NCL epic

NCL epic

Tuesday 29 December 2015

Introduction

Let me start by praising highly the crew and hotel staff on board the Epic as having to deal with us passengers is not a job I would relish and they were pretty much professional, friendly and helpful the entire time. Occasionally the service might have been a tad slow but it's a busy ship and more perhaps the holiday maker needs to learn a bit of patience instead.
The cruise we did was a 9 night voyage starting in Barcelona and visiting Tangiers, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Malaga and back to Barcelona, with 4 sea days during that time.
I had already done a very similar cruise on the NCL Spirit last year at Christmas time and had obviously enjoyed that one enough to want to book again this year, and so the Spirit had set the bar of my hopes and expectations for the holiday.
The Epic is one of the bigger ships in the NCL fleet whereas the Spirit is one of their smaller cruise ships and for comparison the Epic with over 4000 passengers carries almost twice the number of holidaymakers as the Spirit.
The trip cost about £1100 per person for two in a balcony cabin, and the upgrade to a balcony at the time included the ultimate drinks package thrown in (a no brainier then as the price of an inside with a corks & caps drink package was about the same).
If you read this and would like to add your own views or opinions, please feel free, but though I welcome different view points please refrain from aggressively argumentative prose (i.e. "I disagree and thought the Diane Sauce was just right." is good, whereas "How can you possibly have not liked the Diane Sauce!?!", will get deleted.)

Cabin

The cabin not only looks stylish, but is actually very ergonomic in that it blends that aesthetic design with very practical functionality. Every conceivable nook and cranny has a use be it for the necessary things you need in a cabin such as toilet, shower, power supplies, mini bar etc, or is given over to storage space, so what at first glance seems like it will be a problem unpacking everything, turns out to be more than enough space. OK, it's not perfect. For example, the sink is flat bottomed (which is a really dumb idea for a device you want water to drain out of) and you can only fill it toa such a shallow depth, that when you wash your hands it's easy to knock the plug/plunger open and loose what water you have. And enough has already been said in other reviews about the frosted toilet door which could be a tad unnerving to anyone super embarrassed about their 'evacuative habits'. However, I think that all in all the designer has done an excellent job of making the most from a confined space.
For a few random observations:
Electricity supply is a block under the desk area consisting of two 110v US flat pin, and one 220v Euro round pin style sockets. I now generally always make room in my luggage for a trailing UK 4-gang with a single multi travel adapted so I can just bring my regular UK Chargers, hair dryers and the like.
If ambient light annoying yes you when trying to sleep, then be aware there is a function on the top right of the display to turn off that said display.
If you like to shave in the shower (as the sink is a tad awkward for this) then you can place the shower head in the bottom holder, turn it round so the water jets face the wall and the back of the shower head is virtually a mirror to see what you are doing.
There's a dial on the outside of your cabin which you twist round depending if you want 'do not disturb' or 'make up room' but be aware that it does seem occasionally to be a bit of a game for the more, shall we say, mischievous cruisers to wander along giving them an extra twist, so don't get immediately upset with your cabin steward if sometimes your room isn't made up on the odd day.

Food & Drink

I appreciate amazing food but equally I will enjoy a Big Mac or a greasy kebab, so to say I thought the food was OK probably doesn't give much of a clue. Also, I stuck with the food that was complementary, so cannot comment on the speciality dining. However, the Epic did have a few extra options for complementary dining that we didn't get on the smaller ship; on top of the two waiter service main restaurants, and the usual main buffet, pool side buffets and 'pub' style options, there is also a Chinese and Noodle bar. These last two have a relatively small static menu but make a nice change.
As for quality of each, the buffet is one of the better ones I've experienced, certainly when compared with the average all inclusive hotels I've used in, say, Egypt or Crete. And the main dining was also decent eating - not cordon blue, but enjoyable enough. But here's the thing, if you've normally cruised with EasyCruise then you've going to be delighted, if you are used to Cunard, you're going to be disappointed. Food is too subjective. I reckon for our 9 night cruise if I'd eaten out each night back home I'd have paid over £300 on just eating out for just the evenings and not thought I'd been overcharged. On the downside, over the length of the cruise there were too many occasions where things just were not quite right. One or twice, and it would be a case of, no worries, mistakes happen, but it seemed all the way through the cruise there were issues, like running out of brown bread for breakfast, buffet food that had been out so long it was stone cold, a dessert being served that had been plated up so long ago that the berry sauce had hardened and stuck to the plate, a Diane sauce on the steak that was so over salted you were guzzling water, ham missing from the Eggs Benedict etc. All little things individually (for some - for others, it ruins a meal) but by the end of the cruise, I had the feeling I had been just eating, rather than 'dining'. Many of these issues could be sorted out at the time by sending a wrong item back, but by the time you are disappointed when eating, mostly you just can't be arsed to go to the trouble.
The opening times of the restaurants (and which opened or not) altered depending whether it was a port day or a day at sea, but unfortunately there was no consideration on port days to the times of arrival or departure, so for instance when we left Tenerife at 1pm, because it was a port day the lunch options were a too limited given the ship was full, and hence a complete bun fight was the order of the day at the buffet. Similarly, at Malaga, we docked at 11am, so late  breakfast was crammed as sea day options were closed, and the back on board time was 8:30, but most restaurants still closed at 9:30 meaning a rush to get showered changed and back out again.
One option in the buffet at busy times we only noticed in the last days was that extra seating is available down stairs in La Cuicena's which is a much more pleasant place to sit although you do have to negotiate the stairs with food in hand, but worth it for a far more peaceful experience.
For drinks, I think anyone would be hard pushed to fault the range on offer. We had a drinks package which meant we were limited to wine sold by the glass if we didn't want extras on the bill, but that gave me a choice of about 10 different reds such as Mouton Cadet for Bordeaux, Ravenwood's Zen of Zin, for a Californian Zinfandel, if you like a lighter offering a Louis Jadot Pinot Noir Burgundy. Finer wines of course are available by the bottle if you taste buds demand it and your budget will stretch.
Whisky too was good for me with Glenfidick and (one of my favourites) Talisker all part of the drinks package.

Ship

Here again, I am not so impressed with the Epic I'm afraid. Although I have mentioned the excellent design of the cabins, the main reason for that excellent design is to pack more cabins on to the ship, so you have at capacity over 4000 guests on board. Firstly there is just not enough social space on the ship to cope with all those people. On the Spirit, the year before, if you ate about 7 or 7:30, you generally walked straight into the main dining, but on the Epic, there has been a queue (sometimes long sometimes only a few people) every time we went. Similarly the shows all had to be booked in advance or you joined another standby queue to hope you would get in, unlike the Spirit where we just turned up at the theatre if we felt like into the night. So rather than the 'Freestyle' cruising NCL promotes, it fees more like 'book it and queue' style. We ended up with a fully mapped out itinerary of where we had to be and what we had to enjoy by the end of day one. Add to that the few shows we had booked before we left got moved to different days, but the dining bookings we had made to go with those shows remained on their original days, and much of that day one planning felt like a frustrating sorting out the mess time - Time that should have been spent 'freestyle' in a bar sipping a Gin Martini.
The layout of all that social space too I found to be a tad lacking. The atrium area had a open ceiling around which O'Sheenans (the pub/dining place) was effectively the balcony on the next level. So any entertainment in the atrium was just as noisy in the main pub area above. A little way along was the Taste main dining room which also had a hole in the ceiling with the casino above and the sound of fruit machines pilling down while you were eating was not what I particularly enjoy when I am at a restaurant. 
At the back of the boat is the multi tiered sun deck area with H2O bar and a big cinema screen, which was adult only. This was a bit daft as it was showing films like The Polar Express (Christmas Cruise, remember) which the kids are going to want, and regardless the adult only policy was never enforced. When movies were playing it was also deafening. 
And this really is the main issue with the cruise; there was virtually nowhere to sit peacefully with a drink. I know a cruise line needs to provide entertainment for it's passengers but it also needs to allow some space for those passengers who enjoy entertaining themselves.
Except for port days when you were off the ship, everywhere seemed always to be packed and noisy. The only real option was to get a drink from one bar in the afternoon and walk down the length of the ship with it to sit in the Bliss bar that only opened in the evening. And then of course walk out again to go and get a refill. We had a balcony cabin so at least we could always retire there for some peace.
Unlike the Spirit, the Epic does not have a full promenade deck that goes all the way round the boat , but rather two side bits on deck 7, which can only be accessed at either end of the ship so it wasn't particularly accessible if you just wanted to pop out for some air or a smoke (more on smoking policy soon). Additionally it was only as wide as the deck shuffleboard court so if people were playing you were disturbing then to walk past. The starboard side promenade deck was the jogging lane where you could run up and down the side of the ship.
Out on the top decks, the feel was much the same as the Spirit and I feel the pool area has too much of a Butlins style fee to it to be my favourite place, however, a lift on the starboard side just past the Great Outdoors bar takes you directly from deck 15 up to deck 18 where you can walk round to a quite pleasant sun deck right at the front and at the top of the ship. There is still music being played through the the speaker system but at low level so it is a relatively pleasant place away from the raucousness of the rest of the ship. Waiters do prowl up there to bring you drinks, but go in the morning if you want a subbed as by lunchtime guests were prowling to trying to spot free space and were mostly disappointed.
The major plus point though about the size of the Epic up on the out door decks is of course the room to add climbing walls and water slides so if you do like the pool areas there's a little more excitement going on up in there. 
If you are a smoker on the Epic, then the policy only allows smoking in designated areas which does NOT include your balcony for the reason that people throw the lit butts over the side and they can easily get drawn Ito air intakes by the wind currents, so it is a safety issue. 
The designated area however are a little strange. Parts of the Casino can be smoked in, but not all, and the areas are not well marked at all so smokers are constantly moved on. It is also a bad place to be a smoking area to begin with as it forms the central thoroughfare though the ship so having smoking there is very annoying for the non smokers.
The is also a smoking room, although I didn't go in it as my experience from the Spirit was that it is so thick an atmosphere in there that it is fairly unpleasant even for smokers.
As mentioned earlier the other smoking area is the port side promenade on deck 7, and to my knowledge, those were the only options.
I now use an eCigarette, and it was interesting to note that the smoking policy on the ship is the same for these too, and I think whereas for regular smoking the policy is in place for both the comfort and safety of the passengers (recall the earlier comment on hazards of lit cigarettes going over the side of balconies), applying the same for eCigs, is more a policy of comfort for fellow passenger and more convenience for the ship as there is absolutely no safety issue in using an eCig on a balcony above that of a camera or iPad.

Entertainment

I found the quality of the entertainment to be very good.The main shows (Priscilla Queen of the Desert & Burn the Floor) were top notch. Graffiti Classics (a comic string quartet) we had seen last year and were again superb. One of the best was the ship's band that played every night in The Cavern Club who played covers of rock music - their rendition of Freebird with extended guitar solo was always requested by a cheering crowd as an encore. Sadly the Beatles tribute who only played their a few times were a bit disappointing - a lot of the early stuff (everything with the word 'love' in the title) but if you were waiting for classics such as Get Back, Back in the USSR, or Hey Jude, then you'd carry on waiting.
Cirque Dreams was also a great choice and the dinner that went with it was absolutely fine (despite having heard bad reports from other reviews). Being so close to the acrobatics was amazing especially if you consider how much this kind of show would cost you in the 'real' world to be miles away from the action.
Apart from the issues of having to book everything in advance if you didn't want to queue in the hope of standby, the only other issue with the entertainment, was some of the venues just were not suited for the shows. Headliners was great as a more intimate music venue, but we walked out of the magic show as unless you were in the first couple of rows you could not see what was going on.
Of course there is lots of other entertainment on board apart from the shows such as quizzes, karaoke or bingo, and these are pretty much what they say on the tin except for quite a few of them are yet more money making opportunities for the ship. For example the bingo costed $39 to join in which did include some raffle tickets to win a free cruise. Now this is all fine in the sense you are not forced to play, but the format was such when you did part with some cash (as you though, "why not, just the once") you were then under subtle pressure to spend more as the 'jackpot' game was the first to a full house, but you had to do it I only 47 drawn balls, so nobody won and the jackpot prize increased and was held over until tomorrow's game. Similarly the raffle for the free cruise gave you tickets when you joined in the bingo, but it would only be drawn on the session on the last sea day. This would be OK if, but even though you wrote name, address etc on the tickets, you had to actually be there to win, so you either sit though another loud bingo session without playing of spend more money.
The other point about this events and the 'non show' musical entertainment, was that you might find a relatively quiet bar and within a few minutes a musician would turn up and start deafening you. At one point you had a pianist inShakers bar and a guitar vocalist in the Maltings bar both going at the same time and the seating from these two bars merge into one another. Were they competing? The result is cacophony all over the ship and drove you from one place to another so a large proportion of your day was spent wandering about trying to find a place of peace that wasn't jam packed

Conclusion

I was very much looking forward to this trip especially having enjoyed so much my previous cruise with NCL, and even though I had already had some doubts about the size and layout of the Epic, I was very open and willing to give it every chance to convince me that bigger is better.
Unfortunately, though I found very little to complain about with regard to the staff and crew and the service I received, the design, capacity and the inability of cruise ship logistics to cope with being flexible with dining options meant that Freestyle was possibly one of the least applicable words I could use to describe my time on board, and if I cruise again I think I will do a lot more research into the ship layout, and the previous passenger comments.
I did have fun on this holiday and can say I have enjoyed myself, contrary to what my above comments may suggest, but mixed in with this was too much aggravation, annoyance and mutterings of, "You've got a be f*****g joking!", for me to feel like I'd want to return.
Finally as with any review, it is very subjective and many other people I am sure find the whole setup to be fabulous, so read other reviews too. Also I would welcome anyone from NCL Epic to add comments to this blog to give their opinions and/or clarifications especially if there are any factual errors. Any such comments will remain on the blog unaltered (unless they are offensive in manner or overtly just an advert).