Norwegian Epic Cruise Reviews - Reviews

I have been on many cruises and have sailed with multiple cruise lines and I have to say that Norwegian is not one of my favorites.  What sold us with this cruise line was getting the drink package as part of the cost of the cruise.  On other cruise lines you pay the cost of the cruise and then if you want the drink package it is another $450-$550 on top of the cost of the cruise.  Norwegian is definitely the most economical cruise line if you have drinkers in your group.

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Cruise ship was hard to get used to and took a few days to figure out how to get around it. Service was below average. The ship was very clean and we enjoyed each port.

The parties each night were fun if I went to them.  They were on the other end of the ship, I'm a litter person so walking to them took a toll on me.  This ship wasn't made for little people at all.  The dining room chairs was even hard to get into.  The people were friendly though.  In the garden buffet, they were always willing to help me get my food.  That was nice.

Cabin was very small, poorly laid out and poorly lit.  Bathrooms around the ship were few and far between and not well marked.   Method of disembarking with a tender not good-by the time your letter was called for some half of your shore time had already been used.  Overall quite disappointed. 

We love our cruises; this was a good time for us and we enjoyed the trip - there certainly were no big issues.  However, here are my nits, just so you know...

Reservations for shows: * This is a new option - a good idea perhaps but poorly implemented.  No warning is clearly given, so old timers like me were surprised to learn that all the shows were booked on day 1.  And the failure of the TV and APP systems to make reservations (promised they would, but they failed) made it worse.

The APP (Android S6): * Looks nice, but is useless!  Cannot see my account info - was always $0 (wish it were true!).  Cannot see reservations!  Cannot MAKE reservations - it says you can, but that's not true.  No deck plans!  Who was the marketing guy who said "We don't need deck plans in the APP"?  Fire them.

Food: * Good, tasty, plenty.  Everyone has the upscale restaurants and they get more expensive every year!  But they were good...

People: * Never met an officer, but the real hard-workers are great and we had more smiles from the staff on this sailing than ever!  Thx.

WiFi: * Good, workable, not cheap.

Photos: * Nice to have the digital views, inclusion of the USB stick for the package.  Price is competitive.

recommend only after telling friends and family about the very poor design of the cabin layout. our cabin steward Eva was excellent.

see belowfor additional comments.

This was the worst cruise that I/we have been on. I have been on a lot of cruises, and not all of them have been great, but this was the worst!! The cabins are awful, the staff was beyond rude, the casino dealers were rude, the food was disgusting and the sea days activities (and pool music) were horrible!! My boys are 13 and 15 and were bored as well! If they hadn't made friends, I do not know what I would have done! I would not give this ship another try, even if I was given a free cruise! 

We are experienced cruisers.  This is our first, and last trip, on a Norwegian cruise.

Our extended family traveled far and wide to take this holiday cruise. Unfortunately, nearly every part of this week-long trip was below par.  Food ranged from good (Manhattan and Taste dining rooms) to embarrassing (Shanghai restaurant).  Service, particularly at the Taste dining room, was not good at all; most importantly the Maitre d' at Taste was uninterested in solving our problem.

Lastly, sea days were not enjoyable as there are far too many passengers for this size ship.

All in all, while I love cruises, skip Norwegian.

Over all had a good trip on the epic. The ship's layout wasn't ideal. Having dinner while the casino is up above made it loud and smoky. Taste restaurant had the worst service so after theee meals we switched to manhattan restaurant and the service was great. Don't eat at Shanghai restaurant  it was one of the worst Chinese restaurants I have ever eaten at. It was so bad we all didn't  eat our food and ended up at the buffet after. We had wished the boat had more stops only 3 stops in 7 day cruise is not enough. Most of the staff was friendly but many seemed not thrilled to be there. Maybe it was because of the holidays that they seemed not enthusiastic. 

We were a family celebrating a wedding we had four rooms all balconies!  The balconies were large, wished we had a chaise lounge instead of just chairs.  Plenty of storage in the room but the bathroom setup with the "curtain door" was a putoff......  We loved the Irish Pub, Howling at the Moon Dueling piano bar, and the Cavern which had the best bank Siglo.....wish they had been in a bigger room like Bliss at least one night so we didn't have to stand each time we wanted to see them......very small room for such a great venue. 

We had three "free" specialty dining nights and cannot speak enough about the food and service....Moderno-Texas D Brazil style dining, Cagney's Steakhouse, and Teppanyaki Japanese style cooking.....all so wonderful I can hardly tell you which one I'd pick......I guess Moderno for the fabulous salad bar! 

I read in cruise critic that people had to wait in lines for drinks at the bars ...  we were a full Holiday ship and if we did have to wait it was less than five minutes and not very often did we have to do that!!!!  The service throughout the ship was wonderful.  I loved the setup of the Casino and could easily get away from the smokers, I sure do wish they had to go outside to smoke though it kept me away from a lot of machines that I would of liked to play. 

The Garden Café.....the setup for breakfast was great.....the omelette stations were at least 12 of them and you did not have to wait in long lines like most ships!  The Taste dining room is where we ate our meals and I loved the anytime dining where if you were sitting having a good time and not quite ready to go you could just wait and when you were ready you just walked up to the hostess and were seating everytime immediately!!!!! 

We have been on 29 cruises and this was one of the best I have had and I've been on Celebrity, Holland America, Royal Caribbean, Princess, Costa, and Carnival.  We will definitely be traveling with NCL again!

New year party was excellent with great music and free champagne,party hats and noise maker provided.

Best show ever!!!-Burn down the floor and Prescilla. I went to see twice.

The room with best quality bed, pillows and towel with curved tv.and cable.

My room keeper was excellent provided everythings I needed including sterile water for my cpap machine. Folded towels with different characters everyday.

Norwegian still #1 voted for best food.

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The Epic was the newest ship we have been on & it was beautiful. 

The staff & food was the poorest. In talking with the other guests we pretty much all agree. Most of the food was cold. I actually had a waiter tell me if we would have mentioned it to him he would have flagged us in the computer that we like our food hot & that would help. Not impressed.

Dining staff was slow, rude and indifferent.  Worst food I have ever had on a cruise.  Plus it was cold EVERY meal.  Rooms we different with just a curtain between you and the shower and the toilet. Not much privacy.  Public bathrooms were terribly dirty and rarely had soap in them.  Charged for room service, plus many of the food items in the free dining room.  Menus seemed very similar each night. Not near as yummy as cruises usually are.  Couldn't use all our free dining options because the reservations were full by Tuesday.   Loved the free alcohol package, enjoyed the casino and had wonderful entertainment.  Have to say I won't go on the Epic again.

A beutifull ship. Was to big for us as in too crowded . There was no room at the pools and they ran out of pool towels daily. There was a very loud vibration in our rooms air vent that took 3 days to get repaired so finally sleep.food in the specialty restraints was good.as was the buffet if you could find a place to sit after the lines. Entertainment was top notch. No more big ships for us

This is the worst boat to go on if u are in a wheelchair. You will not be able to get off the boat but maybe once. The service is really bad I lost $140 and had to wait for 2 hours just for them to pick me up in wheelchair van at airport and the lady was very rude i will never go on this boat again. WHEELCHAIR STAY AWAY

This ship is absolutely great. There is so many things to do and so many places to eat. If you get the beverage package it is well worth it. The cruise director is great and interacts with everyone. 

Loved the ship (prefer large ships to small any day) once we got our bearings, Shakers was our favorite bar (wish there were outside options like on the Breakaway) and you must absolutely try the dining package, it was worth it but make sure you are hungry!  We did the waterslides and pool and were pleasantly surprised to find the water wasn't salt water.  Couldn't make show reservations, but got right in on standby without an issue and we were a group of 12.  No issues with any dining reservations or walking into the main dining room or O'Sheehan's (the wings are great) with our group size-although occasionally they would break us up.  Our Room steward (Gede) was amazing-introduced himself the first time we entered our room, and greeted us every enter and exit thereafter (I missed that on our prior sailing).  We had a forward balcony on 12, almost under the bridge, and the size of the balcony was 3x a normal balcony-you could change more than your mind out there-which again was great when we had 12 people marching through our rooms at times.  Still love the private island-however I was unable to tender off for almost 2 hours (tender K) this time, on my two prior stops I was one of the first tenders off each time, so this was a very hard wait...especially not knowing how long the wait would really be, and needing to be ready.  Loved having access to my onboard account in my cabin again (had it on my first Norwegian, not on my second).

In Between-we booked excursions with the ship this time-to use up some OBC-that was also a process of cattle herding.  We had to report to the theater, wait for our excursion to be called, queue through the ship and off, and then try to find the proper place to line up and go.  I have seen better signage in Mexico than I saw in St. Thomas and Tortola once exiting the ship and trying to find our meeting location.  The excursions themselves were good, but it reminded me why I like to book private excursions (less people, actually hear island history, more personal, more fun, have a perfect understanding of timeframes, someone to look out for us).

Negatives-Extra charges on drinks-I had the unlimited drink package-which covers drinks up to 15$ each.  When I booked, I was charged a tax and tip on the drink package.  Every time we ordered a drink, there was a tax and tip assessed to the drink again, and I have several charges to my on board account for drinks ranging from 58 cents to $9.84.  Mind you, I was aware of a few martini's that we ordered that cost 17.95 and on those we had to sign and authorize a 2.95 charge...though it was never 2.95 it was 3.48, and the one try of the top shelf scotch/whiskey.  But you can't tell me that the drinks really cost nearly 15$ each for a drink of the day which comes in a 12-16 oz cup and is advertised in the menu for under $10 or a vodka (1oz pour) and cranberry.  I just added the miscellaneous bar charges, and they total just over $90, of which we were expecting about $36 from the overpriced Martini's or the topshelf alcohol.  

Deck space is very limited and deck chairs-they boast only having about 2300 onboard and there are 4100 guests, which means there are too many without a chair, especially when you have 3 sea days.  People were on deck before 7am claiming chairs, and although staff tagged chairs to "remove" towels if a person was not there for an hour, they never returned to actually remove anything, and deck chairs never opened up until after 3pm. 

The rock wall was only open one of the at sea days, and there were specific clothing requirements that were not posted (at least anywhere that we saw), so the one time that the "adult" kids hit the line, they had to return for socks, and then they hit the line again and the girls were told that their athletic shorts were too short, and they needed longer shorts to participate...makes sense, would have been good to have "needs" posted, then they could have dressed appropriately once and been ready-they lost interest at this point and decided to try tomorrow, and since this was the only day it was open, tomorrow never came.

The elevators, especially forward elevators often seemed to "skip" floors magically (I suspect it was related to a haven guest boarding the elevator and having that magic card to ride without the hassle of stopping to board others, so at the high traffic hours when you needed to go many floors (5 or more) in shoes that were not made for climbing, or with all your luggage/bags to beach/if you were feeling the effects of a full day at the beach, and really needed that "floor taxi" it was never available. 

The main Dining rooms were only open for breakfast until 930, even on sea days.  We arrived at 945 one morning (New Years day-we thought we were early risers)and were shocked to learn that they were closed already.  Likewise the Sushi bar was only open for lunch from 12-130 daily.  Longer hours would just be slightly more accommodating on sea days when people may recover and sleep a few minutes later? 

There were 2 shows on the cruise, one a singing and dancing number and the other was a drag show.  While there were certainly funny parts of the drag show, it was nearly 2 hours long and very agenda driven (I am a very open minded person working in the social services field, but couldn't help but feel that I was being chastised and "taught a lesson" throughout the entire show).  Maybe it's a good show for some specific cruises (gay cruises-all the gay folks in the audience loved the show), but for a "general" cruise I think that the story line could be revamped a bit and be a little less agenda driven and more funny (my 2 cents, and that of the group who was with me, who ranged from 16-50). 

We did want to speak with a wedding coordinator onboard, and guest services was less than helpful and would not put us in touch with that department, referring us to the web page, despite my explaining that I had looked at the web and had some questions, that the web could not talk back and answer for me.  She was not willing/able to diverge from her script and allow me to speak with a live body, which we did share with the CruiseNext folks who were trying to rebook us-why would I rebook until someone could answer my questions!

To get on the cruise ship took over 4 hours, and 3 different pass cards. Then when we got to our room, the cards did not work. That was the biggest complaint, then most of the cruise was okay, a lot more that Norwegian could improve upon, I will not cruise Norwegian again.

Our favorite part of cruise was our butler Maxie who was attentive and fun. We didn't research the Epic enough to know it was a big ship and needed reservations for  everything therefore we were unable to utilize our perks that came with the Haven. Our priority boarding was 1 1/2 hrs in sun due to several computer crashes.  We had cruised many times before  with no such problems.