Hi cruise critic! these board have been so helpful in the past, I thought I would contribute a bit from my own experience, gained on the Epic recently. My family (couple in our 40s + a 12yo) have been cruising about once a year for the past 13 years, mostly with NCL. It always has been our preferred cruise line and we faithfully came back year after year. This was our first cruise post covid and that might be a reason why things felt so different. It went so wrong that I ended up emailing the NCL customer service ( and believe me, it take a lot to make me complain!). So the below is an edited version of that NCL complain to add a little more useful information for fellow cruisers and take away some of the ranting.
The good:
The cabin steward was great, diligent and nice. The food in the main dining room was as good as usual and specialty restaurant were very good. Service in the various restaurant was (most of the time) very good. The climbing wall was fun, not to crowded, staff was nice and helpful. We somehow managed to get into the hot tub and to easily get chairs on the pool deck despite a very full ship . And Jeff the Juggler was a big hit with our family. And we had fun exploring the ship which is different from the typical NCL layout. We thought the design was probably a bit too smart: it took us 3 days to find the hidden cabinet behind the sofa (very convenient!) and another 2 days to get to the amazingly quiet and empty sundeck on deck 18. Our stateroom 10201 was centrally located and convenient. Our independently booked excursions were amazing ( most of all small groups that was a respite after the crowded ship). I can recommend Iguana Mama in the Dominican Republic with our guide Edwin, Jet Extreme in St Maarten (French side) - it's really a hassle to get there but we had a great experience, rated the highlight of the entire cruise by all 3 family members, and the mangrove kayak tour in the mangrove in St Thomas ( VI Ecotour, we had the small group one with just 6 people and it was great). And finally the Flavors of San Juan food tour with Carola.
The bad:
Embarkation process in NYC was very slow and felt messy, we usually arrive around 3 pm to avoid the crowds and we used to have priority ( as NCL Gold). To our surprise, 3 pm was rush hour for embarkation that day and the ship ended up leaving around 6:30 pm for a scheduled 5 pm departure.
Overall state of the ship and stateroom. There were some maintenance issues in our stateroom, the bathroom mirror had seen better days (the reflecting part seemed to get unstuck from the glass as if the mirror was 100 years old!) and the paint on the balcony railing was flaking. Some areas at the back of the ship had brown stains from the exhaust, it’s ok but not the immaculate maintenance we have been used to on other ships (I had seen this on cruise critic before boarding, so it was not a surprise, but still worth reiterating, despite the closer of the back area of the ship in the fall, it's not all resolved).
Lines, lines, lines everywhere. The ship felt very, very crowded. Especially the restaurants. We were turned away from the main dining room for lunch (too many people!!) and had to settle for an overflowing garden cafe. We also tried to get into the kid’s club once, it was full and we were turned away. The ship was 110% full but still, we usually cruise during the holidays and it was never that bad.
Lack of options at the garden cafe was disappointing. Hard to pinpoint exactly how, just a feeling that choice was limited (compared with prior cruises), especially for lunch.
(I'm going to sound like an old lady...) We missed some of the nice cruising perks from the old times that have disappeared: No more towel animals, or mint chocolate on the pillow at turn down, no more chocolate extravaganza night. Specialty restaurants cover charges used to be $20, they are now closer to 60$ + tip which is ridiculously expensive (we grown ups had them included in the dining package but had to pay the extra cover charge for the kiddo). The latitude cocktail party also became a sad affair in the past few cruises, just here to sell you the next cruise. I have very good memories of past ones where the captain was attending and we were able to get to a deck that was not usually open, or a time where they called around people who had cruised 500+ nights. And I remember raffles sometimes (we never won but we could dream that we would win). We apparently have a new latitude gold benefit of priority disembarkation, but we didn’t get any instructions about how to use it. And we never saw the captain (didn't take away from the vacation much, but just noticing).
Credit card issue #1 (yes there is more): we tried to play at the games at the arcade. Stateroom card didn’t work. My husband went to guest services. The issue was that we had 2 cards on file (one for me and one for my husband) with the same number and different names. Apparently the system had a problem with that and blocked all transactions. Guest services told us it was solved, but our stateroom cards never worked in the arcade.
Credit card issue #2: On the last day, my son wanted a last fresh orange juice for breakfast. No chance: the account was closed and we could not buy anything. Other people wanted to buy their pictures and faced the same issue. We wanted to get a Starbucks while waiting to disembark … to no avail and of course they would not take cash.
The ugly
We NEVER manage to make show reservations, despite trying in the app, on the elevators screen, on the stateroom TV and calling the box office multiple times (they didn't pick up). Not being able to attend the shows was very frustrating as these have consistently been a highlight of our cruises. We never had to make reservations before so this feel like bad planning from NCL that the theater is too small (and where did freestyle cruise go?). I went to the box office to try to figure it out. All shows for the entire week were sold out and it was only the morning of day 3. I shared my feedback about the reservation system (in a respectful manner) and they just seemed annoyed. We ended up going to the 10 pm Priscilla Queen of the Desert on the second offering, there was zero line and the theater was half empty when it started. The show was amazing, I just wish we had been spared the frustrations.
Credit card issue #3 and cherry on the cake. At 8:30 when our luggage tags were called, we head for disembarkation. My husband gets a “financial red flag” when swiping the card and is told to go back to guest services. We knew it was going to be a mess so we were very unhappy not to have had any advance warning that something was wrong and our only option was to wait in line. The line is quite long and people’s issues don’t seem easy to solve, so they take long. We wait in line for 45 minutes and there are still at least 10 people in front of us. Did I mention we were not even able to get coffee from Starbucks while waiting? Fortunately, a lady from the guest services comes down the line and tries to help people (and help us be patient). She takes our stateroom number and 10 minutes later we get a message from our bank saying that the charge came through on the credit card. We wait another 10 min to try to confirm with her that everything is solved (as you can imagine she’s very much in demand), them my husband tries to disembark by himself while we stay in line (we don’t want to lose our spot in case it didn’t work after all). The most frustrating part is that the lady who solved our issue was able to do so without us providing any further information, or changing the credit card, she just charged it and it worked. SO WE DIDN’T NEED TO WAIT IN LINE FOR 45 MINUTES TO SOLVE THE ISSUE.
The final blow was that with all this delay, there was a huge crowd of people waiting outside to get a taxi, not line, desperate taxi attendees, and absolutely zero cab getting to old San Juan despite hundreds of people hoping to get there. We had a tour (independent) booked for 10 am but we didn’t make it. After 1 hour of getting nowhere, we gave up and started walking too get out of thee port, to at least do something instead of waiting. There is no sidewalk, the terminal it’s meant for cars and not for people so we were on the road, passed by a constant (slow) stream of cars and trucks, under the unforgiving Caribbean sun of 11 am with a kid and 2 suitcases. A perfect end to our cruise, sure to give us memories to cherish for a while.
In case your wonder after a few minutes, a cab stopped by, grabbed another 4 people who were desperate like us and finally took us away from this mess. Also the independent tour company (Flavors of San Juan) was very accommodating and able to rebook us at the last minute for an 11:30 tour and be barely got there on time - total time to get of the ship : 3h. Note that some part is bad planning on my end as I thought the ship would dock directly in old San Juan. But for disembarkation it's on the other side of the bay.
Lessons learned and tips for future cruises:
Carry more cash (and a debit card) - with covid I guess we are not used to carrying cash anymore, I always take some for tips but for everything else, I have the credit card. Well that doesn't work well in the Caribbean, especially for taxis, where we ended up spending $100 in taxi fare each day. (Eternal thanks to Perla the St Marteens taxi lady who trusted us to pay her when we came back to the ship at the end of the day).
Research embarkation / disembarkation ports in advance ( I usually just Google the location ... definitely not enough in that past cruise)
If I every cruise NCL again (which is unlikely) I will avoid the Epic, beside the issues, it was my least favorite ship from NCL for style and layout
