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.