Review: Epic Western Med July 8 2012 with photos and details

I just got off the Epic in Barcelona earlier today and since things are still fresh in my mind I want to start my review right away before regular life takes over and there’s less time for CC.

We went in with low expectations for three reasons: it was our first time on NCL, none of our friends have sailed NCL, and this ship was cheaper than comparable cruises with Royal and Carnival, so we thought you get what you pay for, right?

WRONG!!!

We booked cabin 11154, inside for 2 on deck 11, mid-ship. We are cheap cruisers and proud ;-) I asked for the price of a balcony cabin in the same area and it was $1000 extra. I cannot understand how a cabin right across the hall from my inside can be $1000 more just because it has a small balcony (where I'd get to smell everybody's cigarette smoke). And besides complete darkness is conducive to good things. You know, sleep and such ;)

The cabin was quite comfortable, very similar to what we experienced on Carnival and RCL. I really liked the reading lights with the permanently lit button that made it easy to find them in the dark. The phone display can also be used as a night light if you wish.

We liked the bed and bedding, I think they were a tad better on Carnival, but not so much that it mattered. There was a faint smell of what I call “institutional wash” to the room but it was really faint and within a short time our own smell had replaced it and it was never an issue.

We had plenty of room for our stuff (one large suitcase each), didn’t even fill up all the closet space and drawers, there was also adequate desktop space for our needs. I liked the look of the rounded closet and how it lit up when you opened it. I don't recall anything like that on other ships.

We really liked the way the room was laid out. Sink and mirror in front of the red curtain, shower on the left, toilet on the right. I can see how that could be awkward depending on who you cruise with, but for us love birds on our 20th anniversary cruise it wasn’t an issue. It's a more contemporary design and it really works well!

While we’re on the bathroom subject, hum, the ventilation worked really well and that’s critical when you book an inside cabin as we did.

Finding your way around: This ship is the biggest we’ve been on and there are no mid-ship elevator banks, so depending on where you’re going you may have to hoof it a bit, so it’s best to know which way to walk and I had a hard time with that until our cabin steward (the lovely Merissa) shared a couple of tricks with me:

1. Even numbered cabins are on the “red side” and odd are on the “blue side”. Everything is color-coded that way, carpet, signage, wall art, etc. Remember your color and you'll see it everywhere. Here's the red side:

2. If cabin numbers are going down, you’re walking towards the front of the ship. Now isn’t that a brilliant trick?!

A question for you before I turn in for the night (gotta get some sleep now that the cruise is over, right?) What is this thing on the sports deck?

More soon, ask questions if you wish!

Great start so far!!

Didn't you climb the 'spiders web' ?? :D

Great start so far!!

 

Didn't you climb the 'spiders web' ?? :D

That's not like any spider web I ever saw :p It looked closed or broken or something, but there was no sign. Or maybe it's the world's most unappealing climbing implement? :D

I love reviews like this. keep it up!!

Some things we loved, such as the whole Freestyle concept, and some things we just liked. For instance the ice bar. They give you a cool poncho and little gloves and in you go into the decorated freezer. Cool idea, we just had to try it, but once I got in there I realized this place is for photos and here I am without a camera!!! So I asked to go get my camera (you're really supposed to exit once) and the nice guy let me. Hubby stayed in the freezer the whole time and by the time I came back (5mn) he was shaking. Lots of passengers go in there with shorts or skirts and sandals. Seems like a bad idea to me!

The $20pp cover charge entitles you to 2 cocktails (there's a menu that lists 5 or 6) served in an ice glass. Again very cool, but be warned the cocktails are weak compared to any other bar on board. I asked the bar tenders if they get extra pay for putting up with the temperature and they said no. They stay in there for 1hr at a time which I can't imagine doing myself.

There is a ship photographer assigned to the ice bar, but he shoots 2 or 3 photos and gets out. I kept my camera in there for 10mn and this is what the nearby chandelier looked like with my frozen camera ;) It came back to normal within 15mn.

We enjoyed the decor in the Ice Bar, but it was crowded, had to wait around to get those shots without passengers in the way.

I read a lot of your questions on CC before you sailed, it's great to hear you enjoyed yourselves, I'm looking forward to reading the rest :)

Nice review!!! :)

Keep it coming! ;)

My mom and I are taking my eldest niece (who will be 19) on a cruise next summer and we're thinking about doing this itinerary. As we're already paying to fly from the west coast to the east coast, it doesn't cost all that much more to fly across the Atlantic to Barcelona. And the cruise prices are comparable, too.

Thanks for the perfectly timed review and I'm looking foward to more. I can't wait until you get to the ports of call. Cheers.:)

LOVE your review and pictures

In fact, I love looking at all Epic pictures. But I have to give your frozen camera picture of the chandalier "best original picture on Epic"

The photo says it all. YES, it does get that cold in their where cameras do freeze :)

Now for the "petty comparison" part of this review. There were a few things that I didn’t care for. Having been on several cruises I can't help compare. I wasn't mad, I didn't talk to customer service about it, those things will not stop me from cruising NCL again, but I did notice and I think these are areas for improvement.

• Toilet paper/paper towels. You can’t dry your hands with those paper towels, they are too thin and tear too easily, so what do you do? You get more sheets of paper. Bottom line you still go through just as much paper and guests are frustrated. Not a good place to save money if that’s what they were going for.

• Soap dispensers in public bathrooms were empty at least half of the time. NCL goes heavy on the hand sanitizer (which is good), but soap and water is best and they don't make that easy enough.

• Medium water pressure in shower. I didn’t mind as it compares to what I get at home, but compared to water pressure on the Carnival Magic, this felt much lower.

• Cool "hot" tubs in Spice H2O (only one I tried). I like my pools cool and my hot tubs hot and that’s the end of that. Crank it up NCL!

• No comedy show on board. Somehow I understood that they had Second City on board but I was wrong. We enjoy comedians, would have liked to have that as an option at night.

• The dueling piano trio had to keep their show PG because even at the end of their act (1am) there were STILL very young kids in the room. The performers asked several times "are there still kids in the room?" and the answer was always yes. I am not blaming the performers for this, maybe the parents didn't know a dueling piano show is supposed to be one of the raunchiest form of entertainment ever invented? But then again, maybe NCL should just tell them. Have an announcer that comes on after 10pm to explain the show is going R and over, if you choose to let your kids stay, so be it. Then let the performer loose to do what they normally do, which I enjoy very much :D

• Very little Mexican food on board. I missed that.

• Jogging track is where much of the kitchen exhausts ends up (and some sewer exhaust too), stinky! The shuffle board side (same level, just the other side of the ship) is where they do the air intake, no stinks there. Why do the joggers have to suffer the stinks?!

• I prefer my jogging track on top of the ship as it is so beautiful. This is the jogging track on the Epic, you can’t see it well, but on the right the outside is lined with life boats hanging outside of the ship. No view. To run 1km you have to do 2.3 laps, so it’s not very big. Maybe that explains why there were so few passengers using that area? I think it's the lack of view and the smell mostly.

• Park West "exhibit" and sale persons. I know they’re not NCL, but NCL leases space to them. I overheard one guy explain to some unsuspecting couple that original art means that the artist is involved from beginning to end and that they know their art is being replicated and sold all over. No sir. "Original art" means there aren't 50000 exact copies made by machines being peddled at the highest price possible to gullible tourists. Those are called prints. People are free to pay high prices for prints, but they should know that’s what they’re getting: an overpriced print!

• Stores were same old-same old, but we’re not enthusiastic shoppers, so we're probably the wrong people to comment on that. We walked right past them and that was fine for us. There were shoppers, but fewer than on Carnival, I am not sure why.

I am not getting a lot of responses to this review, am I boring you or what? I'll try a couple of food pictures, let's see if that motivates readers. :confused:

Food/Drink

Being NCL newbies we assumed the food would only be so-so. How else could they entice people to go to the extra fee restaurants? Our assumption was totally wrong.

First of all, as soon as you approach any food venue you have a choice: either use the sanitizer dispenser or a crew member will spray your hands with sanitizer. And if you reach for any food with your hands they will ask you to use tongs. Good for them!

Day 1 lunch we tried the buffet and were happily surprised. It was busy, but we soon got the food we wanted to try, got our soda right there in the buffet bar, and found a place to sit, and the food tasted good! I loved the ice cream bar, didn’t try other desserts as a result ;-) I also liked the cooked to order soup and pasta on the buffet, the Indian vegetarian corner, the daily local special. Hubby loved the made to order eggs benedict and omelets on the buffet; I had a soft spot for the cinnamon buns and muesli with fruit. There were too many choices for us to try them all in one week, but nothing we tried got left on the plate just because it was yucky and the buffet really has a good flow to it, very little wait. I did not care for the coffee very much, which means I cut down which is probably a good thing. One thing that is strange: they had Splenda in the dining room but not at the buffet, not sure why. So I just stole some in the dining room to take to the buffet, voilà!

The only specialty restaurant we tried was Moderno and we liked that very much. Be warned: they will try to feed you until you die. Service and food were lovely, we feel it was worth the extra fee, but it’s best for people with a huge appetite. Next time we will try Le Bistro.

We had one breakfast and one dinner at Taste and both were really nice. Unlike RCI where if you go to a sit-down breakfast they bring you stuff from the buffet, this was made to order hot food and we loved it. The décor is nice there, not as crowded as the main dining room usually. Limited opening hours however, so don’t sleep in too long!

I overheard someone complain that the food at the Cirque dinner was bad, we didn’t think so. Portions are smaller, but the meat was tasty and tender.

Overall impression is that the food is a tad better on NCL than on Carnival and quite a bit better than on RCI. Extra fee restaurants are a nice adition, but we would have been very happy never going to any of them and just eating in the Manhattan dining room or Taste. We loved having a live band in the Manhattan room, they were really good. And tables for 2 are near the windows, so couples get better views, how nice!

Free wine: we got 3 bottles of free Merlot on our cruise. First one was in our cabin when we arrived (we booked directly with NCL on the phone and the guy who helped us told us that would be the case) along with an NCL bottle opener that we got to keep. Second one was from a coupon I printed out on Facebook where if you go to a specialty restaurant on the first night you get a free bottle of wine. Our server at Moderno didn’t know about this promotion but she figured it out and brought us the wine. Third bottle came with our anniversary dinner where the Maitre D came over with the bottle and fussed over us and was really nice. We also got 2 more bottles; see my description of Naples for more on that.

Cocktails were free-pour and quite strong everywhere but the Ice Bar. The Long Island Ice Tea will knock you over but it tastes so good! Bar tenders told us people order fewer drinks in the Mediterranean vs Caribbean, they’re probably right, but there was plenty of drinking going on! I never tried the drink of the day, they looked good, but there was always something else I wanted more.

I never had any difficulty getting a diet Pepsi with my soda sticker. They are not as strict about verifying your sticker as they were on Carnival, if you show up with two NCL soda cups they’ll fill up both no questions asked.

I am not getting a lot of responses to this review, am I boring you or what?

I typically try to wait for the end of the review before I comment. It makes reading the review easier for the next person. Sounds like you had a great time and thanks for posting. Would you sail NCL again?

I typically try to wait for the end of the review before I comment. It makes reading the review easier for the next person.

What they said!! ;)

You are in no way boring me......I wanted to give you chance to finish!! :)

i Enjoy so much reading all those review !!Way better then buying a book !!

Kept coming with the pics ... i love your review .... going in 30 something days :):p

I am not getting a lot of responses to this review, am I boring you or what?

What an odd comment. Maybe people are still reading or the boards are slower due to summer vacation?

I for one am very much enjoying your review. Can't wait to read more.

i Enjoy so much reading all those review !!Way better then buying a book !!

 

Kept coming with the pics ... i love your review .... going in 30 something days :):p

Have you joined a roll call yet? You can find the roll calls in the roll call section.

We're leaving on August 19th, 30 something days from now. Perhaps we're on the same cruise.

I've been working long hours the last few days. Just saw your review today and loving it.

Please keep it coming and thanks for taking the time to post. We really appreciate it!

I just have a few questions. Did you prebook Modernos, or just showed up? Where there any dishes in the dining room that are not to miss? Any desserts?

I also like to see stand up comedy. Carnival, to me, really has that locked down on their cruises. I think Los Locos, if I'm spelling it correctly, is a comedy act.

Can't wait for the rest of your review.:D

Loving your review!:D

Great review! Thanks, looking forward to more :D

Love your review! The pictures really add to the experience, its like we are right there with you! My wife, mother and I will be on the Epic in Septermber. We have only cruised Celebrity and RCL so I additionally liked hearing the comparisons to your past cruises! Well done!

Okay, now your ego has been stroked and pride restored ;)so can you post the rest of your review? Loving it!

Great review. We will be on the epic next month and can't wait to read more.

Can you confirm if lobsters were served on Sunday (Barcelona night)? Just want to make sure that We don't prebook any specialty restaurant on lobsters night :)

Looking forward to the rest of your review! We'll be on this cruise, but not until June 2013, and we're leaving from Rome. Keep it coming!

I just have a few questions. Did you prebook Modernos, or just showed up? Where there any dishes in the dining room that are not to miss? Any desserts?

We just showed up at Moderno on night 1 and it was not busy at all, we went right in. NCL gives out coupons for a free bottle of wine on their Facebook page in order to entice cruisers to patronize specialty restaurants on the first night because they're all wide open. We took advantage of that, but it means we missed the lobster night in the dining room.

For dessert at Moderno they had 3 on the menu and we couldn't decide so the waitress brought us all 3. My favorite was one with coconut in it, but I can't remember what it was called. By the time you get to dessert at Moderno's you'll be so full the best dessert in the world won't taste that spectacular. :p

Dishes in the main dining room... I don't know what I could point out to, everything we tried was really good! But hubby liked the quesadilla for appetizer, he liked both the New York strip steak and the prime rib (on night 5 I think). Overall the food was served hot, presentation was always lovely, ingredients were of good quality and we had no complaints. Beef was always tender, probably not the very top prime beef, but very tender and prepared well.

We never tried to ask for more than one entrée, but we told the waitress we were really looking forward to the prime rib and she said she could bring us two each. That wasn't necessary, we couldn't have eaten another one, but she offered based on our enthusiasm. :p

Okay, now your ego has been stroked and pride restored ;)so can you post the rest of your review? Loving it!

Ahhh! Someone who understands me ;)