Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) Epic - The NCL Flagship is the Epic.

Mike and Vicky Martin of Georgia took a 7-night cruise on the NCL Epic from July 24-31, 2010. Mike provided an objective and detailed report on this new cruise ship. Click the link to read about the new NCL Epic!

NCL Epic Cruise Review & Photos

Mike & Vicky Martin & Family July 2010

  

  

Norwegian Epic report July 2010: Mike and Vicky Martin of Georgia took a 7-night cruise on the NCL Epic from July 24-31, 2010. Mike provided the following objective and detailed report on this new cruise ship.

The Martins booked 2 balcony cabins - category D2 (deluxe family cabin) and D3 (family cabin), The cabins (10258 and 10260) were adjacent, but not adjoining. We looked for adjoining cabins, but couldn't find the right fit. Mike and Vicky took their three children (John age 9, Isabella age 7 and Sofia age 5) with them on this eastern Caribbean cruise out of Miami.

Entertainment was as expected, very solid. Everyone enjoyed the Blue Men Group show; we saw both the 'family' and the 'adult' Second City Comedy shows which are amazing.

They had a 'behind the scenes' session with the Blue Men Group that was really interesting to hear about the show which you normally would not get to hear if you were not on the cruise. Also, there is a Cirque du Solel dinner theater that my wife and girls went to.

Aboard the Epic you will find incredible music. The dueling piano players billed as "Howling at the Moon" was a favorite for Mike and Vicky.

Highlights of the Ship - as expected everything was incredibly nice and new. They have a massive LCD screen that must be 30 ft. high in the main atrium.

They show movies on that during the day and at night and in the afternoon, they let the kids play Wii games on it; 3 amazing pools and waterslides; and a quite large adults only pool and bar area if you don't have kids.

Food. The food in the regular restaurants was quite good. They have a massive buffet restaurant at the top of the ship that our kids loved (and it was hard to get them out of there).

For about half of the dinners we did pay to go to their specialty restaurants. All of those restaurants were really good and not very crowded so it was a great way to get away. Mike said this was "the best Japanese Steakhouse we've been to at sea."

Cabins. We had two cabins which worked out exceptionally well for our family. The cabins are an interesting curved very modern design.

The curves and the mirrors make it seem quite large. Some other people were complaining about cabin size being smaller than some other ships for families. I have not cruised enough to have an opinion about that, but it would have been tight with four people in a cabin certainly.

One thing that we discussed before is the difference between the family cabin our kids were in and the deluxe family cabin that Vicky and I stayed in. You said that neither you nor the NCL agent could figure out the difference. To be honest with you, neither could we. The deluxe cabin had a bathtub instead of a shower, but we looked for other differences to no avail. Pictured here is John enjoying his private balcony view on the rail.

Onboard Activities. There are lots of things to do. It rained one day at sea and they were over the top on adding even more things to keep everyone entertained. We did bowling, rock climbing, repelling, some family games etc. etc. etc. A crazy amount of things to do if you want to keep busy.Thumbs up from John on the Rock Climbing wall.

Our kids were not happy with the kids program. That seemed to be a common theme among a lot of the parents. The kids activity center is really nice and has a ton of great things. It seems like the staff are not very good at getting the kids engaged. Hopefully, this is something that they will improve on future sailings.Here are Sofia, John and Isabella at the Nickelodeon breakfast on the NCL Epic.

Staff/Service. These were very exceptional by any standard. I heard this is the flagship of NCL, so they mainly moved some of their best people from their other ships to staff it. The crew is still fairly new at this point, so they have a lot of enthusiasm. John celebrated his tenth birthday on this cruise.

Overall thoughts on the ship. According to NCL, it's the second largest ship in the world, so it is really really big and holds a lot of people. Funnily enough, the only ship that is larger (the Oasis of the Seas from RC) was docked in Cozumel at the same time, and they are pretty impressive when you see them together. The advantage of the larger ship is that there is more to do and more choice in everything from food to entertainment to places to hang out. The disadvantage is that things can get crowded. There is one particularly over the top waterslide that was really popular and lead to a long wait for example. Anyone going on this ship needs to realize that it is fabulous in everything it offers, but it is in no way intimate. It's a lot of people.

Ports of call. Three stops in 7 days on our trip: 1. Costa Maya in Mexico - it was bad weather so no opinion. 2. Roatan, Honduras - This is an island about 30 miles off the coast of Honduras that is a very unique destination that does not see that many cruise ships. The people were really genuinely appreciative to have the ship and all of the passengers there. You really have to take an excursion since there's not much of anything to do around the port area. We did a dolphin excursion which was fabulous and then went to the beach afterwords.

3. Cozumel - very developed and touristy with some great shopping and dining options close to the ship. My son and I did a motorbike ATV excursion which was muddy but incredibly fun. We went to the beach for snorkeling after that.

Overall thoughts on NCL. I love the whole 'freestyle' approach from NCL. They emphasize that everything is totally flexible in everything they do. Most obviously the whole approach to dining is really great.

You are totally free to eat anytime you want which is a million times better than any ships with defined dining times, and they manage to do a great job of letting you dress up or down as much as you want. Pictured here is Vicky "dressing up" a bit in the 17-degree Ice Bar on the NCL Epic.

I do think that they have a lot of add-on costs that are optional but very tempting. We ended up with a quite large on-board ship bill because we did some of the optional restaurants and other things. The feedback from some other frequent cruisers we spoke with was that NCL is definitely more upscale than many other cruise lines which is nice but it is also a bit less all inclusive than some other cruise lines. While it's possible to not spend anything extra, they have a ton of upsell options even compared with other cruise lines.