I had only ever cruised with Royal Caribbean before so I thought going with a different cruise line would make a nice change. The Norwegian Epic was such a bit ship with so much on offer I thought I would give it a go. I was slightly disappointed. I had been on big ships before but the Epic seemed crowded and it was a struggle to book tickets for any of the shows unless you went on the first day and booked for the whole week of activities. We could only pre-book the Precilla Queen of the Desert online before hand (which we did) but it wasn't mentioned that the show was split in two so you had to book two different shows. We only saw half the show in the end. We never got to see any other comedy show or ticketed show the whole rest of the week. If we were going again we would know to get our tickets for the whole week before doing anything on the first day (although the desk was rarely open when we passed it so I don't know how we could have done that).

On RC cruises you know you are paying for drinks etc. but you could do the whole cruise without paying out much more than your original cruise cost if you really wanted to. On the Epic we felt we were paying out extra every single day. On RC the solarium/sauna/steam rooms are free to enter, not fancy but under cover and quiet. The spa area on the Epic was $40 per day to enter or over $100 for the whole week. The hot tubs upstairs were actually really cold so we were forced to pay to use the spa a few days. It was awesome when you were in there (the hot pools and thermal baths were out of this world) but I begrudged having to pay extra for it. Plus there was no clock on the wall so you could easily miss any appointments/plans/dinners you had. I chanced that my watch was waterproof. Luckily it was.

The restuarants on the Epic always seemed very busy but I didn't think they were any better or worse than the RC ships i had been on. Read more