Norwegian Epic Review

4.5 / 5.0
4,409 reviews

Norwegian Epic - Western Caribbean

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Norwegian Epic
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apartment910
2-5 Cruises • Age 40s

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Sail Date: Jan 2011

As many of the reviewers already stated, the NCL Epic is a brand new, nicely designed ship. The service, food and entertainment that are offered on this ship are decent, but none of them rises up to expectations of the promised "epic" experience. The ship was obviously designed with one goal in mind- to make as much profit as possible, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this underlaying concept has been brought to the extreme, dangerously threatening to ruin the whole idea of the "free style" cruising.

Many of the Epic's guests complain about being nickeled and dimmed, and they are somewhat correct. My impression was that the cruising on Epic was over-commercialized. Except for the food, orange juice, and tasteless coffee, everything else on the ship has to be paid for. Particularly annoying was the unavailability of drinking water, for which guests needed to go several floors up to one of the restaurants to get, otherwise they would be charged $6 if taken from the mini-bar in the stateroom. The food was good to great, although I couldn't help noticing that the meals served in dinning rooms were not the same quality as they used to be in the past. Buffet was OK, but the menu was the same every day. However, the specialty restaurants offered a top notch service, as usual. On the day of disembarkation, everybody was rushing to kick us out of the ship, so many of the guests (including myself) left the vessel without having a breakfast, simply because the restaurants closed much earlier than usual.

Although not directly related to the NCL, visiting the Roatan island in Honduras turned out to be an unpleasant experience because of the army of aggravating locals, who the guests had to deal with upon disembarkation.

Cabin Review

It is obvious that ship designers wanted to maximize the usable interior space, reducing the cabin square footage to a minimum. Placing the lavatory outside the toilet area was the ridiculous idea and a major flaw in the design. The stateroom's entrance area was too tight.

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