Norwegian Epic Review
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We booked this cruise for one reason: some of our friends found it, and found good fares, too. A couple of days in Barcelona and a trip to the Canary Islands sounded like a pretty good way to start 2016. We booked a Spa Suite, which would give us additional access around the ship, a couple of other discounts, and would help us avoid the large queues for embarkation, restaurants, etc. Or so we thought.
Embarkation: complete disaster. Personnel recognized our "Spa Suite" reservation, and took us to the required check-in queue. After 30 minutes of waiting, we had not moved. In the meantime, the standard check-in queues were flowing quite smoothly. After 55 minutes, we finally got to the check-in counter. So much for skipping the lengthy queues....
Walking around the ship, everything looked a bit worn and tired. I was under the impression the ship was built in 1996, so I thought it looked pretty good for a ship that was hitting 20 years of service. I learned a few days later that it had been built in 2010, which changed my perspective from "it has held up well" to "good god this looks awful". Broken furniture, stains, weird smells...after the trip, I learned that the Epic had undergone a refurbishment in just the past year. There is no evidence of this whatsoever; combined with the poor layout of the public areas and the lack of space, I am very close to rating them "terrible". The salvaged Costa Concordia might be more pleasant.
Cabin Review
Spa Suite
I had a look at the deck plans and stateroom lay-outs prior to booking; I found the regular rooms with the sink next to the bed a bit odd, and knowing that we wanted to relax, opted for the Spa Suite.
"Suite" isn't a correct description - and I knew this from the deck plans - but the room was even smaller than I expected. Our room was the size of a standard balcony on a RC or Celebrity boat, but with the curves of the cabinets, felt even smaller than usual. Lighting was OK; there was a control panel that could set "moods", but the control panel was at the vanity in the bathroom area, and the only place in the room from which the lights could be controlled.
Where most rooms would have a couch and small table, we had the Jacuzzi in the corner of the room. It worked just fine, and was quite pleasant.
The bathroom area was average to poor. We had a toilet "stall" with a convex glass sliding door, which didn't slide particularly well, and was so, so noisy - no such thing as a quiet nighttime break. The shower was nice, with another sliding convex glass door, and a tiny lip at the bottom. I normally wouldn't even notice, except on slightly rough seas, shower water sloshes over the lip and floods the rest of the room. We had to call for extra towels to mop up on several occasions; our stateroom attendant eventually started leaving extra towels each day just for mopping purposes.
The Spa Suite did give us access to the spa/thermal suite area, as well as The Haven, which ended up being our favorite parts of the ship. In the unlikely event we sail with NCL again, I will definitely book something with at least Haven access, and depending on the length of the cruise, would even consider one of the owner's suites just to get a proper suite instead of a slightly larger stateroom.