We chose this after trying NCL (the Escape) last year for the first time. I received a call the week after from an NCL sales agent and booked this because of the departure port (we like Port Canaveral), the price, the onboard credit offered, the free beverage package, and the free 4 dinner package. The cabin was the weirdest ever (see separate review of that). The entertainment was excellent (we only saw Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Burn the Floor), and Cirque Dreams was fantastic.

We found that having to make reservations for everything took the spontaniety out of some of our "fun" plans. The upper deck (15) had a lot of unused space towards the back, and was always extremely windy (most ships have occasional plexiglass wind panels to help with this). Spice H2O was a great area, but why do they take 90% of the chairs away when they are showing a movie? Makes no sense. There are no inside places to sit (and perhaps read) with a view of the outside, making it somewhat dark. If deck 7 wasn't completely surrounded by lifeboats, it would have been a nice place to have lounge chairs to lie on (like many other cruise lines do). If you didn't claim a lounge chair on deck 15 (like they tell you not to) by 8am, you were out of luck for the day, and had to find a place inside for the day.

The food was good everywhere we ate, no complaints about that (except for the pot of cold mud (coffee) that came when we ordered room service breakfast one morning). Just like on the Escape (a MUCH better ship, by the way), there was little to no information on disembarking for walk-offs like us. I asked several people then averaged out the information, and it did work out fine. I encountered one nasty person at the Concierge desk (female with braces), but got the information I needed from someone else (who was excellent). We had a good time, but unless someone gave us the trip for free, the Epic will not be our choice again. We are thinking that NCL in general is not our style of ship, but with all of the freebies, it's tough to beat the price if that's the main consideration.