Review Norwegian NCL - EPIC Eastern Caribbean Cruise

Hubby and I set sail on the NCL mega ship epic on February 16, 2013. He had received the okay to travel from his primary care physician and neurologist and the trip turned out to be just what we needed to reconnect, rest, and rejuvenate from a stressful new year and work year.

The ship left from Miami, Florida on Saturday afternoon so we flew out of San Francisco Airport on Friday to make sure that we arrived in plenty of time. I booked a towncar from QuickSilver Town Car service in San Francisco to pick us up and drive us to the airport. We had to leave home at 3:30a.m. in order to get to the airport 2 hours early which is hubby preference. The car arrived right on time and whisked us off to the airport. We arrived and checked our two bags with American Airlines for an extra $25 per bag and got in line for security which opened at 4:45a.m. We then found out gate and shared a $10 breakfast burrito from one of the concession stands.

The flight from SFO to Miami was comfortable. I had purchased the premium seats. I used the website Seatguru.com to help select seats with extra legroom. Of course they have extra cost.

We arrived in Miami at about 2:00p.m. and I called the shuttle for the Hyatt Place Doral where we were staying. Doral is a section of Miami which is near the airport and offers transportation to and from the cruise ports as well as the airport.



Airport shuttle

The next morning we waited for the shuttle to the Port of Miami. It was $12 per person. There were a bunch of people waiting to go on the Carnival Breeze which a newer Carnival ship. The Carnival Triumph disaster was just coming to a close that week so everyone felt they had to defend their decision to go on a cruise. I love cruising so I understood. No need to cancel.

Waiting for the shuttle to pick us up.

We arrived at the terminal before 11:00 a.m. , checked our baggage and waited in the large terminal for them to let us board.

The EPIC is the 3rd largest ship built. Royal Caribbean has the largest two. The ship was definitely beautiful. There is a huge movie screen on the back of the ship in an area called Spice H2O. 

 

There are huge water slides, the world's largest casinos and Vegas style shows for entertainment. There were also lots and lots of people.

 

I book the trip through Costco Travel as a guarantee (GTY) balcony and ended up with what is considered a hull balcony room. It was cabin 8009. It's a room in the very front of the ship with a balcony and window cut into side of the hull. Norwegian gave me $50 on board credit and Costco gave me $100 as part of their promotions.  When I booked I thought I had $75 credit but when we got on board it was $100. Yeah! The $150 basically covered the service charges.

The room was fine. I had been researching rooms on cruisecritic.com and the consensus there is that the hull balcony is terrible. Not so. It was perfectly fine. There was sun, room to sit and relax and fantastic views. The room was quiet with no noise from above or below. We didn't hear any noise from our neighbors. There was plenty of storage and just a little bit of room to pass at the foot of the bed. My 6'6" tall hubby fit in the bed, in the shower and in the toilet area. He found plenty of rerun shows to watch on the in room television. The bed was a little hard. It was so hard that it gave me a backache. I requested a eggshell foam pillow top and that made the bed a little softer and I didn't have anymore backache.

The food was not bad on board. We ate primarily in the main dining rooms entitled Taste and Manhattan Room. We had a full sit down breakfast at Taste each morning and usually had dinner at Manhattan Room. For lunch we at at O'Shannons or the buffet. We went to one of the specialty restaurants, La Cucina becaue the romance package included a dinner there. It was very good.

Dinner the first night in the Manhattan Room. Steak & Lobster

One day we ordered a pizza from room service for $5.00. We also ordered a couple of greek salads which were free and a soda which was $2.00. This was delicious and we enjoyed being away from the crowds.



I ordered a bon voyage gift for myself from NCL.com. It was the Romance package and included the following. Champagne and chocolate covered strawberries delivered to the room at embarkation. We also received a dozen red roses at embarkation.



Later on in the cruise we received canapes served to the room one afternoon. We received these Tuesday afternoon when we returned from St. Maarten.

On another day we got a tea service which included breads, cookies, a variety of teas. We also got a free picture and dinner paid for us a La Cucina.

Tea service

One the first day at sea,  Darryl and I visited the spa. I had enjoyed the spa so much on my previous cruise on Carnival and I knew that they did some specials for days in port and days at sea. I convinced Darryl to visit the spa and take a tour. He liked it so much that he decided to purchase the spa pass for $20 per person. I had also reserved a spa treatment for $89 per person.
Darryl and I got to the spa early and spent basically the entire day there. The pool decks were so crowded that we couldn't find a lounge chair. The spa was a haven. There were heated thermal pools, sauna room, steam rooms, hot tubs, warm lounge chairs and a beautiful private balcony on the back of the ship. Loved it. Next time, if I ever decide to go on that ship again, I will definetly book a spa balcony room because we need the private space.

View at the balcony of the spa area

St Maarten
St. Maarten was our favorite port. We were scheduled to visit St. Maarten, St. Thomas U.S.V.I, and Nassau, Bahamas.

We ate an early breakfast at Taste and then disembarked at St. Maarten. There were tons of cabs lined up but we decided to walk the 15 minutes into town called Philipsburg. A bunch of people booked tours through the ship or on the pier the beach and town in Philipsburg turned out to be FANTASTIC.

There were lots of shops in town and women trying to get us to visit a timeshare at Little Divi. We walked along the boardwalk and bought a few souveniers. There were people along the boardwalk renting lounge chairs for $20. The two chairs included use of a floating tube, an umbrella, the two chairs, two drinks and free wifi. We never were able to get the free wifi. It was fabulous.





The beach at St. Maarten. Great Bay, Phillipsburg. A short walk from port.

Walking on the beach in St. Maarten.



View from the chair. Hubby kept his tennis shoes on the entire day.





I had not brought my bathing suit so I went in the water in my tee shirt and blue shorts. The water was very clear. We laid in the sun and drank our soda. Darryl refused to take off his shoes. Sigh.
Actually it was kind of funny. After a while we wandered back to the ship and ordered the pizza and room service salads for lunch.

St. Thomas
Darryl and I had been to St. Thomas U.S.V.I before. At the pier it took us a while to get a taxi/ truck ride into town.We finally figured out what was going on and the truck filled up and took us into Charlotte Amalie for $4 per person.

Charlotte Amalie was very crowded. The streets are narrow and the buildings are old kinda colonial era looking. It was nice but much more crowded then St. Maarten. Darryl took pictures with his ipad. We walked up and down the main street. Everywhere was selling jewelry and watches. Darryl bought me a beautiful ring as a souvenier of our trip.



 In fact the cruise ship made recommendations of where to shop. We didn't visit any of the shops but on board they were promoting Tanzanite gemstone. We found a place on the way back that had some teeny tiny triangle shap tanzanite earrings for $9 but Darryl thought they were too small. We visited the swap meet for souveniers and tee shirts.

We purchased some rum balls and went back to the ship.

We had another day at sea. We spent most of it in the room. The pool decks were so crowded that there was no place to sit down. There was also a White Hot Party at Spice H20. That was probably the funniest dance party on board. There really weren't any other clubs or parties.

Nassau, Bahamas
The morning we were supposed to visit Nassau, the Captain made an announcement that we wouldn't be stopping at Nassau. There was some mix up with the Port of Nassau and there wasn't a berth available for us. So we spent another day at sea.
The cruiseline offered us our $20 per person port fees back so we had an additional $40 on board credit. The cruise also offered us free rum punch which you had to go looking for.
Darryl bought me a watch onboard. He was mad because the t-shirts were expensive onboard and he hadn't purchased enough souveniers at the other ports.

Entertainment on Board

I enjoyed the entertainment of board. Hubby didn't care so much for it. Blue Man group was kind of cute show but it was probably better aimed at teenagers. The Legends show wasn't bad but it was over very quickly. We also purchased tickets to Cirque. The service was terrible in that show and even though I purchased premium tickets the view wasn't that great from the balcony.


Disembarkation
Getting off the ship was a disorganized mess.

Miami
We took a taxi back to the Hyatt Place hotel in Doral. It was too early to check in so we asked about a rent a car. The hotel kept our luggage and a gentleman from Quest Rent A Car came to pick us up.
After a quick registration period, hubby and I drove off to South Beach area in a brand new cherry read Toyota Corolla. The cost was $29.95 plus insurance and GPS and tax. So basically it was $59 by the time we were finished. No problem. Miami is like Los Angeles in that you need a car to get around.

Hubby and I drove down to South Beach area. We parked and walked on the beach. Hubby is from a beach city in Los Angeles and he wanted to look at the beach. The South Beach Food and Wine Festival was going on. We didnt' go in as the tickets were $225 per person.

We walked along Ocean Avenue and bought some postcards. After we walked the length of South Beach we got in the car and went to a promenade shopping district where we sat down at a cafe and had lunch and people watched. It  was really hot and humid. We were tired so we went back to the hotel and ordered some food from the cafe downstairs. Hyatt Place Doral has some fantastic cookies for $4 each. The sandwiches were way over priced but we didn't feel like going back out.

We had an early flight back to San Francisco. We left the car at the hotel for pick up as instructed. It was still basically full of gas. Left the keys with the front desk.

We took the 5:00 a.m. shuttle to the airport and checked in at the curb. The flight home seemed to take forever but we made it. I called the TownCar service which was expecting us. It still took a while for the guy to find us. There were quite a few town cars picking people up and it took a while for them to find us.

The weather was beautiful in the San Francisco Bay Area when we returned and it was good to be home.

Overall we had a fantastic trip.

I don't think that I will sail on a mega ship again unless I was with a group. I am looking to going on the Princess Cruise Tour to Alaska some day. Hopefull with the kids. I would also like to take one the other smaller more luxurious cruises on Crystal.