We just returned from a winter break western Caribbean cruise on the epic and I must say, with the initial buzz now passed, I'm feeling the need to explain my thoughts on the very lovely albeit very flawed ship.

EMBARKATION

Perfect! We love to maximize our time on the ship so we arrived exactly at 1pm so we could be among the first to board. We rented a car from the airport the day before and researched the closest drop off points. Avis has a great location just a mile from the port. I dropped the wife and 3 kids off at the boat, then drove a bit nervously to AVIS. Not crazy about leaving my family in what is usually a embarkation mess (4 previous cruises on other lines firmly entrenched) but I didn't want to deal with luggage and taxis. This way, they relaxed at the port, I dropped off the car...then cabbed it back- all taking about 30 minutes. We then proceeded to literally walk on the ship. ZERO lines at 1:30 and no fuss. A good sign IMO. Kudos to NCL for making this easy...but my guess is our time of arrival was key to this positive experience. Keep that in mind...GET THERE EARLY. Read more