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.)