Norwegian Epic Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We wanted to do a cruise to the ABC islands and we used our cruise next deposits for this cruise on NCL EPIC. First the good - we loved cruising out of of San Juan. That port draws in older crowd and that suits us. There were minimal 20 yr olds on the cruise. We loved the ports and the crew on the Epic is the best I've seen in 25 years. The bad: the Epic may be the worst ship I've ever been on. The rooms are terrible, very narrow with the bathroom inside of a closet. No surprise NCL has only one of these in their fleet. She has no mid-ship elevators. So if you book mid-ship like we did (and payed extra for!) you will be walking a lot as you have to go to the bow or stern for an elevator. We still had a great cruise because the staff on this ship is top notch. The itinerary was good but I have to call out NCL on some major problems. They cancelled our port to Bonaire. On the island of Curacao we arrived at 6 am and departed at 12 pm. There was no time to see Curacao. We then arrived in St. Lucia the next day at 2 pm at 8pm. NCL's handling of the itinerary was completely unacceptable.
That said we cruised with many terrific people and a great crew...we loved the cruise but NCL could have made it even better without the gafs on the itinerary.
Cabin Review
Mid-Ship Balcony
The worse cruise ship room I have ever been in. Super-narrow. My wife and I spent all week bumping into each other while moving around in the room. The bathroom is terrible. The toilet is on one side, the shower on the other. The sink is out in the room. The bathroom offers 0 privacy. The rugs are stained and the railing wood is peeling. The deck had a lot of rust on it (although they were painting the day we left). The shower floor flexed under my feet and I only weigh 150lbs. The floor leaked and they had to re-silicone it during the week leaving the room smelling of curing silicone rubber. We had a great room steward in Francis but the room was complete junk.
Port Reviews
San Juan
We loved old San Juan. We highly recommend it.
Curacao
We had minimal time in Curacao. We loved every minute of it. We went to BlueBay beach. It was $8pp for a cab ride and no charge as we sat in the bar on rocking chairs. They played jazz music there the bar was excellent. Gorgeous is not a big enough word to describe this beach. We found the people of Curacao to be very friendly and helpful. Curacao was very clean and safe.
St. Lucia
I am no fan of St. Lucia. It is beautiful but not clean and we were harassed by everyone on our short walk from the cruise port. Many of the cab drivers were annoyed that we did not want a ride and expressed that to us. I didn't feel safe and did not like the full-court-press for the cab rides. We walked back to the cruise port and went to a bar that was excellent. The staff their was very friendly and we had the best pizza there that we had all trip.
Aruba
We took a cab to Arashi beach. It was ~$30 for the cab and $40.00 for chairs. It is a beautiful beach, the people were nice. It was clean and had bar/restaurant. They charge you to use the bathroom but we found Aruba to be expensive with a lot of nickel and diming like that.