Some Epic comments

[dans0202]

I wanted to post some comments on my Epic adventure and ask a few questions.

We are a 40 something couple with 2 teens, we have travelled with NCL many times. Each of our last 5 cruises have been the Christmas week so we are use to crowds. In order the last 5 cruises from first to most recent were Epic, Epic, Getaway, Escape and Epic again.

 

The good

 

We were in a group and were able to make dinner reservations just outside the 90-day reservation window which was nice to avoid having to wait on hold at 9am, 90 days out and give 10+ cabin numbers.

The dueling pianos remain the highlight of our NCL cruises and this time did not disappoint. The entertainers were amazing and we hung out in Headliners until the wee hours of each morning.

Our fare included 4 dinners in the speciality restaurants. We ate at Cagney’s twice, La Cucina and Teppanyaki. Teppanyaki was a 10 out of 10, La Cucina was a 9, Cagneys was a 7 one night and a 5 the other as the food was way over cooked and cold. So, 3 out of 4 dinners were not bad. Had we paid for the poor night at Cagney’s I would have been more upset. I would say that given the prices of the a la carte speciality dinning restaurants I would not eat there relative to what I perceive as their value. That said as a cruise perk the dining package is nice.

As a married couple I have no issues with the bathroom set up but do see the issues for 2 teens of the opposite sex.

 

The bad

 

The boarding process was beyond bad and I will leave this for later.

The disembarking process was not very good either and there was one thing that really bother me which I wanted to share with others. The process is slow but to make matters worse there are two lines available once you get your bags. One line is for those using porters or handicapped and another for those carrying their own bags. What you don’t know when you are in the baggage area is that there are 6 custom agents and 3 agents work each line. With the bulk of the people pulling their own luggage one line obviously moved much quicker then another. The NCL staff would not allow people from the slower line to enter the faster moving line. When the NCL staff were questioned, they were pretty up front about the fact that you need to pay a porter for the faster line. This did not sit well with many but the NCL were pretty firm - if you pay, you move faster. I wonder if these NCL workers were getting a cut from the porters as they were trying to drum up business for them. I suspect NCL management (which I do not think much of) is oblivious to what is going on as they make every effort to hide from unhappy customers. If management know what was going on they would just set up a $20 fast line and cut out the porters.

The tendering process off a ship the size of the Epic is in a word, painful. From the private island to back on the ship took 70 minutes if you ended up in a section of the tender that emptied last. Take great efforts to figure out which sections unload first otherwise you will be stuck for 30 minutes in pretty tight quarters.

As I said I have cruised with NCL many times but this is the first time I was not on a new ship. On each past occasion, I was on a ship which was brand new with the best staff. This time on the Epic was a significant step back in the quality of the service we received. Wait staff were weak and the activity staff even weaker. English was very broken with many staff members. Mistakes would be made by junior staff and other more senior staff would openly show their displeasure with the junior offending staff. Do others feel the staff quality has declined fleet wide or do the older ships simply have weaker staff?

We had the UBP as well. I have had this in the past. The by the glass wine selection on the Epic was much smaller this year then on the Escape last year. There was not a single cab by the glass from Napa, only a proprietary blend was available. Was this lack of selection ship specific or has NCL cut back fleet wide? I also noticed that NCL has started to push many more drinks above the $15 threshold. It is not just the premium scotches but some of the mixed drinks as well. A chocolate martini which does not contain anything of a premium nature is promoted in the drink menu and is just shy of $18. There were other mixed drinks being pushed to $18 as well. I assume this is NCL’s attempt to draw in a bit more revenue. I guess at $3 a drink people are a bit less likely to object. I suspect next time I cruise there will be even more drinks moved up to $18. I have to say $21 for a martini with tip is pretty expensive for somebody without the UBP. I wonder how many people are actually paying for drinks. I also found that some bars were short staffed. Being a cynic I think they are trying to slow the flow of alcohol. At the Martini bar in particular there were many nights we just gave up on getting served. Around the pool there were always 3 or 4 people waiting for a bar tender.

As I said above I have been on 5 holiday cruises with NCL and also one with Royal. I can say without a doubt this was the first time that NCL offered almost no recognition of the holidays. Christmas was very low key and Chanukah which lasted the entire length of the cruise was not recognized at all. Each of the past cruises I was on made an effort far greater then the NCL Epic staff did to recognize the holidays. I know NCL does not offer token kids gifts the way Royal does, but to not even offer a candle service was a first time experience for me. Again, I don’t know if this was an Epic cutback or it was fleet wide. I would love to hear how other NCP ships addressed the holidays.

Having been on the Epic 3 times are have certainly seen her age. Our cabin entry door was broken and took a day and half to repair, cabinet doors in our room were falling off their hinges and many items looked quite warn. Staff made efforts to maintain the visible flaws but you could see that the less visible deficiencies were going unchecked. This is simply a lack of labour in certain areas and is clearly been done on purpose.

My last observation / compliant before I rant about the boarding process was the quality of the food in O’Sheehan’s and the service. I had read before about people waiting an hour from being seated to getting food and thought they were over stating things. Well I can tell you they were not. There were times the food came out in 30 minutes but we had one breakfast actually take an hour. The food quality was much worse in O’Sheehan’s then past cruises. I actually only ate there once as I found it so poor. In the past it was a highlight for me. My kids however did not seem to mind as much. I am curious again what others are finding on NCL’s newer ships.

 

The terrible

 

The boarding process was a disaster relative to other NCL cruises I have taken. I highly recommend against a cruise with NCL out of Cape Canaveral after what we experienced. We were on the Alamo shuttle bus just before noon and pulled into the terminal. The traffic back up did not seem that long but it took about 30 minutes to move a few hundred feet. Then once the shuttle bus found a parking spot we off loaded to find a line of people that came completely out of the terminal, down the stairs and all the way along the length of the drop off area. That is when we knew this was going to be bad. There was one NCL employee out there but she did her best to hide and protect herself from angry people. It took about 45 minutes to reach the base of the terminal. Then once up the stairs and into the line for security it was another 15 minutes. Once inside the security portion of the terminal they had to close the security area to additional people as inside the terminal the number of people had reached capacity. Around 2:00 they reopened security and allowed us to pass into the terminal. I estimate there were still well over a thousand people behind us there is no way more then 50% of the passengers arrived before noon. Once into the terminal we were very lucky as with our gold status were able to join a shorter line. At 2:20 we reached the front of the line. That is where we got an earful from the NCL staff person manning the front of the line. First, she went on about how crazy it had been and that the platinum and gold members were all up in arms that their line was constantly being put on hold for those groups traveling with somebody in the wheelchair. Then she went on to explain what the problem was (in her opinion). Apparently NCL is the employer of last resort in the Cape Canaveral area. NCL was forced to bus in 60 seniors from Tampa (over 2 hours away) and provide them training on route. No offence to people of a ripper age but you can not convince me that somebody (on average) born in 1940 is more computer savvy then somebody born in 1970. What happened next only goes to show that. The woman helping us just kept pressing keys on the keyboard and talking to the computer in the hopes it would respond. A supervisor was frantically running between check in agents trying to help them. They took over 10 pictures of my family of 4 with the check in agent continually talking to the software asking it why it was jumping around. At 2:45 we truly thought we were done when she handed us our cards. Then we went to leave the terminal and hand in our cards for scanning only the pictures on our cards did not match our faces when they were scanned. Off to another line (yes, a line as this was happening to many, many people). Then by 3:00 we are ready to board (again there must have been over 1,000 people behind us still waiting to enter the terminal). We step foot on the ship and there was nobody there from NCL. We have been on the Epic several times so we knew where we were but there was no door in front of us. We had to guess, go left or go right. We guessed right. Well on that side of the ship there are no doors mid ship and we had to walk the length of the walking track to find a door to the interior of the ship. All told just over 3 hours. I could not get over how open the front-line staff were that NCL could not find staff. This story was repeated by at least a half dozen people we met on board so obviously, the terminal workers were doing a lot of venting. The back up of people resulted in us departing about 90 minutes late.

 

In summary

 

Overall, I had a good time (I hope I was not too negative but I wanted to share some of my experiences). There is no doubt the service and food quality is deceasing but that is where the current management has chosen to take the company. In my opinion they determined they would prefer to not compete with Royal so they are trying to position the company just above Carnival but below Royal. I think management lacks certain competencies and would not be surprised if down the road a different management team decides to move the service and company in a different direction given the number of newer more modern ships NCL has. I think the modern ships could allow NCL to compete with Royal if they paid better wages, hired better staff and managers and moved away from the nickel and dime mentality of current senior management. In the end the shareholders and stock price will ultimately decide where NCL goes.

For me, if the price is right I will be back with NCL but most likely on the newer ships as service on the older ships is too weak for my liking and I will never cruise with NCL out of Cape Canaveral again. I hope others on the Getaway and Escape found the service level to be higher – please let me know so I can start planning my next cruise. Thanks

[LOWTYD]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

[Wildfan43]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

 

 

I keep thinking the same thing. I'm just going to go into the whole process with a positive attitude.

 

 

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[tgirl25]

Sorry to hear that you had a hectic time and that it was not up to your standards. I am sure you had at least somewhat of a good time...

 

Glad I should be getting there earlier but the boarding stories have me unnerved. I am sure we will all be fine but wow, I hope ours goes better.

 

Now off to pack, lol not for the 2/4 cruise but going away for a long weekend by my lonesome to get some peace and quiet. So hard in a household of only men, they appreciate me more after I am gone a few days(the man and son)...

[easyboy]

Glad that despite the negatives, you still had a good time. I am impressed by your attitude.

[LMKakaThing2]

So sorry to hear about the troubles you had when boarding. I board the Epic tomorrow and NCL was sending out automated calls yesterday telling people not to show up until noon. We're still planning on showing up early, just not as early to try and avoid a nightmare like you described.

 

 

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[Wisconsin995]

So sorry to hear about the troubles you had when boarding. I board the Epic tomorrow and NCL was sending out automated calls yesterday telling people not to show up until noon. We're still planning on showing up early, just not as early to try and avoid a nightmare like you described.

 

 

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This is me exactly! Thinking like 10:30, you?!

 

 

Also, to the original poster...do you mind sharing which sections of the Epic tender are off first? Or was it random each time?

[LMKakaThing2]

This is me exactly! Thinking like 10:30, you?!

 

 

 

 

 

Also, to the original poster...do you mind sharing which sections of the Epic tender are off first? Or was it random each time?

 

 

 

We're planning 10/10:30.

 

 

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[KarimaJ]

To answer your questions about the newer ship, we sailed the Getaway and the service was great! We had one longer dinner on a busy night (1.5 hours) but the rest were fast and staff was very friendly. I have heard others complain on the boards but on a full cruise we didn't encounter this.

They do police those pool towels which I found annoying, you must turn one in to get a new one. The Towel guy at the pool seemed a little irritated. Other then that, always greeted with a smile.

[put me on a ship]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

 

We often cruise out of Port Canaveral, (it's close to our house), and have never had a problem boarding. I've always said PC is the BEST port to cruise out of, and they do have it down pat. However, when we went on Epic for the New Year's cruise, boarding was horrible!! We were held at the bottom of the stairs, outside, for a good hour, security took forever, but once past that, piece of cake!

 

I really think the terminal they are using for Epic is too small for that big ship. A new, bigger, terminal has been built for the mega ships, but it seems Royal Caribbean has dibs on that one. The day we boarded, Majesty of the Seas (small ship) was at the new terminal.

[gorgotron]

We're planning 10/10:30.

 

 

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Sailed recently with Epic, honestly the worst embarking and disembarking I've ever dealt with. I believe going earlier would be the better bet. We arrive at 12:15 and didn't get on the boat until about 3pm

 

Had a very similar experience as OP. Food was great, workers were nice, enjoyed the ship but it was lacking some features/entertainment. Only 3 shows, 1 costs money, the other just being a dance, and lastly the third was a drag show, overall disappointed. Kids enjoyed it, especially the slides, but there were only like 2 small pools to get into. Childcare hours are similar to Royal Caribbeans, but they still were inconvenient hours.

 

Don't let my experience put a damper on your vacation, went with wife a DS3 and DD8, everyones experience is different. Hope you have better luck and a wonderful trip!

[NittanyCruise]

To be fair to NCL a decent amount of the trouble at the Port Canaveral terminal is out of their control. The process for getting buses and passengers to the terminal is beyond bad and that's the fault of Port Canaveral. Once you get into line to get onto the ship it's not too bad - it's just getting you and baggage to the check in line is awful.

[sid_9169]

I guess my boarding experience recently on the Epic was the exception... I arrived on the Cortrans shuttle at about 11:30 am, and from the time I exited the shuttle to being on board was literally less than 10 minutes... Fastest embarkation process ever. I agree that the Epic is showing her age, and I much prefer the Away class ships.

[mjkacmom]

Sorry it wasn't a great cruise. It seems like most of your issues were with the port area and not NCL. We sail out of NYC, learned about the porter trick after our first cruise, standing in line for customs for an hour. I LOVE the fact that we can grab a porter after getting off the ship and whisk through customs (it's not a flat fee, it's a tip, we give $25 and he takes us right to our vehicle.) This has nothing to do with the cruise line - porters are there for every line.

[Justaddvodka68]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

 

It's really just a timing thing. We were on the Dec 17th sailing and had no issues. We took the Alamo shuttle over, waited maybe 25 minutes in traffic to be dropped off. The Alamo driver literally handed our bags to the porter, we went up the elevator to the security, breezed right through and waited one family ahead of us in the Latitudes silver line, then walked right on board.

 

We left the hotel around 11 and were in O'Sheehans ordering lunch before 1.

[LOWTYD]

That does sound promising.:)

[Birder1]

Embarkation/disembarkation, outside the ship areas, at Term 10 Port Canaveral is subcontracted to InterCruises & is not NCL. That said, if any issues arise w embarkation, 2 (only 2) NCL representatives are available to resolve. InterCruises is not allowed to fully vet foreign nationals (which typically constitute approx 15% of pax). Those checkin, InterCruises agents must acquire additional approvals from the 2 representatives.

 

Indeed, Term 10 is apparently too small for a ship of Epic's size. NCL refused to lease Term 1, which is much larger & a bit more ergonomic. Disembark is further challenged by the lack of space near the CBP area & lack of CBP agents, which are out of the control of InterCruises. Pax should have all docs in their hands when they approach the CBP officers, Particularly have the Customs form completed.

[mark290]

Thank you very much for taking the time to post your experience.

[Sissaaaaaa]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

 

 

We have cruised out of every single port in Florida, and Cape Canaveral was BY FAR the fastest, most organized, and easiest. I have no idea at all what that OP is talking about, and maybe something happened to make their process hard, but we sailed on 12/30 - a new year holiday cruise on a sold out ship, and had NO issues with the port at all. We also had NO issues with the tender.

[happy cruzin]

UGH! We are leaving on Feb 4th. I keep reading these awful stories about boarding in Port Canaveral. You would think they would have it down pat by now.

 

I keep thinking the same thing. I'm just going to go into the whole process with a positive attitude.

 

 

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It is beginning to concern me that we may be dealing with this too! You'd think they would have found the solution by now! :mad:

[happy cruzin]

We have cruised out of every single port in Florida, and Cape Canaveral was BY FAR the fastest, most organized, and easiest. I have no idea at all what that OP is talking about, and maybe something happened to make their process hard, but we sailed on 12/30 - a new year holiday cruise on a sold out ship, and had NO issues with the port at all. We also had NO issues with the tender.

 

That's sounding better!!

 

[Birder1]

You can reduce delays w the embarkation process if you have a passport (not a passport CARD; you will fill-out additional paperwork), & will have to fill-out additional paperwork if using a birth certificate and a debit card. Take a pen to the terminal to fill-out your health form before you reach the check-in desk. All these delay embark. 😀

[dans0202]

Wusconsin995 - my advise when taking the tender - going to private island, move to the bottom of the tender when boarding. When returning to the ship, be on the top if possible.

When going to Grand Cayman it is 50 / 50 as to whether top or bottom gets off first. On the return again the top is faster.

The issue when returning to the ship is the single gangway and having to get through security which creates a back up. People often don't have their passes accessible or forget to pass certain objects through the x-ray. NCL can only tell people to be ready and organized so many times.

 

As for what time to arrive at the port, if NCL is saying 12 noon, I highly recommend 11am. Part of our problem was the rush of people that arrived at 12 (when NCL recommended it). From others in our group that arrived at 11am, they were on in less then 1/2 the time it took us.

[Birder1]

Check-in desks open around 9:30am, but boarding begins (priorities first) around 11am.

[cecil89]

We're planning 10/10:30.

 

 

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I hope all you boarding tomm do not have s long delay.

But the ship is hosting a Holy Week cruise, electronic music party.

Big party cruise, I feel for the employees.

 

Cecil