Transatlantic Cruise on the Norwegian Cruise Line Epic

A bit of explananation here - this entire web page is a review of the Epic and you will note as you read onwards, that this ship is comprised of various areas and components. So a "review" cannot be done in a paragraph or two, it requires a lot of explanation and we have done so herein together with images, narrativ, perspectives, etc.

Click any link below to go to that destination page;

1. Port Canaveral, FL Day 1 - The ship departed Florida, seven nights at sea.
2. Ponta Delgada, Portugal Day 8 - one night at sea.
3. Funchal, Portugal Day 10 - one night at sea.
4. Cadiz, Spain Day 12.
5. Malaga, Spain Day 13.
6. Cartagena, Spain Day 14.
7. Palma de Mallorca, Spain Day 15.
8. Barcelona, Spain Day 16.

Port Canaveral (our departure port) is a large cruise, cargo, and naval port in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is one of the busiest cruise ports in the world with 4.5 million cruise passengers passing through during 2016. There are five cruise terminals; Carnival, Disney, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean International are some of the cruise lines which dock at there.

There are parking lots that serve each cruise terminal, and there are "close-in" lots as well as more distant "economy lots" available. There are shuttles for the distant economy lots.

As we had been on a cruise aboard the Oasis of the Seas in December the previous year, it is inevitable that comparisons would begin to occur as we cruised towards Europe.

The Norwegian Epic versus the Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas first impressions. The Epic feels a lot more disjoint than the Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas. Traffic doesn’t flow well and there are many areas that get clogged. As an example, on the 5th floor you can’t walk from Bow to Stern without going to a different floor and the aft elevators don’t even go to the 5th floor so you have to go to a floor above or below and then walk the stairs up or down to get there. Overall the design feels a bit clunky to me. There is no separate shower/bathroom/sink in the staterooms rather they are part of the stateroom. Some of the places to store your things are very narrow and awkward. We made things work but had to get creative to keep it all in place.

Here is a comparison of the Norwegian (NCL) Epic's dimensions & statistics (click the button below to view it) to the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL) Oasis of the Seas. This is interesting because these ships are considered to be "mega-ships" and are similar in size and capacity.

Throughout this narrative, we will make comparisons between Norwegian & Royal Caribbean where it would be appropriate. If you would like to read about our cruise on the Oasis of the Seas, click here.

• Don’t stress about the weather. The captain does a good job keeping people informed and they are watching the weather to make sure they don’t need to reroute.
• Relax - try to relax as soon as you can. It can be hard to de-stress. It’s interesting to see the difference in the people between day one and day 5. By day 5 everyone knows the drill. People have settled into a routine. They are nice and more laid back about the daily activities.
• Don’t forget to look at the Ocean. It’s out there. In all kinds of weather take in the sea.

• Stay hydrated - don’t forget to keep drinking water and other drinks to stay hydrated.
• If you bring your own wine you will have to pay a $15 corkage fee per bottle - However you can take the wine with you to a restaurant and they will poor it for you, etc.
• Booking through our United Mileage Plus account gave us many free perks. Basically we had triple the number of perks due to a promotion that was going on.
• Free packages - Based on our United Mileage plus booking and promotions that we going on we had to pick many free packages. We picked 2 internet packages and three $50 off shore excursion packages but in the end we realized that this wasn’t a good choice because the shore excursions booked before we could book them and they seemed to be extremely overpriced and it would have cost us more to take them than not. We only ended up using one of the shore excursion promotions which was less than perfect. We could have received a Spa package or even more internet would have been nice or one of the food or drink packages. In any case, if you get free packages this is something to be aware of.
• Specialty restaurants are worth it especially for a long cruise. The food and service are very good, good selection of adult beverages, etc.
• Sun Deck - there is a sun deck on deck 18 that we didn’t discover until Day 5! You get to it via the outside starboard elevator on deck 15. There are lounge chairs on the side and at the bow of the ship. I wish we’d had found it sooner. It seems that maybe everyone doesn’t know about it. It’s a great place for those seeking a quieter place to hang out and relax.

In no particular order, lets take a look around the ship and some of the many areas that we frequented, starting with the Ship's Sporting & Fitness Areas:

Theater Seating area

'Burn the Floor' show

'Queen of the Desert' show

• Burn the Floor: This non-stop, high energy dance revue fuses contemporary music with sultry dance routines. This 50-minute production runs through various scenes with a talented cast of singers and dancers. The "Rebellion in the Ballroom” dance performance heats up the stage and keeps the audience fully engaged.
• Priscilla Queen of the Desert: This hilarious Broadway musical combines comedy with energetic dance hits from the 70’s and 80’s in a 90-minute production show. Showcasing the journey of 3 drag queens across the Australian Outback in their run-down bus, Priscilla, this show is a crowd-pleaser featuring plenty of glitz and glam.

Each of the shows we attended were top quality entertainment, excellent dancers & musicians and extremely well performed. These two shows drew large crowds at each showing, so having reservations was a drop-dead necessity or you would need to get into the stand-by line very early.

The stand-by line fills up quickly, so if you do not have reservations, plan on getting to the queue at least 30 minutes prior to show time. As just an example, everytime we arrived to see a show, we could see that the stand-by line was already out the door and down the hall with passengers hoping to get in!

The Epic Theater has 681 seats, which ought to give you an even better idea why it is very important to make reservations; you must make reservations for shows, and can only attend one performance of each headliner show per cruise, so you get to see only two traditional night-time shows, and won’t be able to leave dinner and attend a show every night. This is due to Norwegian Cruise Line rules.

Only a few cruise lines (Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises) require passengers to make free reservations for nightly entertainment, only Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines allow reservations in advance of boarding

Casino Starboard Side

The majority of the aft area of deck 6 is dedicated to Casino usage, with restaurants and other shops lining each side of the area. It is 13,000 square feet, and follows a Monte Carlo-inspired design theme and includes gaming tables featuring poker, black jack, roulette and craps, as well as 340 slot machines.

NOTE: Image is the property of Cruise Critic

Casino Port Side

The casino is laid out in the center area of deck 6 with various restaurants & venues on both sides of the ship. A considerable number of slot machines, poker, black-jack and roulette are located here.

NOTE: Image is the property of Norwegian Cruise Lines

We are not what you could consider as "formal diners", and we do not ever bring formal clothing on a cruise! However, since we had booked this trip through United Airlines Vacations we took a "dining package" that included 4 evening meals at various restaurants. Here is a quick overview of those that we selected;

This is one of the "complimentary restaurants" on the Norwegian Epic (deck 15) and it was consistently very popular with passengers. The reviews for this restaurant are all over the map, however we found the food to be good quality, nicely prepared, and the dinner menu varied each day. Our opinion is that the Norwegian Epic complimentary restaurants are equal to the Oasis of the Seas in most areas, and in specific instances, clearly superior.

You should be aware that Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) varies where their ships go, as well as what ships they will reposition. To determine where NCL is sending what ships, you should visit their website. Our list of ports below, is based upon what the "Epic" did when we were onboard in 2019.

• Breakfast: For breakfast they have a wealth of stations and choices. There were a multitude of stations making "cook to order" omelets and there are numerous side items; Bacon, sausage, biscuits, fruits, fried tomatoes, salmon, meats, cheese, oatmeal and all the fixings. I don’t think I can name something that was missing from the morning buffet.
• Asian Restaurant - complimentary: We ate at the Chinese restaurant the first night. If you don’t select the speciality meals then the dinner is complimentary. Food was average but the setting was nice and the ambiance was good.
• Drinks: After boarding the ship and dumping our stuff in our cabin, we needed a drink to relax. We ordered a banana daiquiri and a shot of Jack Daniels and it was $37. That was a surprise so we didn't do that too often! You can bring as many bottles of wine as you want on board but there is a $15 per bottle corkage fee for each bottle. We brought four bottles, and made sure that they we excellent bottles of wine. ;-). There are wine stations in the cafe buffet and you can swipe your room key if you want some wine with dinner or lunch.
• Shore Excursion Presentations: We attempted to attend the Azores overview presentation and were 15 minutes early. The place was too packed to attend. Anticipate crowds for the first stop presentation on the cruise. People are anxious to hear about it after being at sea for so many days.
• Entertainment: "Burn the Floor" is an outstanding dance and music show. Magician - funny magician with audience participation. House rock band was entertaining to listen/watch on the pool deck. Magician - more funny than magic but some good tricks. Epic Beatles - Beatles tribute band was just okay. It seemed their drummer might have been a stand-in as the rest of the band was good but he was struggling with the songs.

• The Norwegian Cruise Line App never worked on my phone even though I downloaded the newest version. It would have been handy to view our schedule on the App during the day.
• The perks that we received from a partner that we booked with didn’t show up on our account when we viewed it which made it confusing to know whether the perks were acknowledged to avoid us having to go to the service desk to ask. For example, we had two internet packages as perks and we did not know how to redeem the 2nd package. We also had per port excursion perks which didn’t show up on the account and we found out after visiting guest services that the perk would only be applied after we took the excursion. If these things showed up in the account overview we would not have had to wait in line at the service desks.
• TV/Movies - The selection of TV channels for a 15 day cruise is lacking. The same movies were played day after day and same exact TV shows and there was only one TV channel and one movie channel. Perhaps allowing people to rent movies on demand would be nice as an option for an evening in the cabin. Perhaps they ought to consider a sort of "Red Box" DVD rental for passengers?

• We really enjoyed both our time at sea and our time in ports. The Norwegian Epic grew on us during the time on the ship. At first, we couldn’t help but compare it to the Oasis of the Seas since we had just been on that ship a few months ago and the design is not nearly as elegant. However, it has a lot of plusses. It’s easier to find people. It wasn’t hard for us to find each other as there weren’t as many spaces to hang out - don’t get me wrong there are a lot of spaces to hang out but it was pretty easy to check and find people you are cruising with. There seemed to be more of a sense of community on the ship and a positive vibe. We spoke to many people and a lot of people were there having a good time, letting their hair down a bit dancing on the pool deck and in the various venues, listening to bands, and singing karaoke. We got used to the disjoint nature of some of the logistics after a few days.
• The last few days of the trip we both came down with colds. Terry’s cold affected him much more than mine did to me. His went from congestion in his head down to his chest and he spent the last few days on the ship and in Barcelona coughing - which was a bummer. This is something that had not happened to us before on cruises and it freaked us out. We were very diligent with the “Washie washie” each day all day long but it didn’t prevent catching a cold when it started permeating the ship.
• We met many serial cruisers on board - people who had cruised more than 60 times! Some people were actually staying on board after we got off for the next cruise. A significant number of people as a matter of fact. We were surprised, although, it makes some sense. You are already there so why not see more places. To be honest… at the end of the 15 days and the days in Barcelona - we were tired of touring and eating. Taking a trip like this is wonderful but we both like to get back to “normal” eating and working out habits. Taking some time in between trips makes each trip more special.