Norwegian Epic Review
An Epic cruise on a ship that's still finding its sea legs..
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Myself, my wife, our two teenage daughters, and a family friend, just returned from the Norwegian Epic, having taken a back to back sailing, from the 14th to the 28th August. On the whole, we had a superb couple of weeks, went to some amazing places, and met some great people. However, this being the inaugural sailing, the ship has issues. We've never cruised with NCL before (the only other cruise ship we've been on was the Disney Magic, last summer... and the ferry crossing from Dover to Calais probably doesn't count), so I can't say whether the problems are line-wide, or to do with the Epic being a brand new vessel, that's still finding it's sea legs.
A lot of issues people have mentioned in other reviews - the small sinks, the smoking (even though we're non-smokers, aside from one woefully misguided visit to the cigar lounge, in a bid to try everything the ship had to offer/make ourselves throw up...), the nickel and diming, the omnipresent casino etc. - weren't a problem with us.
Perhaps expectations have been lowered by all the complaining, or maybe we're still feeling guilty about returning to a luxury cruise ship, after witnessing the incredible poverty around the port in Roatan. It feels churlish to complain about a sink that makes your socks wet because it was too shallow, when you've just driven past a family of 20, who wave and smile, despite apparently all living together in a rusty sceptic tank about the size of a small tumble dryer.
Cabin Review
Mid-Ship Balcony
Larger than we'd expected, given all the negative comments we'd read - we were expecting a shoe cupboard, but the rooms were more than sufficient. There's plenty of storage, and - though we found the split-bathroom a bizarre design choice - we were able to work around it.
The only negatives were a locked safe in the balcony cabin (which never got unlocked despite us calling Housekeeping), and a broken reading lamp in the inside stateroom, which was hanging off the wall due to it having been nailed in place. It was fixed with screws a few days into the cruise.
The only other problem we had was a smell of rotting veg/poop on the balcony, the day we hit Cozumel. Presumably, this was when the ship was burning its solid waste, and the wind was not in our favour...