Norwegian Epic Cruise Reviews - Reviews

Great fun ship.Have sailed it last 2 years in Jan.

Do not book room8168 as noise/vibration from Far Cats,2 FLOORS BELOW our room,caused us to change rooms.Lucky for us there was a room available or we would not have been able to sleep til 2 am when it closed.After 3 years,NCL should have been aware of this problem,that was confirmed by staff that was sent to our room and it should not have been given to a Platinum member of NCL!

NCL staff was helpful during room change and did supply us some nice gifts for our trouble.

We will definitely sail the Epic again as it is a great ship but not in room 8168!

This was our 1st 7 day cruise.  We loved it!!!  Outstanding service, excellent entertainment, beautiful ports, and gorgeous ship.  We just got back and are already looking for the another cruise to go on soon.  We just hope it meets up to the EPIC's outstanding performance.  Thank you EPIC for the best vacation ever.

Wonderful balcony room with lots of storage. Entertainment (blue man, Cirques So Lei, and Legends was excellent. One reccomendation: Garden cafe food should have marks on the food items describing it so people with allergies know to stay away from it.

My wife and I have cruised at least a dozen times, 4 0r 5 on Norwegian. We decided on the Epic this year (Jan, 2014) and were sorely disappointed. We have always enjoyed our cruises and never complained. First, the staff was great. No complaints there. Food was wonderful. Two shows were great. So, what was wrong? The design of this ship is terrible. We thought because it was so big, it would be great. However it was way overcrowded. Combine that with only four banks of elevators and the problems began. Not nearly enough places to sit in the sun. The decks that did have lounge chairs were all completely full immediately every morning. You could not walk around comfortably. I cannot stress enough the overcrowding. We were not aware there would not be a different show each night in the theater. The lesser shows in some of the bars were nothing short of boring, and sitting shoulder to shoulder did not help. The design of the Mini-Suite was ridiculous. In the past we have had more room with a standard balcony room.  All in all, very disappointed, even though we have always had good cruises with NCL.

Very disappointing ship - first impression as you boarded as werre taken to the pool deck that the ship was a giant playgournd for kids, with waterslides and  spray pools.  The 'adult ' pool was located in the back of the ship and became overcrowded with 10 people in it. 

The next 'surprise' was the cabin design, 'modern european' which meant the bathroom was in the bedroom or the bedroom in the bathroom.  Step from the shower into the doorway hall and forget to draw the 'privacy' curtain.  The sink was in the bedroom and if someone is using the sink the only way across the cabin is over the bed.

The other 'feature' is the gian casino located in the center of the midship acitivty area.  You could not walk from one end of the sip on the resteraunt decks without passing through one of the smokiest casino's outside of downtown vegas.

On the plus side, the speciality resteraunts were very good, whihc is a needed plus because the main dining rooms weren't.  The Cirque show was really good and worth the cost 

Overall, the experience wasn't terrible, just poor, and I can understand why the prices were great.

btw - I could go on with many other issues, but hopefully this will forewarn the next raveller.

This was my first cruise, so please factor that into this review. I really enjoyed St. Maarten & St. Thomas. The ports were nice and the islands looked great. Be prepared to shell out some cab money at both locations. On St. Maarten, don't waste your time taking a cab downtown. It's just a 10 minute walk from the part on a sidewalk that takes you right to the beach. I do recommend a cab ride to Maho Beach to watch aircraft land at the airport. 

On St. Thomas we did a full day excursion that we purchased from . I highly recommend this. While the cruise line used the same kayak/snorkle tour company we did, they're group had over 30 people in it and included just one snorkle location. Our group had 6 people! It was amazing. We kayaked to two different snorkle locations and even had a locally made fresh lunch provided on our own stretch of beach. 

I did not care the for the Bahamas. The islands are flat, boring and run down. Everyone seemed to want to go to Atlantis, which is clearly nicer, but also was too expensive to see. The price to use the water park there was $125. Too much for us for about 6 hours spent there. We ended up exploring Nassau downtown and got back on the ship. The beaches there were too dirty to sit on.

The Epic as a ship is was great. During sea days the sun deck did fill up fast. Even though the instructions on the ship said that saving seats was not allowed, we never saw crew members moving towls off seats on the sun deck after the self imposed 60 min limit. That made finding a good seat on the sun deck difficult on sea days. During one day we simply moved the belongings off a seat ourselves after not being able to find a free seat. The sun deck definitely feels crowded on sea days. 

There is a lot to do on the ship and a lot to eat. Though there are restaurants that require a cover, I honestly would have been perfectly happy eating at the buffet and free restaurants the whole trip. The free food was good, tasty and well presented. I would also recommend the sushi bar. Its prices are about 30-50% less per roll than you would find on land. The Noodle Bar was also awesome. Very cheap. For about $4-6 you got A LOT of food. Easily enough for lunch or dinner. Skip the ice bar. It's a novelty and honestly too cold to be in for an appreciable amount of time. 

The one activity I'd recommend to do on the ship is the piano bar. DO THE PIANO BAR! The experience is amazing. We went to every night they played and stayed the whole 3 hours. Each night is different and so much fun. It was by far the best exerience of the whole cruise. 

The staff on the epic were great. Thats all that was great the food was not as good on this cruise. UNLESS YOU PAID THE EXTRA FOR THE SPECIALTY RESTURANTS. The ship is way to big ,too many people long lines. We will go back to the smaller ships. Did two cruises on the Spirit.and loved it.The staterooms were small . on the epic and not layed out very well.the pools were small for a ship with 4,000 pasengers.

Very clean and nice ship. This was our 6th cruise and 2nd on NCL. Balcony room is very small especially when we had 3 people try and fit. The balcony itself is nice and large, plenty of storage space also, just not a lot of room to move.

Over christmas to

St. Maarten, st. Thomas and nassau...From start to finish we were treated like royalty. Excellent food, entertainment, activities, accomodations, very friendly helpful staff, even the weather was terrific. Worth every penny and then some!,

The entire crew aboard the Norwegian Epic are "Epic".  Had a great week at sea. Elliott, Richard and Burton and many more take great care of you while on board.  Our second NCL cruise and will be truely dedicated to them..  Great time......

No interior beauty or dramatic settings. Odd curved cabin wall configuration, which makes walking back and forth within the cabin a tight fit at the end of the bed, sink is situated practically next to bed ( who thought THAT was a god idea?), shower in mini-suite could hold 3...why not devote that space to the cabin? No sexy/inviting bar areas...sterile. Too much space devoted to gaming, and the area smells of stale cigarette smoke. The small ice bar is a joke...and of course $ must be paid even to take a look, but no one stays in there more than a very few minutes. I felt ripped-off on that. NCL makes such a big deal of this in their promo ads that folks get succered into the "experience." Good for first time cruisers who don't yet know what "better" looks like. Tell your clients to go elsewhere to see a dramatic entry area; up-scale art work and vivid color on walls; non-sterile main dining room; and to find inviting woody/sexy bars,  

 Great trip!  This was our 4th cruise, 2nd on NCL.  As a couple, we love the freestyle cruising, as its easier to find a place to eat, not worry about waiting until our appointed time.  Saw large groups having to work hard at making reservations, so wouldn't recommend for large groups.  Ship was big, loved our stateroom (we had a mini-suite) and the balcony was really big.  We spent a lot of time out there.   Minuses were the casino being in the middle of the ship, the walking/jogging track had NO VIEW (looking at the lifeboats) and didn't go all the way around the ship.  Lots of waiting for elevators too!

  Would go again, but not on the Epic.

While the Epic cruise ship is quite large it had minimal available amenities. *There were only a few stores aboard the ship that one could avail themselves too while at sea for three days. I felt that a ship of this size would have more to offer in this sense. *Also, the rooms design was unusual with the toilet, while you may be enclosed, was on the side where your stateroom door opens. *The lighting in the room was to low for make-up application as well. However with that being said, we well be cruising with NCL again in the future.  

The ship was awsome as well as the entertainment. The specialty restaurants were great and the service  in those excellent.  The service everywhere on board the ship other than those specialty restaurants was terrible and the staff where not friendly at all. My stateroom attendant was very accomodating and pleasant, other family members never even saw theres and never had clean towels nor theyre beds ever turned down no ice etc.   I have always encouraged NCL.   We are in the process of planning a family cruise same time same ship only western next year , with  15 to 20 staterooms needed , WE want to book now so everyone can make payment,   I  hope we don,t  regret giving the epic another chance

The ship was very nice, but the customer service was awful. Most of the Guest Service staff was very rude and not helpful! They nickle and dime you for everything aboard compared to other cruises i have been on. Some of the activities like putt-putt and others were no where to be found on board. Alot of the sports areas and the rock climbing wall were closed most of the trip. The big bowl water slide was closed for a day or two and the kids water park was broken the whole trip. My 5 year old niece got horrbily sick from the kids center and eventually got all of us sick. The parents obviously just sent there sick kid in there to get everyone elses kids sick. We had a balcony on the 8th floor and every morning we would wake up to cigarette butts all over our balcony!!  I was kind of dissappointed with the whole cruise experience. I don't think i will be cruising Norwegian anytime soon.

The room was big and little.  What I mean was that there were several bottlenecks where one person had to go somewhere else for us to pass each other.  The Bed and Sofa were both rounded at the end creating the bottlenecks. 

The Blue Man Group was great and the Cirque Dreams was excellent (was Cirque Dreams woth $40 each?).  Second City had several good shows, The Legends in Concert was good.  There was a comedy magician.  Count them 7 shows which we had seen in the first 4 nights.  There was no Las Vegas style show.  The Blue Man Group was very good, but that tied up the auditorium for 4 nights of the 7 meaning 3 nights with nothing but a repeat of the performance.

They eliminated cold soups which my wife loves about cruises.  We only ate twice in a main dining room because both times the over marinated meat left me with indigestion all night.  I prefer my steak just cooked without marination and without sauces.  I found prime rib one night in the cafeteria (Garden Cafe), but they sliced it too thin and it was too well done.  I ate a lot of hamburgers.  The deserts looked great, but had very little flavor...was that lime, peach, or lemon? 

Overall, it was our worst cruise out of 12 we have taken.  No more big ships.

Very nice ship, we loved the amenities.  The only issue we had was the setup of the room, there was no seperate room for shower and rest room.  They were both tucked into the corners just inside the stateroom door.  It didn't offer the privacy that we prefer. 

Have cruised on NCL 6/7 times and have learned to adjust & accept their "Freestyle" promotion.

My disappointments with this cruise were:

1- Ship too large (I think 4900 people)  Long lines for everything, or too full to get in.

2- Blue Man Group was "sole" major entertainment playing 4 nites (I believe)

3- One other entertainment nite with a charge for the dinner and show.

4- The cabin design with the new toilet section is unacceptable. 

overall experience 4 star, what kept this from being a 5 star cruise is the food, it was mediocre at best unless i went to a specialty restaurant or the garden cafe, taste was fair

Overall, we had a very good time. It is a very large ship and it took a while to figure out where everything was. The entertainment was great. We saw Blue Man Group, Legends in Concert and Cirque show. The casino was very large and offered everything we needed. The food was very good, not epic. The overall food service was a three star. We had to ask for our upcharge back at one restaurant as the service was very bad. I have been on 8 cruises and I always felt that the crew was doing everything in their power to make my experience outstanding. I did not feel that on this ship. The crew lacked basic manners and were not focused on the guest as they should be. The ports were great and we had a great time. I have decided that I am not a fan of freestyle cruising. I believe that the crew no longer feels a connection with individuals and don't work for their tips.