We just returned from sailing on NCL Epic (3/11-3/16/19). This was our 8th cruise overall and the 2nd time sailing with NCL. We were blown away by the mind-numb robots posing as NCL Crew members. Hardly any of them acknowledged our presence during the 5-night cruise. I do have to say that our cabin steward on deck 13, Wilbert, was always pleasant to talk with and exceeded our expectations. The rest of his colleagues should take notes from him on how to interact with the people paying their salaries. Somehow, the staff in all areas of the ship from the Departure terminal in Port Canaveral, to the Garden Café, Exercise room, Customer Service Desk, and officers walking around to the ship forgot how to be nice and pleasant to the passengers. The people at the Customer Service Desk were the least helpful and disingenuous people we have ever met on a cruise. We were awe- struck in the terminal when boarding started. One of the NCL Terminal workers directing people started screaming at the us to “GET IN THE RIGHT LINE AND STAY IN A SINGLE FILE”. The folks scanning our room cards to board the ship looked at us with blank stares. We thought it might be due to the stress of swapping out 10,000 passengers in 5 hours’ time, but their attitudes and lack of interest in passengers continued to decline the entire week.

The “Unlimited Adult Drink Package” needs to be tossed overboard! Just know that it will cost you half of your cruise in time, waiting to get served. Average wait time was 20 mins during peak hours on the pool deck regardless of what you are drinking (this includes non-alcoholic drinks as well). If you hate waiting, you will hate the fact that they will only give you two alcoholic drinks at a time, and that is after you have already waited 20 mins. They do not sell buckets of beer anymore. Finally, the canned beer is warm by early afternoon, because they never refilled the ice in the coolers holding the cans. Even though it is unlimited drinks, they still only give you one measured shot per ingredient in the mixed drinks. It was college spring break for many and as hard as they tried, most of them were not able to get drunk. I guess that could be viewed as a benefit to rest of us who were not there to be drunk for 5 straight days.

There were only 2 roaming servers on the pool deck on day 1. However, they were both on the same side of the ship, which was the opposite side that we were sitting on. Day 2, never saw a server until 2 pm. We finally flagged her down, so we could place an order. She told us “I am really, really, really, really busy” and then walked away. Yet she walked by us 10 times to pick up empty cups and cans, but only rarely brought drinks to the other passengers by us. Amazing! A server finally came by and took our order a few times on the third day. What really blew our mind is that NCL did not even have servers roaming the venues before the big shows. There was one server in the comedy club, but he only served the first couple of rows of people before the show started, then they closed the bar. Read more