Norwegian Epic Review

The First Epic Hybrid Cruise! 28/08/10

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Norwegian Epic
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kikki21
First Time Cruiser • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Aug 2010
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony

The Epic Hybrid Cruise - Hurricane Earl sent us West not East! We were already in Miami for 4 days before we joined the Epic. There were not many cruise ships in port for the 4 days we were there. However, we had a special late lunch/ early dinner at Smith and Wollensky's on Friday evening to watch the weekend cruise ships go out of port including my first ever cruise ship foray... the Majesty of the Seas! Both my husband and I were really excited about the Epic... we had read about her on Cruise Critic, commented about the various bathroom/sink issues and now tomorrow we were coming on board!

Embarkation - So we got to the Port about midday..... yes we could have got there sooner but to be honest there were not that many queues there really and we were actually processed very quickly.. It took about half an hour and that was it! However, we had a bit of a shock getting on board as I heard the words "itinerary change" from a customer service agent and he was handing out letters - we were not going to St Thomas and St Maarten but to Cozumel and Roatan instead! Ok, our UK travel agent could have told us about the change beforehand... the whole trip was booked through them... it wouldn't have changed anything, we would have still sailed but I could have done some research beforehand on what to do with the new islands.....very poor customer service. I had heard of Cozumel but it was a case of Roa - what to us Brits!? I was very happy we had an extended stay on Nassau as I had booked a dolphin encounter at the Blue Lagoon independently and it meant we had much more time on the island. I booked this independently and paid in advance. I had booked other trips but not paid anything out so that was good. We were very glad we changed hotels as according to tripadvisor our original hotel was a bit of a dump and indeed walking past it, our 2nd choice of hotel looked a lot better and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay there - Marseilles Hotel. We had known there were hurricanes about and had checked UK news before we went and American TV but the last we had known was that they were not heading for where we were going... wrong! Anyway, I am digressing... we got on board and we got maps when we checked in and it was like wow..... we are here! It was pretty heaving in the Garden Cafe which is where we chose to have lunch but we could have gone elsewhere as Taste was open for sure. Whilst having lunch, we had the announcement that our cabins were ready and indeed one of the officers was also coming round telling passengers this was the case which I thought was a nice touch.... we thought the food compared very well to RCI - our last cruise, so we were quite impressed although NCL could have some variation to their complimentary drinks other than water and iced tea/coffee after the breakfast juices were taken out.RCI have a tasty lemonade too.

Stateroom - We had balcony cabin 12152... which was nicely midship positioned. We really liked our cabin and we were lucky enough to have an excellent stateroom attendant in Made.... who showed us where the secret lights were and also how to turn off the phone light! He kept the room very clean for us and amused us with cute towel animals including some swans for our first night with confetti as this was our honeymoon cruise! Our opinion on the cabin was that it was compact and bijoux.... things as have been reported are a tight squeeze to get by especially when you are trying to unpack at the same time! I liked the fact we could make tea and coffee and Made always made sure the ice bucket was stocked up. I loved the interactive TV and the fact you could get menus on the screen - genius! We liked the fact we could just have a chill in the cabin for a bit of quiet time. The sink - yep - useless... but we did like the separate shower/ toilet arrangement and we thought the shower was great, well sized and you could get 2 people in there - ahem! The storage was also great, plenty of it, so things never looked messy in there. Our suitcases went under the bed and I thought having an NCL plastic dirt sheet for when you arrive for your suitcases to go on the bed is a good idea, saves the linen getting messed up!

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony

Cabin BA

Cabin 12152 was in a great location midship so not too far from either stairwell or lifts. Love being port side especially when leaving Miami and also when entering Nassau. The deck was a great height for everything too.

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