We set out to have a relaxing cruise as we often do (17 to date). Norwegian Epic is a huge ship with 19 decks. The speaker system is loud everywhere and both had daily headaches from the noise. Most announcements could not be understood due to the loudness. We heard this complaint from several passengers. The ship layout is very odd. There are elevators and stairs at both ends of the ship but none in the middle so be prepared to walk a long way to go anywhere on another deck. We stood in lines for everything we did on board. Most times we could not get into entertainment in the Comedy Club and other small venues. This is a Freestyle cruise ship so that means reservations for everything. We went to the dining room to make reservations and were told that we did not need them and so we stood in a long line to enter then gave up and did what most did and ate upstairs at the Garden Cafe. We had a tender and had to have a reservation to board going and coming back to shore. The dining rooms are low ceilings so extremely loud and the average dinning time for our table was 2 hours with very slow service. The cabins are also strange with very little room in our balcony cabin. Two people can not pass each other anywhere in the room (12125). Overall I gave it a three-star rating because of the crew's helpfulness and the food was good. Too many people for me on this ship and freestyle cruising.