My Epic thoughts. (24 Nov 2012 - 1 Dec 2012)

[rajones007]

Rajones, can you please tell me about the VAT charges on Epic?

I know it is charged on drinks and specialty restaurant food, and in the gift shops. Did you find it to be excessive? And did you apply for the "refund"?

Was it something that you would avoid on future cruises?

When we bought a $10 item at the onboard shop, the bill was for $10.

 

When the 4 of us went to La Cucina, the bill was $10 x 4 for a total of $40.

 

There was no extra tax. (Unless I totally missed what it is you're asking about.)

[SuiteCruiser]

Rajones, can you please tell me about the VAT charges on Epic?

I know it is charged on drinks and specialty restaurant food, and in the gift shops. Did you find it to be excessive? And did you apply for the "refund"?

Was it something that you would avoid on future cruises?

 

 

The Epic is in Miami doing the Caribbean run until April, so there was no VAT issues for the OP. Once the ship moves back to Barcelona in April, there will be VAT added to onboard purchases.

[rocklinmom]

Oops! Sorry, I totally forgot that Epic is in the Caribbean right now not in the Med. Duh! So obviously no VAT.

[sjn911]

Some other random thoughts...

 

--The reserved seating for Haven guests for Blue Man Group are kind of sucky. Well, the seats weren't entirely awful, they just wouldn't be my first choice.

 

Adrian walked us down to the theater and they roped off the first 4 or 5 rows of the section to the left of the stage (left, when facing the stage). I was led to believe by these forums that we would be escorted there before they opened the doors to everyone else. Then we would have our choice of seats of anywhere in the theater. In which case my choice would have been halfway up the center section.

 

But that wasn't the case. The place was already full when we entered.

 

No big deal. We still got to see everything, but a couple times the angle we had meant certain (albeit small) portions of some scenes weren't easily visible to us.

 

--The Epic Blue drink (or whatever it was called) is awesome. They only serve it in the theater prior to a BMG show. I'm not much for alcohol, but it was pretty damn tasty. (I think I said that before in one of my updates. Oh well, it was worth typing it out again.)

 

--Contacting the pre-cruise concierge desk was met with mixed results.. My girlfriend likes a specific vodka cooler. As a surprise to her, I contacted the NCL Concierge and asked if they carry this particular vodka cooler.

 

"Why yes we do! They are even available in our buckets, pay for 5 and get a 6th one free!", was the response.

 

"Can you put one of those buckets in the room prior to our arrival, please?" I said.

 

"Yes, sir! It will be there. We'll just bill it to your onboard account. Is there anything else you would like?"

 

"I'd like to purchase the soda package for all of us." was next on my list.

 

"Done. You'll just need to pre-pay for that now. The stickers will be on your cards when you pick them up at check-in and the souvenir mugs will be in your stateroom upon arrival," was NCL's response.

 

"Here's my Visa number..." I said, and they processed the purchase.

 

"Thank you sir. What about pillows? Do you have a preference? We have all kinds of different pillows to choose from."

 

"Okay. I never thought of that. Hmmmmm. We all like feather pillows. And we'd all like an extra pillow if possible. So 4 pillows on the King bed, and 2 for each twin in the small bedroom."

 

"Yes sir. Consider it done."

 

And that concludes my discussion with the NCL Pre-cruise Concierge.

 

How did they do?

 

1. The bucket of vodka coolers wasn't in our room. Luckily the Posh bar had these particular coolers (in fact, they were the ONLY bar that had them, as far as we could tell). So they were easy to find. Once we told Jeffrey, our butler, where to find them, he made sure my GF always had a new bucket whenever she finished one.

 

2. The soda stickers were not on our cruise cards, so we had to pay for our soda during lunch prior to being allowed in our cabin (not a big deal, but still.) Once allowed in the cabin, we found 4 letters, one for each of us, telling us we just had to sign the form and present it to one of the limited amount of bars to receive the sticker and souvenir mug. Luckily, the Epic Club Lounge bar was one of them.

 

3. [EDIT]Correction: We had 4 feather pillows on the king bed, but the kids bedroom did not. They just had those narrow cheap pillows. When we met Jeffrey our butler for the first time, he rectified the situation immediately.[END OF EDIT]

 

--Don't get your soda from the Epic Club Lounge bar (the one closest to the Haven pool.) Something is wrong with their soda dispenser and it always has a terrible plastic-y taste to it. Anything served from that fountain will taste funky. All the other bars on the ship are fine, except for this one. I told the bartender about it, but she didn't believe me.

 

I'm a lover and Connoisseur of fresh fountain pop, soda, or whatever you want to call it. Fountain pop is just better than any bottle or can you can get. I think it just tastes more fresh. I know what I'm talking about too. I'm known to go through the McDonald's drive-thru JUST to get a Coke.

 

--I could never figure out what the Courtyard Grill was supposed to be. Yes, the bar there was handy (except for fountain pop) and the coffee there was great. But they never served any food there that I could tell.

 

In the mornings they had a basket of croissants and muffins next to the coffee, but that was it.

 

Could you order food in there and sit down and eat it? I sat down and watched the ocean while I had a Pepsi one day, but I never seen a menu, nor did a server ask me if I wanted to order anything.

 

So what is the intention of the Courtyard Grill?

 

--The amount of people who purposely avoid using hand sanitizer is depressing. I watched many people try to get past the girl at the front of the buffet. Some successfully. Some who weren't successful reluctantly took the little spray of sanitizer and then proceeded to wipe it directly on their shorts.

 

I know we can argue about how effective the hand sanitizer program is, but really people; is it that difficult to rub your hands together for 2 seconds? Sheesh.

 

--These forums led me to believe that the deck 18 forward sundeck was for Haven guests only. Wrong. :)

 

--I didn't have the nerve to check out the deck 19 freestyle sundeck. I know. I'm a wimp.

 

--I didn't want to bother our butler, so every morning while everybody else in the cabin was asleep I would scoot down a flight of stairs to the buffet and load up a plate and bring it back and have my own quiet breakfast on the balcony.

 

The waffles were AWESOME. They ain't no Eggo waffles, that's for sure.

 

The eggs were gross and runny.

 

The pancakes were decent if they weren't sitting around for too long. Then they'd get hard on the edges. Usually a buffet serves those paper thin pre-made pancakes, a la fast food restaurants. Not these. They weren't perfect, but they did have some puffiness to them.

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again - I want to shoot the guy who thought it would be a good idea to put raisins in the French Toast. Seriously, who would ruin a perfectly good piece of French Toast by putting the worlds more vile and disgusting fruit in it? Terrorists, that's who! (The same thing can be said for Butter Tarts.)

 

They had these little cookie-size hash browns that were crafted and cooked by Jesus himself. Oh my they were sooooooo goooooooood.

 

PRO-TIP: put a second plate upside-down on top of your plate of food when going back to your cabin. I wish I had thought of that prior to that old guy on the stairs coughing on my breakfast.

 

..................................

Getting a huge kick out of your humor and review, considering the Epic sometime...my grandma hatd raisins, lol..fond memories of every cin roll or anything like that.... her carefuly picked out pile on the plate..she was a birdie eater..so she just went slower on these rare family occaisions when we forgot on rolls...Sarah

[chisoxfan]

My family and I just disembarked the Epic yesterday morning. Overall, we had a fantastic time. I miss the ship already :( .

 

The Epic is gorgeous, the staff is top-notch, and the food was great. I honestly cannot think of any more adjectives to properly describe the ship and her staff.

 

Now before I begin on what is my own type of review (a collection of random thoughts) I want to make sure everyone knows and understands that WE HAD A GREAT TIME. WE HAVE NO REGRETS. THE SHIP IS BEAUTIFUL AND THE CREW IS FANTASTIC. Anything negative I am about to say is not that big of a deal. Nothing ruined our cruise, nor did anything cause us to re-think our choice of cruise and cruiseline.

 

If it looks like the negatives outnumber the positives, just remember it's easier to remember the negatives. I'm sure if I took a couple weeks and typed out all the positives, they would far outweigh the negatives.

 

We are loyal to NCL because of the Freestyle concept. It suits my family and myself. It was designed with people like us in mind. This cruise was myself, 46, my 46 year old girlfriend, and her kids (16 yo girl and 14 yo boy). This is our second cruise as a family, and second on NCL. We did the Star last November out of Tampa and fell in love with NCL freestyle cruising. My GF and I are already booked on the Dawn 12-day repo from Tampa to Boston this coming April.

 

We had originally booked on the Carnival Liberty on the same dates, but after much discussion we decided to cancel that and go with the style we know and love - NCL.

 

To begin - I have to ask myself one question:

 

-- Would I cruise on the Epic again? The answer is No. Not purposely. I found the ship to be too big. I'm no engineer, but it's plain to me that the ship was built with the intention of cramming as many people as possible on board. The flow and movement of people being a distant 2nd thought of the designers.

 

There were people everywhere. There were never any quiet little cubby holes (with the exception of the Epic Lounge..more on that later.)

 

The positive spin I can put on our first Mega-ship experience would be: at least now I know I won't waste my time and money sailing on the Oasis or the Allure. I was considering sailing them in the future. Not any more.

 

--We stayed in a 2 bedroom family suite in The Haven on deck 16. Gorgeous room with an excellent location. My only complaint being the mattress, which was manufactured by the Portland Cement & Mattress Company.

 

The cabin itself was noticeably smaller than the same cabin on the Star, but there was still plenty of room to ballroom dance.

 

--Jeffrey, our butler, was a man with no other goal in life than to ensure we were all comfortable and happy. Garry, our room steward was the best steward we have ever had. He was a super friendly guy who was a pleasure to talk to. The concierge Adrian was very helpful. I inquired about getting an actual lounger on our balcony and before I could even finish my sentence he picked up his phone, called Jeffrey the butler and had one delivered within 5 minutes. Wow. What service.

 

--The back and forth motion on deck 16 forward is quite noticeable. Much more than I anticipated. I normally adapt well to the movement of the ship. I can handle the back and forth. It's the SIDE TO SIDE motion that I find more noticeable. I think a ship this high should be wider. Maybe the physics and math people said it will be fine, but in the real world it isn't.

 

Overall, I found the Epic to not be very stable for a ship of her size. Even on deck 5 we could feel a great amount of movement.

 

--The Courtyard in the Haven is really nice and relaxing. That is until a group of kids showed up. The pool and hot tubs were over run with about eight or ten kids, aged from 5 to 12, who thought they were at Disneyland. We dubbed them the Rug Rats. As the week went on, it was funny watching people pack up their stuff and move somewhere else once all the Rug Rats arrived (which was pretty much from 9am to 9pm, every day). They were doing cannonballs in the hot tub and having splash fights in the pool. The parents either weren't around or they were too busy talking to each other and didn't notice.

 

The parents of these kids, at least 2 (but probably 3) couples that I could tell, had formed a clique among themselves and were too busy drinking and talking over top of each other to even notice that everyone else in the vicinity wanted to strangle their children.

 

I think it was one of those situations where one set of parents is hesitant to discipline their own child for fear of 1) looking too strict in front of their (new?) friends, and 2) possibly looking like they're giving the other kids crap too, being guilty by association or whatever. Meanwhile, the other couples are thinking the same thing. So nobody says anything to their own kids and the cycle of hooliganism continues.

 

The Rug Rats also liked to run around decks 16 & 17 playing hide & seek or tag or something. One of their favourite games was running out of the Haven area and locking themselves out. Then they wait for a Haven resident to swipe their card so they can barge in without any sort of acknowledgement or consideration to whoever opened the door. A well placed hip and "oh, excuse me - I didn't see you there - that's why you shouldn't run in the hallways - that's how accidents happen - I hope your shoulder feels better tomorrow" ended that game pretty quick when they seen me coming. They never did it to me again.

 

Okay, seriously now. It sounds like I'm exaggerating. And I am. But just a little bit.

 

--The Courtyard is a lovely place to be. Simply lovely.

 

--I think they should have kid-free times for the Haven Courtyard area. Like, let the kids in from 9am to 1pm, boot them out and make it a quiet area from 1pm to 5pm. Let the kids back in from 5pm to 7pm, and then let the adults have it for the rest of the night. That would be a fair compromise in my opinion.

 

--The Epic Club Restaurant was awesome. The restaurant was not, however, the quiet elegant place I was told it would be. Not that I cared. I'm not the quiet elegant type anyways! The only complaint I would have is they have the same menu every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every single night, it's the same. They have a daily special of 1 or 2 additional items, but it was never anything worth remembering.

 

--The Harlem Globetrotters had the cabin directly above us. They held practices every day from 9am to noon, and again from 10pm to 1am. Every day.

 

--The Epic lounge was a waste of good space, in my opinion. Hey, it's nice to have a lounge at my disposal, but 23 hours a day it was empty of any life form. I spent an afternoon in there reading all by myself after the Rug Rats chased most everybody else out of the Courtyard. I really don't have any idea on how to better utilize the space, though. I am most certainly NOT going to suggest they could put another cabin or two in that area because the last thing the Epic needs is more passengers.

 

--Posh had to be the most under-utilized part of the ship. It was never busy, with the exception of the group of 20-somethings who hung around the bar every day. They only spoke in high volume and appeared to always be discussing which of their woman had the trampiest tramp stamp.

 

The noise from the main pool desk just below was easily heard at Posh. Therefore I would never consider Posh to be a quiet zone.

 

--For the first time ever I actually liked the buffet on a cruise ship. It was busy at times, but overall it wasn't too bad. I hate to admit this, and most of you won't believe me, but I had a slab of prime rib that easily ranks with the best I've ever had.

 

I absolutely hated the food at the buffet on the Crown Princess (although it was the nicest buffet, design-wise, I've seen on a cruise ship), and the NCL Star's buffet was kind of bland, both in taste and design. The Epic buffet was something I actually looked forward to.

 

--We went to La Cucina...twice! I don't know why people often ignore La Cucina, or bash it for having poor quality food. It's our favourite specialty restaurant. And for 10 bucks a head it's a damn good deal. La Cucina was never busy on the Star, and Epic was the same. Empty tables everywhere. A 14 ounce Ribeye for $10? Yeah, try finding that on land.

 

--Moderno's was a lot of fun. But the salad bar was a let-down. I don't know what all the fuss was about. It wasn't that big, and the salad items (you know, items that actually have something to do with salad) were few in number.

 

The meat, however, was awesome. Once they get going it all gets confusing and you have to flip the card over to tell them to "STOP BRINGING ME FOOD!!!!!" I never thought the day would ever come that I would utter those words. And I never did have to say it. I just flipped the card over to the red side. Whew. That was close.

 

--We never made it to any of the free MDRs, or Tepanyaki, or Cagneys, or Le Bistro. There were just to many choices and we can only eat 12 hours a day. 13 hours a day is just too much for me.

 

--Blue Man Group was just okay. Entertaining, for sure. But they did have some skits that needed speeding up. It started to get a little long and we were thankful when it ended. The drink they serve just prior to the show (only available in the Epic theater) was pretty damn tasty. They even had a non-alcoholic version.

 

Maybe BMG just isn't my cup of tea. Who knows. I enjoyed it. I'm glad to say I seen their show. But it wasn't the big awesome show I was expecting.

 

--We had a hell of a time finding a store on board that sold basic drugstore items. Finding jewelry and clothes was easy, but want to find some candy or a toothbrush or deodorant? It's behind the barber shop, off to the left, behind all the liquor and cigarettes. We didn't find that store until day 5.

 

Luckily we weren't in serious need of anything, it was just odd that no crew member could direct us to this store. Every crew member I asked would keep guiding us to the main store area with all the jewelry and clothing.

 

--NCL needs to do something with their elevators. Many, many times we were crammed into an elevator, only to continuously have it stop at every floor along the way up/down. I know it's possible to put a sensor in an elevator that will tell it "hey, I'm full of people...maybe I should start dropping them off at the floors they requested instead of stopping at every floor like a dumbass." Matter of fact, the elevators on the Star will refuse to move if they are overweight, so I know it's entirely possible for a system to be designed to bypass floors in order to drop people off first.

 

Speaking of the elevators - NCL really messed up with only going with 2 banks of 8 elevators on the Epic. They screwed up badly.

 

--It is very disheartening to see the amount of people who use the elevator to go up/down 1 floor. It happened all the time on this cruise. Of course I'm not talking about the elderly or handicapped. I'm talking about young able-bodied people who were just too damn lazy to climb a flight of stairs. And it wasn't just going UP. People also jumped on an elevator to go DOWN a single floor.

 

It seemed to be such a common annoyance that by the end of the cruise some passengers were beginning to confront others who would attempt to do this. I thought I was going to see a fight at one point. I personally don't say anything, although I am using my imagination to violently strangle the offender.

 

And we wonder why obesity is getting to be a serious problem in our society.

 

--I had to laugh at other Haven guests who continually thought that inserting their cruise cards into the slot in the elevator magically transformed it into a priority service elevator. Swiping your card did nothing. I did it for the first 2 days and it never made a difference. I asked Adrian and he just smiled and said it doesn't do anything.

 

--I'm an ex-smoker (about a year and a half) and I absolutely LOVE the smell of cigarette smoke. I'm not going to lie. I love it. My GF, a 10 year ex-smoker, is the same way. However, we could not stand being in the casino for more than 10 minutes. My eyes would burn and my throat would close up. The next day I noticed the clothes we were wearing at the casino were now stinking up our closet. I also had a good bout of smokers hack for most of the next day. Seriously.

 

I enjoyed it for years myself and would never ever put-down anybody else for smoking. So I'm not saying they should ban smoking in the casino because that would make me a hypocrite. But that Epic casino specifically.....UGH. That was awful. You smokers can have it with my sincere wishes of good luck. I'm not interested in gambling any more.

 

And those rinky-dink little air cleaners you see scattered throughout the casino? Ahahahaha. Yeah, I got news for you NCL - they do nothing. It doesn't take a college degree to see that they need something a little more robust than those cheap made-in-China Walmart specials. They need to be looking at industrial sized air cleaners if they want to put a dent into that thick cloud of cancer.

 

--I don't know what the official number was, but there was a LOT more kids on this cruise than I expected. Kids everywhere. Small kids.

 

--There was less selection on the in-room TV than there was on the NCL Star. I would have expected the complete opposite.

 

--The EPIC has the worst Navigation channel I have ever seen. I admit that I'm addicted to that station. The Epic's, however, was downright bad. Copyright 1996? Yup. I didn't make that up. 1996. This is 2012. Get in the 21st century, NCL.

 

NCL could easily provide us with interesting and helpful information...but they don't. With the high quality TV we had in our cabin, there is nothing (but money) stopping NCL from designing a nice interactive navigation channel that will be the envy of every other cruise line.

 

So please NCL, just do it.

 

--We met a wide variety of people on this cruise. Lots of nice people. Lots and lots of nice, fun, smiling, happy people. Those people are what made our cruise. Thank you!

 

...................................

 

I guess that's about it for now. If I think of more I'll post more. Remember, a lot of that is tongue in cheek. It's true, but I say everything with a smile on my face.

 

If you have any questions, please fire away.

 

Thanks for your review. I am posting primarily because I am in such close agreement with your comments. We cruised Epic on Jan 19 - we also had a great time with pleasant crew and nice diversions but would not travel on her again. While we only had a midship balcony we did enjoy Posh greatly-it was a highlight. Some random comments:

- Posh was great and relaxing-it seemed to be the only way to make sure you had a comfortable pool chair. The pool area is pleasant but way too small for the number of passengers

- We had to put up with the infamous bed by the door (ie, by the sink). The layout certainly isn't unworkable but it is far from ideal

- the balcony had two basic chairs and a footstool. Unsuitable for dining

- the ship layout seemed poor to us. You virtually had to transverse the casino to get anywhere. I hated the low ceilings and the ship to me seemed dark and not very luxurious compared to Pricess and X offerings.

My pesonal view is that this ship will not age well

-was particularly taken by your comments on ship movement- it did seem extreme even in what appeared to be calm waters. Surprising with the ships size although I realize this is the most subjective topic

-food was very good- we disliked the dining room layouts as crowded, noisy and boring. It was disconcerting in Manhattan to see crew pull bags of laundry through the dining room

-most the two tops were jammed together in both MDR's and we wound up asking for some 4 tops (we never really noticed an issue on any other cruise we were on).

-casino while huge didn't have many (or any) newer video slots

-really liked La Cuccina (2x), Cagney's (1x) and Ice Bar was novel

-Slam Allan!- what a fantastic entertainer

-could take or leave Second City and Blue Man and had no interest in seeing them twice

I realize many negative comments here but we really did enjoy the cruise and aren't sorry we tried the Epic. It just seemed engineered for maximum occupancy and shipboard diversions and not scaled towards relaxation and elegance. Lo:)oking forward to trying a suite on the Jade this fall in the Med.

-

[rolloman]

The positive spin I can put on our first Mega-ship experience would be: at least now I know I won't waste my time and money sailing on the Oasis or the Allure. I was considering sailing them in the future. Not any more.

 

 

Nice review. As for your comment above, it will be your loss. Those two ships were purposely built with more space per passenger than any out there.With the wide open interior forward to aft promenade and the open air Central Park deck it Really spreads people. I enjoyed the Epic when I sailed her as well. Looking forward to Getaway and Breakaway, I am sure they will be spectacular.

[AZKEN2MUCH]

thank you for your review...yea, the kids get away with whatever parents let them, right? I'm sailing in 44 days and will be my first "big" ship so don't know what to expect. Looking forward to a ton of exercise getting to know all the nooks and crannies (did you know that on the Star there is a men's restroom that has glass windows overlooking the sea?). (Like I said, I get to know ALL the nooks and crannies - lol)

 

Thanks again and continue to have a great outlook on sea experiences.

[gelo7]

Very nice review.