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.