an HDMI cord and a cheap universal remote from Amazon (about $5). You’ll need the universal remote to change the inputs on the TV to your selected HDMI port..the in room remote won’t do this. TVs are Samsung if that helps. 
 

I’ll post more Freestyle Dallies tomorrow night. 

[itsnotjustme]

Thanks for the update.  On another thread I just saw the Gem cancelled its current cruise while underway and is returning to New York early.

[HugeMuscleGeek]

St. Lucia today with similar Covid guidelines to Grenada, but maybe a bit looser. I’ve posted the guidelines we received in the Freestyle Daily below. 
 

We did the Let’s Take a Selfie tour. Ten people in a nice van, with a tour guide, an assistant, and a driver. Not as in depth as yesterday’s Land Rover tour of Grenada, but definitely more comfortable.   It was two hours of various scenic stops with two more hours of beach time at the end. We used the beach time to eat lunch at a restaurant on the beach since it was a 9am start, so no time for breakfast. 
 

Tomorrow is St.Kitts, with no special restrictions, other than always wearing a mask while in port. 
 

Freestyle Dailies for Days 5-7 are below. 

NCL Epic Jan 9 Freestyle Daillies - Days 5-7.pdf

[cecil89]

Thank you so much for all this information, hope u are having a great cruise.   Looking forward to sailing feb 13-27th, fingers crossed.

would love to hear more.   
cheers 

 

[DevonfromAcme]

13 hours ago, HugeMuscleGeek said:

St. Lucia today with similar Covid guidelines to Grenada, but maybe a bit looser. I’ve posted the guidelines we received in the Freestyle Daily below. 
 

We did the Let’s Take a Selfie tour. Ten people in a nice van, with a tour guide, an assistant, and a driver. Not as in depth as yesterday’s Land Rover tour of Grenada, but definitely more comfortable.   It was two hours of various scenic stops with two more hours of beach time at the end. We used the beach time to eat lunch at a restaurant on the beach since it was a 9am start, so no time for breakfast. 
 

Tomorrow is St.Kitts, with no special restrictions, other than always wearing a mask while in port. 
 

Freestyle Dailies for Days 5-7 are below. 

NCL Epic Jan 9 Freestyle Daillies - Days 5-7.pdf 10.44 MB · 15 downloads

 

Did you get into St Kitts today?  We are scheduled to be there tomorrow on Enchantment. 

[Patsfans]

Did they stop allowing smoking in the casino ? I so hope so 

[HugeMuscleGeek]

22 hours ago, DevonfromAcme said:

 

Did you get into St Kitts today?  We are scheduled to be there tomorrow on Enchantment. 

Yes. We were there. 

[HugeMuscleGeek]

16 hours ago, Patsfans said:

Did they stop allowing smoking in the casino ? I so hope so 

Freestyle Daily says in fine print casino is non-smoking. No one was smoking there during our cruise. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by HugeMuscleGeek
Small edit