Norwegian Epic Review

Oh Norwegian ... where do I start?

Review for the Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Norwegian Epic

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Sail Date: Dec 2018
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony

Well I will start by saying that I am not typically the type to complain, but Norwegian left us less than impressed. The biggest issue was that the boat seemed way understaffed. Since the drink package wasn't monitored well, it seemed that all 4,000+ cruisers were drinking, and there were only about 2 or 3 bartenders to the busiest bars and only 1 in the less busy bars. This led to long wait times and annoyed guests that actually ended up exchanging words many times because there was no order in the queue. There were some waiters at the pool area, but it literally took them around 45 minutes to return between drink orders (with exception of Carlos from Colombia who was one of the only bright spots for us). The pools were laughable. Keep in mind that there are over 4,000 people on this boat. These pools might have fit 50 to 100 people at max and there were only two of them in the main deck area. Also, if you didn't go to the deck by 7:00 am to claim a chair, then you would not get one. There was no control over chairs claimed and left vacant for hours. As for the food, I felt like there were minimal included restaurant options (about 3 places other than the buffet), but there were several restaurants where you would pay extra. We only went to the included restaurants which were always booked solid. The wait staff was stretched thin, and they would become almost rude at times. I was snapped at once by the waiter for requesting another drink. As for room service...forget it. Sometimes we couldn't even get an attendant to pick up the phone, and when we did, it took over an hour to arrive at our room (even just a pitcher of water). So going back to the phones, the availability to support was severely lacking. We couldn't get guest services or room attendant support at all by telephone. In fact, we NEVER even saw our room attendant. We would just have to flag down attendants in the hallway if we needed something. I feel like I am bashing the cruise line right now, but all these things were so disappointing when we thought Norwegian was a step up from the competition. I can certainly say that the experience was better on Carnival. The general attention to detail was just not there at all. Just a few other points of disappointment, the shopping was minimal, the internet (although very expensive) was horrible, the live entertainment was not spectacular (with exception of the Cirque show and Priscillas which were great). As an example, the musicians in the Cavern had no stage presence and they played the same set each night. They didn't know any of the songs called out for request, and they were some pretty basic songs, like Free Bird. This is a cruise line; I would expect the entertainment to be above the level of the basic corner bar. To be fair, I want to mention the things that I think Norwegian did right. The onboarding and disembarking moved quickly. The app and excursion booking process was easy and convenient. The rooms were kept clean. And the "washy washy happy happy" girls will have us laughing for years to come. Other than that, I would say that Norwegian has a lot of room for improvement if they want to maintain their reputation as a premier cruise liner.

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony

Cabin BA

The cabin itself is as you would expect. Small but there were plenty of storage spaces to make the space work as efficiently as possible. The room was kept clean, but we never even met our room attendant.

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