Some background: We are both in our 40's and we have only cruised on NCL before. We have done 4 cruises before on the Wind (Hawaii + Fanning Island, 11 nights), the Dawn (Western Caribbean from New York, 11 nights), the Jewel (Northern transatlantic crossing from Dover to New York, 11 nights) and the Jade (Ireland from Southampton, 5 nights).PRECRUISE:We stayed at Radisson Blu Skycity hotel on Arlanda, Stockholm airport, the night before our flight to Miami. The hotel is decently priced for being at the airport, in the same building as the check inn, and the room was very nice. The breakfast was also good but we had to eat it a little early to really enjoy it!We flew with British Airways from Stockholm to London and a few hours later from London to Miami. It's always nice to fly with BA, good food, nice staff and to change flight in London is never a problem, unless your first flight is late.In Miami we stayed at Dorchester hotel on Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, for three nights before our cruise and one night after our cruise. For the price we paid, the hotel was okay. If we should go to Florida on vacation and stay longer in Miami Beach we should choose one of the big hotels right by the beach but for a shorter precruise stay the hotel was okay. The bed was very comfortable but the air condition sounded like there was a truck with the engine running standing in the room! On Saturday we took a taxi from the hotel to the airport around 10 and 15 minutes later we were at the terminal.EMBARKATION:Extremely smooth. First they scanned our bags and after that we saw a room with the sign: "Penthouse check inn". There was no line there and we got a chair to sit in. A few minutes later, when all the paperwork was done, we were escorted to the priority waiting area. There they had some refreshments but one thing is very strange, why don't they have a place to put the dirty dishes? It was the same when we had a suite on the Jade with embarkation in Southampton, no place to put dirty dishes.The priority waiting area was rather small and the last people who got there before we were allowed to board the ship had problems to find a seat.Around 11.45 were we finally allowed boarding the ship. Noone came to escort us (like they did on our Jade cruise) but when we came onboard they showed us the way to elevators which took us up to deck 16 and the Epic Club Lounge. We sat there for awhile and Monica, the concierge, said that we soon should get a tour of the Courtyard and all the facilities there. We left our bags in the lounge when we took our tour and after that we took our traditional glass of Champagne in the Epic Club Lounge before lunch in the Epic Club. After lunch we walked over the pool deck to our cabin. OUR CABIN, SPA SUITE 14145:A very nice cabin. (I call it cabin instead of suite since there is no separate bedroom) It is small but there are lots of places to put clothes and other things. A little more space to hang longer clothes should have been good. We don't like the new design when it comes to the bathrooms on the Epic. A bathroom is much better than a bath area in the living room/bedroom! Since the floor space is very limited in the spa suite the "bathroom" had one advantage, it was possible to access the "bathroom" from both sides of the bed and with a real bathroom that hadn't been possible. The hot tub in the cabin was nice but some extra floor space with room for a larger table and chairs should have been better.The lightning system in the cabin was nice but a little to advanced! I have a technical education and have worked as a technician for Ericsson for ten years but a week was too little for me to fully understand the lightning system in the cabin! There are no switches for the lights, except for the bedside lamp and the balcony lamp, but a panel with preset alternative in the "bathroom". Another bad thing with the lights in the cabin is that when you enter the toilet area, the light goes on. Since there is no real door to the toilet area, just a glass door, and only a thin curtain between the bed and the "bathroom", the light may disturb someone who is trying to sleep.The only real problem with the cabin was the shower. We flooded the room a few times when we used the shower. The shower is definitely bad designed. There is a low edge which shall keep the water in the shower and outside the rest of the room but it is too low so water gets over it and out on the floor. Sometimes we had water all the way to the hot tub! The edge should have been a little higher and the floor drain should have another position. It was not only when the ship moved, we managed to flood the room even when the ship was docked. The solution was to put some towels on the floor outside the shower.THE SPA:Since we had a spa suite we had access to the Thermal Spa Suites so when we had looked at our cabin, we went to the spa to get a tour of it. We put on our wristbands and walked to the spa for a tour. We asked for a tour of the spa facilities and that was no problem. First they showed us all the rooms where we could get treatments to look better, it probably took around 15 minutes, and after that they took us to the Thermal Spa Suites. When we got there they told us that it was possible to buy a pass to get access to the Suites! Why should we have a wristband when they didn't care about it anyway?For us a spa shall be a place to go to to feel better not to look better. They talked a lot about how we could get whiter teeth, thinner thighs, less wrinkles etc. so the spa was not a place for us; they made us feel very unwelcome.They also told us that if we wanted to use the Thermal Spa Suites we had to check inn and exchange our keycards for a key to a locker, why? Why can't we just walk in and use the facilities, they gave us the wristband right?The spa was the only place we didn't felt welcome and also the only place where we didn't felt special for having a suite so our tour there was our only visit.It should have been nice to spend some time in the Thermal Spa Suites but a week on a ship like the Epic is a very short time and we also used the hot tubs in the courtyard so we didn't missed much.PUBLIC AREAS:The pool deck: We never really used the public pool deck (since we could use the courtyard and Posh) but we walked over it a few times every day and we also looked down on it from Posh. There were lots of deck chairs there but also lots of people! If someone wants a deck chair and don't really care about the pool, I can recommend the public sundecks on deck 18. Spice H2O, for adults only, seemed a little less busy than the area around the "main pools" (there is a pool in Spice too but I think it's smaller). When it was hot, the "main pools" were always overcrowded! If you prefer a little less people, I can recommend you to buy a pass for Posh. There is no pool there but it's easy to go down to pool deck from there if you want to use the pool.The Casino: In my opinion, too big. For me the casino is a waste of space but since NCL earns lots of money it makes my cruise a little cheaper so I can live with it. We often walked through the casino and the smoke didn't bother me, others have mentioned the smoke in the casino as a problem.The Atrium: No WOW factor, it's too small for that. I liked the big TV screen they had there and they showed movies there a few times (Toy Story 3 is the only one I know the name on). One bad thing is the games up in O'Sheehan's, they make lots of noise and that disturb whatever is happening in the atrium.The Theater: It looks much like the theaters on the Jewel class ships but it's smaller. We sat on the first row every time we were there so I can't say anything about the legroom. They have a bar in the theater and they don't allow any drinks to be brought to the theater. (Maybe that's only for some specific shows.)The promenade deck: Sorry, no promenade deck. There is a small outside area on each side on deck 7, one for jogging and one for deck games and walking, but there is almost no view from there because of the lifeboats. Even when we have a balcony, we like to walk on the promenade deck close to the water but not on the Epic.PRIVATE AREAS (=FOR SUITE GUESTS):The Courtyard: One rather small pool, not much smaller than the "main" pool, and two hot tubs. When we wanted to get a hot tub for ourself, we always got one! The pool was never crowded either, once we shared it with two little girls but the rest of the times it was all ours! There were also many options for those wanting to just sit in the sun, people reserving chairs was no problem here! The courtyard also has a sundeck on deck 18 with the best front view on the ship, never crowded. We stood there when we arrived in Nassau and that was very nice!Posh: Never crowded, I should have preferred that a little more people had been there since it was very empty. The only time there were more than a few people up there was when we left Miami, they then served sparkling wine and some other drinks (without extra cost). I asked one of the staff working in the bar there if it was boring to work there since they had so little to do and yes, it was! One bad thing with Posh is that they served all drinks in plastic glasses. I understand that they don't want real glass on the pool deck but in Posh, they can have real glass instead of plastic. The Epic Club Lounge is more a bar than a lounge so I will come to that soon.THE RESTAURANTS AND BARS:The Epic Club: We ate all our breakfasts and lunches there, why should we go anywhere else? They definitely have the best food for breakfast and lunch and the service and atmosphere is the best too. For breakfast we really loved the "Belgian Waffle with Dark Rum Island Pineapple", "Crab Cakes Benedict" and "Fruits de Mer in Brioche" but not all the same day because the portions are big. For lunch some of the best dishes were: "Fresh Smoked Salmon with Toasted Brioche and Citrus Herb Cream" (appetizer), "Fettuccini with Porcini Mushrooms and Truffle Cream Sauce", "Grilled Angus New York Strip with White Truffle Fries" (entrees) and "Banana Cream Pie" (dessert). We also ate dinner there twice and the food was good but the highlight was the service, it couldn't have been better.La Cucina: We sat there by the window when we left St. Maarten and that was extremely nice! The food was also very good. I have a sister who lives in Italy so I know how real Italian food shall taste and the food we got at La Cucina should have been good in a real Italian restaurant too. The service was very good too; don't know if the fact that we were escorted there by our butler had anything to do with that.Moderno: An excellent table by the window there too, but aft view this time. The meat was excellent; I can really recommend the Costela de Caneiro (Lamb Chops). After we ate enough meat to die they asked if we wanted and dessert and then we thought that we could see the menu. The problem with Moderno is that they don't give you a menu; they just give you one plate of each dessert! (Fortunately they only had four desserts but we were still extremely full when we left!!!)Le Bistro: Always one of the cruises highlights and this was no exception. The food and the service was very good. The best thing was that we found out that they don't serve Foie Gras (goose liver) anymore. We asked why and they told us that the reason is that they don't treat the animals okay when they produce it. (One problem for us at Le Bistro has been that too many dishes contain Foie Gras since we don't want to eat that.)Manhattan Room: We ate there on dress up or not night and the quality of the food surprised us, it was better than we thought it should be. We even asked to talk to a manager about it and he told us that the reason was that it was Easter Day and the food was special. For someone who doesn't want to pay to eat in the specialty restaurants I can recommend the Manhattan Room. (I don't know how the food is a normal day but it was a very nice restaurant and the service was good. I don't like that we had to ask for the wine list there but I guess that most people eating there don't order wine so that can be the reason and I understand it then.)O'Sheehan's: We had an early dinner there before a show, Fish & Chips. The food was good but not as good as in a real Irish or English pub. The games they have there make the experience worse and they add nothing to the Irish pub feeling. (I have been in many pubs in Ireland and they never have games like the ones in O'Sheehan's there). The noise from the games is very annoying.Garden Cafe: We never ate there but we walked through it when we should eat at La Cucina and it looked much nicer than the other Garden Cafes we have seen. The tables by the window in the front of the ships probably offer the best view if you don't have access to the front sundeck on deck 18.The Epic Club Lounge: Our favorite place on the ship. We had champagne and martinis there every day. 5-7 every day they had 2 for 1 on the martinis so we always had a martini there before dinner. The only bad thing with the place is that there are a too few guests there! It's nice to get the excellent service and the staff working there always has the time to talk for awhile, which we appreciate, but it is a little boring when it's almost empty all the time! Only twice, when we were waiting for our tour of the courtyard and during the captains reception, were there lots of people there. It was very peaceful to sit there with a drink and look out on the crowded pool deck, I don't mind to see many people but prefer not to spend time with too many on my vacation.The Ice bar: It was nice and the drinks the offers are good but I don't think that is was very special. I guess that someone who never has experienced a real winter may think that it's very special but we have the temperature they have in the Ice bar for weeks every winter so for us it wasn't very special. It was nice and we are happy that we went there but we don't have to do it again.Shaker's Martini Bar: They had the longest martini menu and sometimes we just passed Shaker's to look at the menu before we went to the Epic Club Lounge and had a martini. We had a few drinks there and it was nice to sit there and watch the people walking by.Cascades Bar: We never sat there and had a drink, too close to the casino, but when you ordered a drink in Fat Cats it was from Cascades so we know that the drinks were good. Cascades was also the most convenient place to go to when we wanted to have a drink in our cabin.Atrium bar: The noise from the games in O'Sheehan's made us choose another place when we wanted to sit down and have a drink.Spice H2O: If you don't have access to Posh and want to sit outside and have a drink, Spice is the best place to go. They don't show much interesting on the big TV screen they have there but we did saw some dolphins on the screen once and that was nice and felt very appropriate on a cruise. They have two hot tubs in Spice and the few times we were there they were occupied but less crowded than the hot tubs on the "main pool deck".Some general thoughts about the bar service on the Epic:We thought that the prices on the drinks were decent but remember that we live in an expensive country! A Gin & Tonic with Bombay Sapphire cost $7.19 (with gratuity included) and at a bar in Sweden we pay around $13 for the same drink, a Red Stripe cost $6.85 and a glass of House White cost $6.04. A glass of Champagne cost almost $20 and that is expensive but when we look at the total cost for our vacation it's still worth it.I have seen other people mention that the drinks are too weak (too little liquor) but I think they were almost too strong sometimes.One really bad thing is that the drink menus had no prices in them. For some reason they had prices on the wines but not on the cocktails, martinis, spirits or beer. Do they sell more expensive drinks that way?THE ENTERTAINMENT:Our opinion is that there are two musts on the Epic right now: Blue Man Group and Slam Allen Blues band.Blue Man Group is definitely the best entertainment we have ever seen on a cruise ship. I can't explain it but it was so funny. We sat on the first row and I got some blue paint on my best shoes, I will keep it there as long as possible as a souvenir. (It's not much so if you don't know about it, you don't see it.) The only bad thing with BMG is that they don't sell any DVD's on the ship. I don't understand the reason for that when they have other BMG souvenirs, they should sell lots of them, but it's a decision BMG has made.Slam Allen Blues band played excellent blues at Fat Cats almost every night and that was a very nice way to finish the night.We also saw Legends in Concert but that was nothing special. Okay, they were good singers but far from the megastars they tried to copy so I see no reason to see them again.THE STAFF:Except in the spa, everyone we met was very nice.We talked to the captain a few times, and also some other high ranked officers, and they all seemed interested in what we had to say. I told the captain what I thought about the noise from O'Sheehan's and because of that our wine in Moderno was on the house (I guess that the captain doesn't pay for it himself, right?).Our butler, Charlie, was very nice and he really made us feel special. He escorted us to the specialty restaurants (La Cucina, Moderno and Le Bistro) and believe it or not, that made a different in our cruise experience. We are not demanding and ask for very little so we have no reason to feel that we wasted his time when we let him escort us to the restaurants. Especially since we never asked him to do it, he always offered it himself.Monica, the concierge, was correct and the very few easy things we asked for, we could get. I have seen, in the forum and in the review section, that some people don't like her but we can't say anything bad about her. She helped us with some reservations and escorted us to the theater. How nice is it to be able to pick a chair five minutes before everyone else when you shall see a show? First row on Blue Man Group made a big different! The last night when we had dinner at the Epic Club she came to our table and offered us a bottle of wine, because we had told the hotel manager about our shower problem.Everyone working in the Epic Club and the Epic Club Lounge is worth to mention. We liked them all but some of them were extra special:Siti, bartender in the Epic Club Lounge.Hazel, hostess in the Epic Club.Ramona, head waiter in the Epic Club.Ricky, waiter in the Epic Club.THE PORTS:The ship is more important than the ports when we cruise but we choose the Eastern Caribbean itinerary because we had already been to the ports on the Western itinerary. Our ports were St. Maarten, St. Thomas and Nassau.St. Maarten: On St. Maarten it's walking distance from where the ship docks to "down town" and we just walked there and did some shopping and had some beer on the beach. We paid $3 for a bottle of beer on a restaurant by the beach and saw that the price for a bucket of beer (6 bottles) was $12. We don't want to miss a meal on the ship so we were back for lunch.St. Thomas: We had booked a ship excursion, "Best of St. Thomas". The bus trip took us to many nice views where we could see Magens Bay, St. John, Charlotte Amalie etc. We have done more demanding excursions before, like hiking in a rainforest on Maui and cycling in the mountains on Jamaica, but it's also nice with a relaxing excursion in a bus. After the excursion we just walked around in the area by the dock for a short while before we went back to the ship for lunch.Nassau: In Nassau the cruise ships dock in the middle of the town so it's very easy to just walk around. The Epic docked at noon so we had lunch on the ship before we took a short walk in town. The most interesting thing in Nassau was that RCI's Oasis of the Seas was there too. It is the biggest cruise ship but it really didn't looked much bigger than the Epic.DISEMBARKATION:We used the Priority Disembarkation and that was very quick and easy. We should be at the concierge desk sometime between 7.45 and 9 and we were there close to 9. Less than five minutes later we took an elevator down to the deck where the disembarkation was and didn't had to stand in a line at all before we could leave the ship and before 9.30 we sat in a taxi on our way to our hotel. The elevator was kind of funny because it had a sign: "Use this elevator for garbage only"! Since our cruise was over, we were just garbage they wanted to get rid of!We really like to use the Priority Disembarkation but they should have one more option for suite guest. Why not introduce a "Leave the ship as the last passenger" disembarkation? They could have a place, for example the Courtyard or the Epic Club Lounge, where the suite passenger could wait until the last minute and leave after everyone else. Perfect for people with a late flight or people going to a hotel, check in is normally not possible before 1 or 2 so why rush of the ship?POSTCRUISE:We stayed at the Dorchester again and this time they gave us a very large suite, not the room we had paid for. The air condition was also very quiet! We checked out by noon on Sunday and left our luggage at the hotel for a few hours until we should go to the airport. When we got back to get our luggage they asked if we wanted to take a shower and that was very nice of them. Our first flight, Miami to London, was very bumpy and the captain had to use the fasten seat belt sign a lot so it wasn't very easy to sleep. When we got our drinks for dinner I had to just hold my wine bottle for a long time before I could pour it in a glass! Our second flight was delayed from Heathrow so we missed our train from Stockholm. We had to buy new tickets for around $120. (We paid around $40 for our first tickets.)HOW WAS OUR CRUISE? A SUMMARY:The cruise was great and the main reason for that are the private areas. We should love to cruise on the Epic again but only in a suite. We should not be able to really enjoy a cruise on her without a suite when we know about the private areas.Another question is; will we ever be able to cruise again on a ship without the private restaurant and lounge? We love the breakfast and lunch perk on other ships but it's not really the same. Hopefully the new ships will have areas like the ones on the Epic, but a little smaller since they will be smaller.We are not rich but we are willing to sacrifice other things to be able to cruise with a suite and we also cruise less than many other do. The sweet suite life is addicting and without some kind of treatment, we will never be able to go back to something else!