CruiserJess

been looking everywhere for menus, thank you!!

so helpful.....now im hungry 🙂

Thanks for your review. We're on the Epic TA from Barcelona in November back to Port Canaveral and looking forward to all the dining options. Did you make reservations in advance for Taste/Manhattan Room? We are considering a 5 dinner package as we're on board for 13 days.

Yes we made reservations when the portal opened about 30 days prior to cruising. I recommend making reservations whenever you can. I often noticed lines and pagers being given to those who did not.

Thanks for your review! We are doing this route next summer. I knew about the weird bathroom set up when we booked, but with a family of 4 it might be nice for kids to brush teeth, while someone showers, while someone is in the bathroom. And we booked for the ports but this ship fit us best with the water park and other activities for the kids. We are actually traveling with 5 families and 10 kids!

Wow big group! Plenty of things onboard to keep everyone entertained.

Jess,

 

Thanks for the great review! I am excited to look at your travel vlog to see your photos. We have been on the Epic twice, agree with your review of the ship, but we are considering our first Euro cruise. I grew up in Germany but it would be my spouses first time in Europe.

You will love it! We had so much fun exploring these ports. Highly recommend!

Enjoyed your review! We were on her 2 years ago out of Barcelona and had a great time too. Nice to hear that Andre is on the Epic- we had him on the Escape and LOVED him. Maybe we are biased as he is British haha. He was just so funny and energetic.

 

Oh and also we are big La Cucina fans- it gets some stick on these boards, but since they changed the menu it's fantastic. My husband said the steak in there is one of the best he's ever had.

Agreed! Our La Cucina experience on Sky was lack luster but this one was fantastic! Glad we gave it another shot.

Quick Recap- NCL Epic Med May 2018

A little background, we are a married couple in our 30’s who love to cruise. Every year we plan to visit one place we have never been. So this year we decided on the NCL Epic out of Barcelona for our first trip to Europe together. Since we would be traveling so far (we live in Baltimore, MD) we also wanted to visit another bucket list place, London. So off we went on our European Adventure!

We flew direct from Philly to London, very easy flight. We had just 2 full days in London, one of which was coming off the red eye flight. We crammed a ton into those 2 days and so glad we did. We walked over 30 miles in those 2 days! Loved the city and can’t wait to go back! We flew from Heathrow to Barcelona the day before the cruise left. (Also the day of the Royal wedding! The city was not as crazy busy as we had feared) The flight from Heathrow to Barcelona was under 2 hours and passport control in Barcelona is very quick.

We spent the night at the Renaissance downtown. It was a great location in walking distance to everything we wanted to see. Hotel also had a nice rooftop bar overlooking the city. After another day of exploring and a tapas dinner we headed to bed, excited to start our cruise the next day.

Embarkation: We got to the port around 10:30 and it was quiet. We were able to check in quickly and waited about 30 minutes before they started boarding. Once onboard we made our rounds to explore the Epic.

The ship: Overall we enjoyed the ship except for the fact that often times you could forget you are on a boat. Not much to see for Sailaway in the back of the ship and the upper deck around the pool was quite choppy. We did love all the dining options and had the drink and specialty dining package included with our fare. Took great advantage of that! The rooms are of course the strangest at sea. I read prior to the trip about them, but even as a married couple it was different. The toilet piece of it more so than anything. Maybe just use a door that isn’t just a sliding frosted glass. I can understand how friends and or family traveling together could be uncomfortable.

Food: Never had a bad dining experience. Ate in Taste only once for lunch the first day and it was way less busy than the buffet and a great menu. Both of us had soup and salads which we enjoyed. Ate in Manhattan twice and loved the ambiance with the live music in there, dinner was always delicious. With our dining package we ate at Teppanyaki, Le Bistro, La Cucina and paid extra to try Cagney’s. Our favorite was by far Teppanyaki for the fun experience and tasty surf and turf. La Cucina was a close second. Great location over the bow of the ship and after a day in Italy we loved having a delicious Italian meal. We were impressed with La Cucina. Cagney’s was another favorite but as far as experience goes it was your standard steak house. Lastly Le Bistro, we both were left unimpressed. Food was just ok and the meal took longer than the others. Friendly but slow service, would skip it next time.

Drink package: Worked great, never had a problem getting a drink anywhere except by the pool. The Pool bar mid ship always seemed to have less than thrilled bartenders working behind the bar. Had better luck with servers back in Spice H20. Felt NCL had a decent wine and liquor selection within the package limits.

Entertainment: Didn’t make it to everything with it being such a port intensive cruise but we loved Howl at the Moon. They also had a comic magician who was very entertaining, he did shows in English and Spanish. We did go see Legends in Concert which was fun as they did all cover songs you know. Cruise Director Andre was often out and about on the ship, very nice guy.

Ports: We chose this cruise because of the ports. We had never been to any of them and enjoyed the time spent in each. In Naples and Rome we booked tours through italytours.eu and HIGHLY recommend them. We got to see and do everything we wanted in the window of time we were there. Great pricing, knowledgeable and friendly guides in much smaller groups than the ship tours. In Livoreno we went with an NCL tour to Pisa and a Tuscan winery. It was a much bigger crowd but we did have some time on our own to explore Pisa and we LOVED the winery. It included a short tour and a fantastic Italian lunch complete with bread, pasta and bottles of wine on the table. In Cannes we went off on our own to Nice. Very easy to take the train, about a 45 minute commute. Nice was absolutely gorgeous with it's beaches and flower market. In Palma we rented Electric bikes and biked down the coast to a beach where we spent some time relaxing before biking back through the city a bit more. Electric bikes cost a little more than standard bikes but well worth it in my opinion. Made it a very easy ride.

Overall: An AMAZING trip. Although Epic was not our favorite ship, we would cruise her again if she was going to new places we haven’t been. Her short comings did not take away from our fantastic vacation. It was truly a bucket list cruise for us and we are already planning a trip back to Europe next summer.

For FULL details and photos, visit my blog! https://wanderlustcruising.com/2018/06/12/mediterranean-cruise-may-2018/

Thanks!

Nice review! Thanks for sharing :-). Jessica, I took a look at your blog and its really very good. I enjoyed reading about your Cuba sailing. I am thinking of this for the future and I appreciated the details you included about the ship, tours and Havana.

 

I'll echo most on this thread and say we also thoroughly enjoyed our Crown Princess New Year's cruise. One of our best! It seems we also got lucky with super comfy beds!!!

Thank you very much!!:D

thank you for a lovely and positive review! We will be on the Crown in 3 short weeks.

Jealous! If you drink wine at all be sure to visit Vines. Carmen the bartender there is one of the best crew members we have ever encountered on a cruise. So friendly and always had great conversations with her.

Better Late than Never!

Just wanted to do a quick recap of our 8 Day Southern Caribbean Cruise on board Crown Princess December 2017. This will be the short and sweet version. The link to my entire review/blog will be added below for those who want more details.

About us: Married couple in our 30's, love to cruise. Always pick this week in December as there are not many kids and prices are typically cheaper. This cruise was a bucket list one as we had both never been to Aruba, Bonaire or Curacao (ABC Islands as we learned to call them)

Prior to this cruise I read a lot of negative reviews about the Crown Princess but I am happy to report that I did not have that experience. Ship is older but was well maintained and cleaned (what more can you ask of an older ship?)

We were certainly on the younger end of the cruise passengers on this ship but still found it very lively. The shows were busy and even made it to the night club one evening where they had a decent crowd.

What stood out the most on this cruise was the people. We had fantastic service just about everywhere we went. From the main dining room to the bars and by the pool. We had NO BUTTER ISSUES as previously speculated on this forum. Made reservations for a table for two each night and got that table with no problems and plenty of butter. On lobster night our server came around asking who wanted a second helping.

We had a standard balcony cabin and found the room to be clean and had lots of storage! Our room steward was fantastic, introduced himself and called us by name each day. The room was quickly tidied up often before we even returned from breakfast.

Found the food to be good in main dining room and LOVED Crown Grill as well as Salty Dog. Definitely worth the additional charges there.

Sea days spent poolside with no chair hogs complaints. Had 4 of them on this itinerary and really enjoyed it as we had great weather. We also had the drink package and it was very easy to get drinks at the bar or at dinner.

As I mentioned all of these ports were new to us and we really liked them all. Would probably return to any of them on another trip.

Finally, I am glad I didn't let some of the bad reviews scare us away from this ship. Yes the mattress wasn't the greatest and the ship shows some wear and tear but things like that do not ruin a vacation. The staff on this boat truly made a good cruise great for us and that is why we have liked cruising Princess. I would not hesitate to go on this ship again.

For full detail and photos you can visit my blog HERE .

Happy to answer any questions I can.

Cruising to Curaco for the first time in Dec of this year on Princess. We will be in port all day 7am-10pm. I would like to find a way to rent a jeep or buggy to see the must see sites during the day on our own. Is that possible? What do we need to see?

Also at night i was hoping to find a sunset cruise somewhere. I found a few things in my research but no definitive answers. Was hoping CC could help point me in the right direction! :)

Recently completed this cruise in April. Did so much research here on CC that was extremely helpful. I finally finished my Blog that may help you in your planning process too. Happy to answer any questions!

This review has been so extremely helpful in planning our trip on June 5th. Thank you and your wife for sharing this with us. I am now even more excited for this trip!

Hey Jessica, I am on that same cruise in 11 days! Can't wait! What caterman tour are you doing?

The same as the OP is talking about above.

Loving this review!! We will be on her in 11 days! Being so early in the season we didn't think we would get to see a new review.

We are also booked on the Catamaran tour so very interested how that goes today. Best of Luck! Can't wait to read more, thank you!

Great review, doing this exact cruise for presidents weekend!

How do they handle bringing wine back onboard from other ports? This will be our first visit to California and will definitely want to buy wine to bring back home. Hoping we can check them and get them at end of the trip vs paying another $15 per bottle.

Thanks!

I did the exact same thing April 2012 :) Married on Smathers Beach through a company on the island. Used Carnival for our reception afterwards.

You can not bring real flowers on or off the ship. I found artificial flowers through a vendor online that were amazing! They are not your 80's fabric fake flowers, they looked and felt real no one believed me they were fake. In fact when we were debarking in Miami the beagle that they have sniffing bags for fruit etc walked right by my flowers and his caretaker made him come back to smell them because she thought they were real.

I used wedideas.com for my flowers but here are other options out there as well.

Fiance and I will be on our first back to back and our wedding/honeymoon cruise in an aft wrap balcony on the Destiny, 8328. This thread is just fueling my desire to be there now! CAN'T WAIT!!!:D

PICTURES ARE GORGEOUS!!! I love the outdoor pics! Exactly what I want for our wedding :D

I would love a copy too if someone could send me the word version :)

jfuhrey@gmail.com