This was the very first time we cruised with our children. We had previously only ever cruised with Norwegian and had gone to three cruises with Norwegian, one in Spain, one in New Orleans to Mexico and another when I was pregnant with my first child from NY. We had never been on the Epic so we were very excited to try this ship. Our experience on this trip definitely convinced me we need to try other cruise lines, especially with two small children. Unfortunately we are already booked for a huge family trip with their Hawaii cruise and they are the only cruise line for Hawaii so we are sticking to it.

Positives: The staff is very helpful overall and really friendly. The food in the specialty restaurants is, in my opinion, very good. We loved the Moderno Churrasceria and considering we were travelling with a group of families with young children (3 families--2 kids each ranging in ages from 1-9years of age) our fine dining dinner experiences were really great. We were not rushed and the staff was accomodating with our children, my daughter has special needs and our friends' child has a number of severe food allergies. The staff helped us get their food and helped make sure that there were no allergy incidents. We also ate at La Cucina, Cagney's and Teppanyaki, I listed them in order of what food we enjoyed most. We had a nice stop at Atlantis and did the beach and explore Atlantis excursion. The weather was so bad we couldn't go to Great Stirrup Cay which was the second destination on the itinerary. The children's pool looked like great fun but once again the weather was so bad my daughters only got to enjoy it for a couple of hours on embarkation day.

Negatives: NCL had very little to offer the youngest group, Guppies. We attended a session with our 1 year old and 3 year old and it felt like we were in a closet, the person leading the group said they had last minute reassigned the room that the Guppies use to the older kids group, so she closed off half of the room (the other half of the room was spacious and beautiful with computers and a large tv screen that could have been used to play a toddler friendly movie) she also did not have enough supplies for all of the kids to use and several of the parents were saying this was such a disappointment compared to the children's activities they had experienced with Royal Caribbean. Also, I had an umbrella stroller for my kids and a walker and the hallways going to the room were nightmarish when people were cleaning. It was a true struggle to get my two kids to and from the rooms. Finally, they tell you to download the NCL app which has options to send messages to others with the app but for a ridiculous amount of money and it doesn't work without internet. When my husband tried three times to purchase an internet package, the manager was never there to help him work out the app on his phone so we never completed the internet purchase. Also the one thing I always do on our cruise trips is take pictures every night. Other than one wonderful photographer, the other photographers had zero to little patience with the children and did not take the extra time to take great pictures of them and our family group. I did purchase several pictures but was disappointed with the overall experience, especially at the end with ordering as everything was computerized but still complicated. Read more