Norwegian Epic Review
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We took our first cruise in June - an aft facing Haven suite on the Norwegian Joy from Seattle to Alaska. We enjoyed that cruise so much that we decided to spend our holiday break cruising the Caribbean in an aft facing Haven suite on the Norwegian Epic.
Never again.
For the most part, the restaurants are the same on both ships and even the menus are the same. The resemblance stops there. On the Joy it was a pleasure to go to the Haven restaurant - most families ate there many times. On the Epic the menu is exactly the same but we only ate there three times during the entire cruise because the food was so bad. The service was slightly worse.
Cabin Review
Aft-Facing Penthouse with Balcony
We booked one of the most expensive suites on the ship, as well as a very nice adjoining suite for our daughter.
As I mentioned above, the suite staff were lovely. The room was not.
The first thing you notice is the bed. Advertised as a king bed, but not meeting any of the criteria of a king bed. It was small, round, and it felt like a trampoline. It’s going to take a few more days for me to straighten out my back.
Even worse than that, every time the ship manoeuvred into port, the thrusters shake the back of the ship like a pneumatic drill. Since all of the port arrivals are early in the morning, we would be shaken awake every morning, with the sound of everything falling off shelves and the feeling that we were in an earthquake. The funny thing is that every single member of staff I talked to knew about this and just attributed it to the ship’s age.
The last four days of the seven day cruise the toilet started smelling really bad - like a men’s room in a dive bar at 2am on a Saturday night. This was an issue with the ship, since all three of us would use my daughter’s bathroom rather than the zero-privacy toilet in our fancy room.
Port Reviews
St. Lucia
People were friendly here. We got our first clue as to the fact that there was nothing to do when we left the ship - an hour after we docked there were more people returning to the ship than leaving.