My husband and I were very excited to think we were booked on the NCL Epic's "Inaugural Maiden Voyage" from Southampton to New York City. Needless to say, there was a bit of a "what the heck?" moment when searching the Internet the day before our departure to see videos of the Epic sailing out of Rotterdam and to find YouTube videos from passengers on that mini-cruise journey. It just took a bit of the gleam off of our "new and shiny" and waited just-for-us expectations. Not to mention, it was our first cruise on NCL, having previously cruised with Carnival on three separate occasions; so we were looking forward to experiencing the freestyle cruising option...dining when and where we wanted and skipping the dressing up (formal attire anyway) parts.
NCL handled our flight arrangements and flew us from JFK over to Heathrow on American Airlines. Of course, no seat assignments had been made for us; but I was all over that early on and had called AA and booked our seats weeks before. The flight over was smooth (although we didn't sleep on the flight...and it was a red-eye) and we were promptly greeted at the airport by an NCL representative after we had cleared customs. We had to wait about an hour to board the bus to take us from the airport to Southampton, but it was well organized and everything flowed smoothly. Once having arrived in Southampton, the check-in process was very efficient; although the lines were long, they moved at a steady pace. One important thing missing, however, was the distribution of ship maps and a Welcome Aboard bulletin. We found out later that some of the other passengers had been given them at check-in, but most of us had not. There were so many passengers storming the guest services desk on that first afternoon for maps and information that the staff members were just grabbing stacks of them and walking down the lines of people handing them out. I guess it seemed that many of us wanted the same things.
We found the elevators without much to-do, and fortunately took the right set up to our deck. We found out the next day that all cabins on the port side could be accessed by the red elevators (hallway carpet was red and brown) and all cabins on the starboard side could be accessed by the blue elevators (hallway carpet on that side of the decks was blue and brown). It would have been helpful to know this the very first day...again something that could have been communicated at check-in and repeated in the Welcome Aboard bulletin and/or map.