Norwegian Epic Review
Shake, Rattle and please don't let this thing roll....
Rating by category
Additional details
This was our sixth cruise, but our first with NCL. I want to first say, THANK GOD WE UPGRADED TO THE HAVEN!
If you book the in the Haven suites, note that there is a VIP check in for Haven only guests. So you won’t have to stand in the long lines for check in. This is not clearly marked so if you are embarking from the port of Miami, when you walk in, there is a little sign on the left on the wall that says VIP CHECK in. This is where you need to go. They will have everything ready for you, and then whisk you away to your very own VIP holding room where they have juice and snacks for you to partake in while you are waiting to get on the ship. This was very nice. Within about 15 minutes our butler came to show us to the HAVEN suites, and show us around the HAVEN area. BUT…. Before even the HAVEN guest were allowed to get on the ship, they were letting "visitors” on the ship to show them around, and they were all kinds of in the way during our tour. Anyway, by the time the tour of the HAVEN was over, we were able to get into our room. Room 16017. This room is beautiful. It’s a two room family suite, with two bathrooms. The master bath has a full size tub and separate shower. Both with full length glass walls looking out at the ocean, and other ships at port. The second bathroom had a full shower as well, which was a good thing because we brought our 16 year old daughter with us. The second room was a little cramped but who spends a lot of time in their rooms anyway? Oh wait. We did. One of the reasons was because the ship was SOOOOO crowded everywhere else BUT the HAVEN. 4200 people on the ship and only a couple hundred in the Haven. We only had four people in our pool at any given time and always one of the hot tubs to ourselves. We talked to other guests who said they couldn’t get in the lower pools or get a pool side chair due to the overcrowding. A few of us were a little sea sick because this ship rocks like crazy. But they have puke bags in every stairwell. Nothing like the OASIS of the SEAS.
Let’s talk about the food. First in the "Garden Café,” I can explain this in one word. YUCK. The same food was served all seven days we were on the ship. Hamburgers cooked so well done that you could use them for hockey pucks. Hot dogs were well done as well, and the buns, (if you could find one) were hard and stale. There was a spot where you could make a salad. Not much to choose from to dress your salad up. And some days you were lucky if there was even any lettuce to make a salad with. The lines are horrible. You don’t know where one line starts and where one ends. With this being our first time on a NCL cruise, we weren’t sure what the process was. We thought that you stood at the end of a line, and worked your way through until you got where you wanted to. This is not the case. The lines start where there are stacks of plates and ends where that section ends. Then there are more plates. Good luck getting in line. That’s all I’m saying. Trying to find a seat after you have picked out our not so delicious food is also a real treat. Good luck. By the time we would find our seat, our food was cold. So now we had cold, over cooked food to try to choke down. Not fun. There are also little buffets in the pool areas. (With the same well done thing that are on the buffet in the garden café) By Thursday I was all ready to not eat again until our dinners we had booked. I was so done with cold tasteless, over cooked food. And then we remembered… We have the Haven restaurant. So we ended up going there for Breakfast. It was like lights came down from heaven and angels were singing. The food was great. It came out fast. And it was hot!! Great food. I wish we would have remembered the Haven restaurant sooner in our cruise.
Cabin Review
When you book a room in the Haven, you get a butler, room steward, and a concierge. The butler brings in the room service, evening snacks and fruits. And he didn’t do much more than that. Plus he (Christol, our butler) had no personality to speak of. Our Concierge (Ryan) was amazing. Any questions we had, we could go to him. If you book shows like The Blue Man Group, Cirque’ Dreams and Legends at sea, the concierge will take you down to the show before everyone else is allowed in, so you can pick where you want to sit. (Front row center stage) Or you can choose to sit in the section marked off for Haven guests only. If you book and excursion, the concierge will also take you down the “magic elevator” to where you can get off the ship quicker than you would if you had go down with everyone else. This was a big bonus to booking in the Haven. Our room steward Eric was great. Eric had a great personality, and wouldn’t hesitate to talk to you if you were around when he was turning down or making up your room. He also left towel animals for us every night. The only bad thing about our room, and I’m not sure if it was like this all over, but it shuttered nonstop. It made my husband feel like his heart was in A-fib the entire time the ship was in motion. You could feel every movement on the ship, and you could hear the ship making this creaking sound. It reminded me of being in an old house or an antique store where you would walk on the floor and hear the boards moving and creaking. One last bad thing about our room. The toilet room in our bathroom. It is also shut off from the regular part of the bathroom. When you open the door, it smelled like a rest stop’s bathroom. Almost like someone urinated in the drain next to the toilet and it was never cleaned out. The smell was just there the whole week.