Back to Back Haven Epic July 3 thru July 17

[Harratine]

Just returned from our first back to back on the Epic out of Barcelona.  We had a 2 Bed Haven Suite on 16 looking out on the pool courtyard.  I am planning on writing several posts about the good, the bad and the not so good.

 

A little background first.  This was our 13th and 14th NCL cruises, add in 2 Disney cruises and you could say we travel a fair bit.  In our cabin was me (your narrator), my wife and our daughter in the second bedroom.  We live in Northern Virginia, about 30 miles outside of DC, or just north of Dulles airport.  Wave as you go by next time you land in Dulles, we are so close.  This cruise was our Covid revenge tour, as it replaced an Alaska cruise in 2020 that included the railroad to Denali.  The cancelled cruise credit plus some robust negotiations by the trip planner (me), we swapped Denali/Alaska straight up for the back to back for all of us in the Haven.  The deal was sealed in May 2020 guessing that NCL would survive the shutdown and we went all in on losing all the cash we paid for our Alaska bucket list cruise for a once in a lifetime b2b Haven experience.  We came up 🎰.

 

The Epic has always been the cruise ship we wanted to take as it became the template of the Haven, featuring Vibe as part of the Haven, and the original Haven experience.  We weren’t looking forward to the split toilet that is synonymous with eponymous Epic cabin and the enhanced Haven plus the price made the decision easy.  We are familiar with Haven experience on the Escape and had a pretty good idea what we should expect.
 

My wife and I met in Africa as part of the Peace Corps, with me serving 3 years and my wife serving 2.  After Peace Corps, I returned back to the States and my wife went backpacking through Europe.  This was back in the 90s, before we were married and before our daughter (now 19,,, her age becomes part of the story later on).  She visited Spain, Italy, France and Germany, which was similar to the ports for the Epic, so we had a built in tour guide for our trip.  This was our first family trip to Europe as we wanted our daughter to be old enough to enjoy the trip.

My wife’s sister’s family visited us in DC last summer and during their visit, they decided to join us on our European Vacation.  Their daughter is the same age as ours and would join us for the first week.

 

Our itinerary was Barcelona, Corsica, Citaveccia (Rome), Naples, Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Cannes, Majorca and then back to Barcelona.  This was a port every day.  We have never done a cruise where they were no sea days.  We like our sea days. Also unlike any cruises that originate in the states, the cruise ship never “zeroes out”, which means all the passengers disembark.  About 80% of the passengers board in Barcelona, 19% board in Rome, and the last 1% boards in between, so everyday is new passengers coming, rooms being turned over and it’s pretty rough on the crew.  It is also pretty rough on the cruiser if you aren’t expecting it as it is super easy to book yourself solid for the cruise.  Fortunately we didn’t book everything in sight, though it wasn’t in recognition of the pace of the cruise.  I guess we got lucky.  We inadvertently planned our own sea days as a result.

 

For this cruise we booked our airfare through NCL as the price was really, inconceivably low.  I am guessing that several parties lost money for the price of the airfare as I couldn’t send a letter for how cheap it was.  This will be a later post as we had one direct flight (IAD to BCN) and another that was via Africa.  I kid you not! Two different carriers, two different trips.  This may have resulted from the separate cruise numbers for the b2b cruises.

 

We typically arrive the day prior to a cruise departure.  This trip due to the 6 time zone change, we planned a jet lag day and a excursion day in Barcelona.  So we had 3 days in Barcelona through NCL. NCL provided the transfers from the airport, the hotel and the transfers to the ship.  The airport transfer was pretty good once we found the driver.  Barcelona had 5 cruises originating the day we arrived and nearly 100 drivers with signs on their cell phones making it harder to find the right person. My DW was able to find them, ironically right in front of the exit, we of course were looking left at the other 99 drivers.  Hotel met our needs (Hilton).  The location was central to Barcelona and adjacent to Diagonnal Avenue, which has wide tree lined sidewalks, separate roadways, bike trails and a fantastic pedestrian experience.  Very easy to hail taxis, walk to stores and restaurants.  I would definitely stay there again if the opportunity presented itself.  Cost of taxis in Barcelona were cheap compared to what we pay in Virginia.
 

The transfer to the pier however was not well done at all.  The tour bus operator and NCL had you check in (which could be as in our case, 3 days before), gave you a packet telling you where to be when.  Sounds simple? That’s what you would think. That of course was contrary to what happened.  Apparently there are little spit ball papers with numbers that they use to assign buses.  Where does one get these wrapped scraps with a pencil marks? No one knows, not mentioned in the packet.  We talked with another family in week two who also experienced this bizarro system of picking busses like you select a “Secret Santa”.  So after seeing the first bus being held up by a half hour and realizing the third bus they were “creating” due to the number of passengers using the shuttle to the port, we decided to go “off mission”.  Seriously, couldn’t they count the people before hand and figure out they didn’t have enough seats?  I am shocked that the wisp of paper solution failed to account for this systematic failure!  So rather than deal with the noon bus #3 that was at least an hour late from the non-departure of bus 1 and 2 due to the wonders of transfer system, we jumped in a taxi.  This was day 3 of taking Barcelona taxis.  Who would have thought there would be a problem getting to the port? Of course, we had a driver that thought we said “Aeroport” not “Puerto”.  It happens, and we all had a good laugh with our driver once we all figured it out.  Learned the word “cruesera” too.  We arrived in front of bus 1 by about 2 minutes and prepared to check in.  Once onboard, the in-laws appeared to have a similar experience in their taxi, ie the driver not knowing there is a port in Barcelona.  

[CTCruiser001]

Nice start - Looking forward to the rest of your review. 👍

[cruiseny4life]

Keep it up - I'm loving reading this so far! Thank you...I'm going to be disappointed there are no sea day relaxation stories though (I love sea days)!

 

Next day my plane gets cancelled at Dulles, can I pop in for an evening to rest? It happens far too often haha

[Cruise-mom]

Looking forward to following along, we are on the Epic July 31st.

[Harratine]

The Epic being a 10 year old ship recently went through a refresh.  The Haven rooms are a more contemporary sleek finish with wood and greys.  It turned out really well done, and as a construction guy this is a high compliment.  
 

You could see the age of the ship in a few odd spots, one of which was the biggest issue on the “not so good” list.  The entry door was quite finicky on when it decided to latch properly.  This drive my wife to question whether she understood the finer points of door closing and a few discussions with the room steward and butler.  Mildly annoying and not the worst thing to have happened.  Taking the award for the biggest issue was the master toilet not flushing.  This was really annoying.  I can’t ever say I got on a first name basis with the ship plumber before.  Nice guy, but not the guy you want to develop a daily relationship with.  The Epic has the master toilet further into the floor plan than the older ships normally did.  I am guessing the ship has undersized vacuum lines which leads to the “toilet not flushing” issue.  I’m sure there are fellow cruise board people who can verify this. It got so bad at one point in the 2 weeks that the Epic plumber replaced the valve assembly.  Annoying, yes.  Vacation ruining, no.

 

Speaking of the room steward and butler(s), we had Putu as a room steward and the tag team of Virgilio and Richard as they moved the butler around the ship so the aft Haven suites were served by a rotation each week.  They were fantastic.  NCL should be proud to have such professional staff on their ships.  With the “made up sea days”, we were a handful for Putu to guess our schedule.  He approached it with a great attitude and worked around our schedule.  Both the butlers provided in room dinners after our Rome days which were always long and brought coffee, hot chocolate and pastries for morning each day.  We requested sandwiches whenever possible for afternoon snack instead of sweets.  The room team hit it out of the park.

 

The bar service team in the Haven was awesome.  Upstairs in Posh (Vibe) was Alvin all day for both weeks.  Easy to talk to and makes a fantastic Mango Madness.  Day 2 of the cruise I wandered upstairs with my daughter and sat down at the bar.  Alvin, being the consummate professional leaned over and mentioned “the Posh Club is an adult only area”, which made me ask “what age is an adult in Europe? I thought it was 18”.  After which Alvin did a double take on the daughter (who is a very young looking 19 year old).  We had a good laugh and I am sure Alvin verified what I said too.

 

Downstairs was Maricel and Sy.  They can make a wonderful drink.  For the second week we upgraded to Premium Plus, cuz why not right? The whistle pig old fashioned they crafted was to die for.  That with a Starbucks habit every morning and random glasses of the veuve cliquot the added cost was far exceeded with the premium beverages.  Waters and sodas whenever was a nice touch.  A wonderful place to do the rock star treatment.

[Harratine]

The cruise visited a different port everyday.  There was one port that exceeded our expectations and a lot of pretty good ports as well.

 

From our visits, the ports we found most interesting were Corsica and Naples.  
 

Corsica exceeded our early low expectations as it was very walkable with interesting streets.  It is a place that we could see ourselves retiring to.  We were pleasantly surprised.

 

Naples was second in the ease of moving around from the ship and it’s charming alleys and buildings.  The port does require some navigating as they are constructing what they Claim will be the the “most beautiful train station” surrounded by a castle, which it appears it may be.

 

Least favorite were Cannes (all tenders), Rome due to the distance from Citaveccia (hour and half plus depending on traffic). 
 

For excursions, we did Rome and the Vatican on one week and Catacombs and Castles on the other.  These excursions will run you an easy 11 hour day.
 

 The visit to the Vatican was incredibly cool.  Favorite place was St Peters Basilica.  Absolutely stunning.  The Sistine Chapel was wall to wall people and the tour included a shortcut between the Sistine Chapel and St Peters through the “Kings Staircase” which is a long staircase that kings would walk when visiting the Pope.

 

The Colosseum was pretty neat though really hot.  We lost 3 tour mates at the Colosseum.  Not sure if they ever made it back.

 

The Catacombs were impressive s they sprawled under farm.  There was a room that was the final resting place of several early popes, an occasional saints and over 500,000 souls final resting place.  The trip continued to Castle Gandalfo, the Popes summer residence, a visit to Nemi and lunch in a restaurant where Nona made homemade pasta.

 

Next up is Excursions to Cinque Terre, Secret tunnels under Naples and Pompeii and Barcelona 

[ljrfrm]

Enjoying your review - especially because I live in Ashburn too!!! 🙂

[Harratine]

With the before hotel time in Barcelona, we turned one day into an excursion day with the in laws.  We bought tickets to Sagrada Familia cathedral on their app about a month before we left.  After a little online research, we decided to include the Nativity Towers option as it was the part designed/constructed by Gaudi.  Incredible views when you ascend.  You end up on a bridge located by the Christmas tree at the front of the cathedral, or about 15 stories up.  They take you up in an elevator and then you walk down.  It was nerve wracking as the staircase is a tight spiral and has a handrail on the outside only.  There are about 400 steps down.  Bad knees will feel it by the end.  Incredible cathedral, it is extremely busy with tourists and is the second most visited place in the world after the Great Wall in China.  A not to be missed experience that you want to book early.

 

After the cathedral we grabbed lunch and then a cab north to Parc Guell.  It’s the only park I have seen that everything appears to be uphill both ways.  This is another Gaudi design.  Book tickets online before you leave.  Each ticket has a time range of a half hour to enter the park.  You can stay however long you want, but only enter during this time.  Some truly interesting and whimsical buildings in the park.  
 

Our Gaudi day saw incredible architectural work and set the bar high for the rest of the excursions.

 

Pompeii Excavations was fairly easy to get to from the ship.  First lesson I would share is that volcanic activity and trees don’t mix.  So if you are looking for shade in Pompeii, bring a parasol.  The past few weeks in Europe have been hitting 40 to 43 Celsius and Pompeii was nearer the 43.  Hot days, but that is relative to what happened in Pompeii during the eruption.  Streets are uneven cobblestones (most of the walking in excursions) with the curbs a 12” rise. 
 

Naples Secret Tunnels tour was a short walk from the ship.  Our first stop was near the theater and government palace.  Nice neighborhood to walk around and explore and has a cafe with the most incredible looking pastries.  They served the hottest espresso that may have been warmed up in Pompeii.  The tunnel tour was a mixture of World War 2 bomb shelters created by the early Naples residents to build their homes.  Interesting stuff.  The tunnel then becomes an escape route from the palace to a nearby military post.  Fascinating history.  After you come out of the tunnel at the worlds most interesting parking garage, we stopped for pizza (pizza alone was worth the tour).

 

Last and not least was Cinque Terre, the five villages.  It’s a 2 hour ride north through Livorno, Pisa and Carrera to get to the villages carved into the side of the hills.  You start going down to the second village Manarola. Bus can’t access the town so lots of walking.  At the end of the town is a ferry that takes you to the 3rd town Riomaggiore where you find “Luca” ristorante amongst the buildings.  Two of the towns were morphed together for the setting of the Disney movie of the same name.  Final boat stop was Monterosso for late lunch and train to Levantine.  Beautiful towns, very crowded during this time frame.  
 

I mentioned we drove through Carrera on our way to Cinque Terre.  Yup, that snow you see in the mountains is not snow but world famous marble used by architects and sculptors worldwide.   
 

Biggest takeaway about the excursions. They include a lot of stairs that are uneven, cobblestone roads, crazy curb heights and in general a bad day for bad knees.  Be careful when selecting and pay attention to activity rating and accessibility.  Two of the three tour mates who we lost at the Colosseum were due to wheelchair access (third not sure, maybe lions?). 
 

Next up, building your own Sea Day!

[cruiseny4life]

Can't wait for the BYO Sea Day adventure!

[bbqbears]

Harratine, thank you for this wonderful review.  My family and I will be on this cruise in September.  I have some concerns that you called out, i.e. several sites are not comfortable to navigate.  Could you tell me if there are any places to sit down, both in the Pompeii site and in the Roman Forum?  My friend and I both have some mobility issues, thus we plan to go at our own pace while my able-bodied son and DIL explore further.  

Kathy

[Harratine]

On 7/19/2022 at 11:57 AM, cruiseny4life said:

Keep it up - I'm loving reading this so far! Thank you...I'm going to be disappointed there are no sea day relaxation stories though (I love sea days)!

 

Next day my plane gets cancelled at Dulles, can I pop in for an evening to rest? It happens far too often haha

Looks like ljrfrm can help too!  Just knock on any door and tell them y’all know us.

 

21 hours ago, ljrfrm said:

Enjoying your review - especially because I live in Ashburn too!!! 🙂

 

[Harratine]

2 hours ago, bbqbears said:

Harratine, thank you for this wonderful review.  My family and I will be on this cruise in September.  I have some concerns that you called out, i.e. several sites are not comfortable to navigate.  Could you tell me if there are any places to sit down, both in the Pompeii site and in the Roman Forum?  My friend and I both have some mobility issues, thus we plan to go at our own pace while my able-bodied son and DIL explore further.  

Kathy

Pompeii had some, maybe 10 benches in an acre.  Oddly enough the super high curbs could work for a low bench.

 

colosseum had a walk about 100 yards from where the buses drop you off and it’s downhill from there.  If you went rogue from the tour, the sidewalk at the street would give a pretty good view and be less walking.

[Harratine]

On 7/19/2022 at 1:13 PM, Cruise-mom said:

Looking forward to following along, we are on the Epic July 31st.

Awesome! Please let me know if you have any specific questions

[Harratine]

On 7/18/2022 at 3:20 PM, CTCruiser001 said:

Nice start - Looking forward to the rest of your review. 👍

Welcome aboard!

[bbqbears]

Harratine,  Thanks for your response-very helpful.  I've waited a lot of years to go rogue.  Now I may have to! 

[Harratine]

Building Your Own Sea Days - 2 Ways and some different things to do 

 

With all the port days and no sea days we got inventive on making our own sea days.  Easiest in Cannes as you aren’t tied up to a pier.

 

Plan 1 - Haven Pool

Go to get breakfast late, watch everyone leave and pick your favorite chair pool side. Rotate between the pool, sauna and hot tub.  Move with the sun, get drinks from the outside bar and eat lunch in the outside haven restaurant.  There will be at most another couple at the pool.  Peaceful and great to read a book.  When your shipmates return, depart your private pool.

 

Plan 2 - Spa Passes

Epic has a really good spa.  Limited accessibility on a sea day. With the port plan, you may see (sea?) maybe another couple.  So quiet and empty that the staff will literally mop behind you as you walk about.  Plenty of heated chairs.  Go outside on the back porch and take a nap overlooking the latest port in quiet.  Make sure to visit the steam room, a hidden treat.  After you finish in the Spa, walk to deck 15 by the pool to the secret Haven Elevator (aka the Bat Cave entrance)by the outside food station on left.  Badge in with your Haven card, take to floor 18.  Enjoy the infinity mirrors and elevator air conditioning as it whisks you up to the Posh bar.  Chances are during your personal sea day, the bar service will be only for you.  Order up your favorite libation in your private bar.  Finished upstairs, back to the Bat Cave elevator to 16 to the Haven bar.  Refresh with another libation in your other private bar.  
 

Add on activities depending on what you like to do

 

1. Join a fitness class - they are usually the same time as the port arrival.  It’s annoying if you are leaving.  BYO C Day means the classes are pretty empty.  I am a big Peloton rider, the Ryde spin classes were a good workout for me.  Wanted to get a Boxing training in, but never got the class to align.

2. Meander to Starbucks, no line, little waiting.  Enjoy the cup of Joe

3. get your guest services annoying stuff done.  No line, little waiting.  It’s like having your own lobby.

4. Eat early breakfast and get secondy breakfast with your family.  
5. Slides. And if you haven’t figured it out, no lines. You can move so fast from slide to slide without waiting the stairs become a great cardio workout.

6. Get your toilet fixed.  Oh this was my problem, so hopefully you won’t have it happen to you.

 

 

[Harratine]

Adventures in B2B cruising

 

Our transition from week 1 to week 2 started with a meeting in Le Bistro hosted by the General Manager of the Epic, Nelson and his staff.  
 

Really informative meeting.  For our week there were a total of 12 passengers going B2B.  According to Nelson, this was a very small number, a big number for his staff is 300 passengers doing B2B.  For week 1 there were 3600 passengers (ship felt empty) and rose to 3900 for week 2.  They expected the next few months to be over 4k every week going forward.

 

During a back to back, the account you have is kept opened and they just roll everything over and make sure your card says the new week.  We were a little concerned with this as each week we had an astounding amount of OBC ($700/week).  That’s enough money to keep my attention and we’re assured that this would be seamless.  We also added the spa passes and premium plus package for week 2 as the in-laws were there for week 1.  Any guesses on what happened?

 

Our keycards got horribly screwed up.  They had to replace them 3 times in 2 days and continually were deactivated.  Phyllis in Finance and I are no longer on friendly terms.  The times that the cards were deactivated were during meals and other really inconvenient times.  The OBC took three days to get resolved and the poor folks at Starbucks started handling our key cards as if they were some kind of an explosive.  We came to resolution over most of the items and NCL zeroed out all the Starbucks charges (even the first week) rather than dealing with the spaghetti mess.

 

To make it even more fun, remember back when I said my daughters age would become part of a story?  Well week 2 is when it became fun.  Our daughter has cruised with us since sometime in 2005, as a child before this cruise she had 84 latitude points.  Your first cruise after your eighteenth birthday, the child becomes an adult in NCL parlance.  So week 1, our daughter was a child.  Week 2 she become the youngest Platinum latitudes member in the NCL fleet.  That comes with some really big perks, laundry and the two free meals for two are like big money.  With the three of us as Platinum and my wife and I getting the two meals, it means we had 12 meals or enough meals if the daughter brought one of us as a guest on her tickets for 4 nights of specialty dining.  And this took an act of the NCL gods in Miami to resolve as normally the next cruise isn’t the next day.  Eventually figured out and our newest Platinum member was happy to finally be in the club.

 

An interesting side comment from the Nelson meeting was that as of August 1, NCL will no longer require pre cruise COVID testing.   
 

Tomorrow we can hit food as a topic

[thedriver23]

great read - love all the info being posted.

 

How did your daughter go platinum -only asking as wondering if I have missed a trick.

 

My kids have cruised with me everytime, but my eldest is now 21 and is sailing with me again (but on his own booking now), but he is starting off with nil points

 

This is despite him doing several cruises in the past with us.

 

What should I have done so he got those points - only asking as I have a 14 year old and want him to get the points if I have missed it for the eldest 

 

Thank in advance

[Cruise-mom]

15 hours ago, Harratine said:

Awesome! Please let me know if you have any specific questions

Thank you, can you remember anything about Priscilla, days/times?

[Mandalay5]

Regarding child getting latitudes points—He should have been assigned a latitudes number when he initially cruised with you. He will probably have to call to have points credited to the correct number (and merge latitudes accounts if needed). This was the case with our child…he had been assigned a new number on each cruise as a minor.

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by Mandalay5
Added clarification

[Harratine]

On 7/21/2022 at 9:15 AM, Cruise-mom said:

Thank you, can you remember anything about Priscilla, days/times?

Didn’t go to any shows.  If memory serves it was Tuesday and Thursday with shows at 7 and 9:30.  One of the days was only a single show (7?)

[Harratine]

Food was excellent all around. 
 

Ate in LaCucina and LeBistro twice, Teppanyaki, Moderno and Cagneys once.  Had a 3rd planned in LaCuccina that we cancelled.

 

LaCuccina is our go to.  Took us a few cruises to go there, surprisingly good.  Lasagna is back on the menu.  Dining plan included appetizer, pasta course, entree and desert.  Got pizza for the first time this cruise.  Not as good as the pizza in Naples (high high bar).  I’m a fan of the lasagna, so had that twice.  Veal chop was awesome as usual.

 

LeBistro was a good one to repeat.  Our favorite is the escargot.  If the servers mention that it will be a few minutes on the escargot, give them the time they want.  Our second visit had this occur and the escargot was at another level of taste and chew.  
 

Teppanyaki was its usual noisy crazy meal with too much food.

 

Cagneys, while excellent, is a step from the Haven restaurant. So if you have the Haven restaurant, it becomes okay.  The rest of the family is indifferent on red meat.

 

Moderno was the first time we ate there.  Seriously.  Been on a lot of cruises and just didn’t do it.  Partly due to the red meat comment before.  This time we had so many meals and not a lot of choices, so we went.  Oddly enough after we decided to go to Moderno back in January, my work schedule the last two months included lunch meetings at Fogo de Chao.  From that I had a pretty good idea of what it was to be.  The buffet choices were numerous and varied.  The pickier eaters had a lot to choose from.  The sushi was a nice surprise.  All together we would go back to Moderno.

 

For the “included” restaurants, we went to Taste 3 or 4 times and O Sheehans 4 times.  One night post-Rome we ordered Noodles/Shanghai to the room (this why we like the butler).  Taste was never crowded which is why we go there.  Meals were solid, staff attentive.  O Sheehans has changed some.  The shepherds pie is now turkey based and wings are a little over sauced.  Sausage Sliders were awesome.  Wife and daughter became huge fans of the chicken salad sandwich.  My go to the 2 Coney Island hot dogs, no fries.  Most days was uncrowded and service was quick.  Drinks took longer than food.

 

Noodles in the room took about 45 minutes longer than expected.  We ordered the morning before our excursion to assist the butler with planning.  Ask for the menu the evening before to be able to make your requests.

 

Haven restaurant was excellent as usual.  One evening after excursions, the dining room was chaos.  It felt like everyone in the Haven was trying to eat the same time.  The staff was challenged to say the least, though they performed well.  Our daughter is a big fan of pasta.  The Haven menu doesn’t have pasta as a choice.  The Assistant Maitre D offered early on to bring food from LaCuccina if she wanted (pizza and pasta) whenever she wanted.  They made pasta for her a few times without blinking, not surprising that they have this level of service.  Did see one child eating a hot dog at breakfast too.  New additions (at least to me) were the Surf and Turf with the lobster tail, Israeli CousCous and shrimp salad (shrimp grilled and were huge) and avacado toast (which I didn’t try).  Menu stood up over two weeks of the same menu.  For breakfast, ask for “crispy bacon”, that was to die for.

[Mommapadraig]

Thank you! I am enjoying this so much. We were on the Epic on a TA in April and loved the sea days. It was the most relaxing vacation I can ever remember. Our Haven bartender was a wonderful man named Ivan. Am I reading this correctly that he is no longer there?

[dolls123]

4 hours ago, Harratine said:

Food was excellent all around. 
 

Ate in LaCucina and LeBistro twice, Teppanyaki, Moderno and Cagneys once.  Had a 3rd planned in LaCuccina that we cancelled.

 

LaCuccina is our go to.  Took us a few cruises to go there, surprisingly good.  Lasagna is back on the menu.  Dining plan included appetizer, pasta course, entree and desert.  Got pizza for the first time this cruise.  Not as good as the pizza in Naples (high high bar).  I’m a fan of the lasagna, so had that twice.  Veal chop was awesome as usual.

 

 

I'm happy to hear the lasagna is back a La Cucina

[Harratine]

7 hours ago, Mommapadraig said:

Thank you! I am enjoying this so much. We were on the Epic on a TA in April and loved the sea days. It was the most relaxing vacation I can ever remember. Our Haven bartender was a wonderful man named Ivan. Am I reading this correctly that he is no longer there?

They appeared to move around a lot of folks on the staffs.  Didn’t run into an Ivan