Hey y'all!
Just back from my *ALMOST* two week long vacation, the first week of which was spent aboard the lovely Epic. This was the longest I've been off of work since...well I guess since I took two full weeks off when I got married in 2008. So crazy. After the cruise ended Sunday the 15th, we rented a car and drove up to Clearwater Beach, where my mom was vacationing with two of her best friends. Turns out I picked the right week to cruise as it worked out perfectly and I was able to extend my vacation by a few days. That was a nice surprise.
Anyway, I don't know that I will do a full on "review" per se but I do have some thoughts to share in case anyone is interested. Knowing me though, I'll end rambling on and making it into a haphazard review of sorts. So I don't really know what this will end up being.
We are now officially "gold" Latitudes members, which is a shame, because this was probably our last cruise for awhile due to upcoming life changes/transitions that will make travel more difficult than it has been.
So a quick note on me. This is my 5th cruise (I've only been on NCL), second time on Epic, the first of which was the first week of January in 2013. We knew then that we definitely wanted to cruise on the Epic again and when I learned that it was being permanently moved across the Atlantic, I knew the time was now to book again.
The first time, we were in a mini suite, I think deck 10 aft starboard. This time, we were in a plain ole balcony, also deck 10 but forward port. I didn't think it'd be a huge difference, and overall it wasn't, but there were some things I missed, namely the extra storage. But whatever. No big thing seeing as it was just the two of us.
I cruise with my sister, who is 18 months younger than me, but has a learning disability so I have to do some level of caretaking for her, very minor, but it's always something of a challenge. My husband stays home with our nine year old four-legged fur daughter, who is a Maltese named Nico. I live in Chicago, my sister lives at home with my parents in Virginia. We rarely see each other, so we cruise usually once a year both as a vacation and also a way to hang out together.
This time, we both flew into Miami. I always arrange my flights to land before hers so I can meet her somewhere and her not have to wait. Weather delays can obviously affect that, but fortunately, it hasn't happened yet. So I got to Miami about two hours before she was due. Once she landed, it took me an hour to find her (while on the phone with her trying to figure out where the heck she was), but I finally tracked her down and we took a cab to our hotel, the InterContinental. We stayed there last time also. I get a bay view room so we can watch the ships at the port.
We got there at about five after four. Check in was at 4 I think. Our room wasn't ready so they gave us free drink coupons and held our luggage while we walked over the the Bayside shopping center or whatever it's called to grab a piece of pizza since we were verrrrrrry hungry. The hotel texted me about 30 minutes later to tell us our room was ready. We settled in and had a very exciting night of watching Saved By the Bell on Netflix via my iPad. We were born in the 80s, Saved By the Bell was a vital part of our formative years.
Next morning, we raised the window shades to make sure the Epic was there (it was of course) and wandered a few blocks up the street to CVS to buy a couple of last minute things. Yeah, it turned into $84 of junk, including a 12 pack of diet Dr. Pepper cans). We had a grand time trying to carry it all back to the hotel and fitting it into our already stuffed luggage.
I think we arrived at the port at about 12:45? Check in was a breeze and we really didn't wait long at all. We carried on five bottles of wine so we paid our corkage fee of course and headed to our room where there was another bottle of wine waiting for us with a note to my sister thanking her for celebrating her anniversary with NCL. I have NO IDEA where that came from. Neither of us have an anniversary of any kind in February, haha.
Our room was nice, though a tad smaller than our mini suite on our previous Epic voyage. Our beds were separate this time which was nice. My sister tends to be a sheet and blanket hog and I'm always cold so I need my coverings.
In the months leading up to the cruise, I'd contemplated purchasing the spa pass. I had no issue paying the $199 for it, but I knew it'd be a tough sell to my sister. Had I been traveling with anyone else, I could have purchased it on my own and gone alone, but with her, we have to stick together all the time so anything I do, she's kind of forced into doing as well but luckily she was on board with it. Oh, we usually spend VERY little money on board, this time we went a little crazy. I also usually prepay service charges, but didn't this time, nor did I book any shore excursions ahead of time so that right there created an on board account balance of a few hundred dollars per person. My balance on the Breakaway last August was $1.43, ha. But I had like $150 of OBC. Anyway.
So the spa pass was lovely and well worth the money in my opinion. We spent a good deal of time in there every day, except for one, maybe two port days. There were times when it was pretty crowded on the balcony and tile loungers, but we were pretty much always able to snag a padded chair inside and if that failed, we hung our robes and towels on a hook and just enjoyed the thermal pool. My favorite place to be though was out on the balcony. Didn't really spend any time in the steam room or sauna, just too hot in there for me, despite my affinity for desiring to be on the warmer side all the time.
So we really didn't do much in terms of activities on the ship. This was very much a relaxation cruise for us. My sister really liked BMG from the first cruise, so she wanted to do that. I had already prebooked it for Monday night (I think?) but it ended up being the same night and same time as the Latitudes reception so I rescheduled it for Friday night. We didn't go to any other shows. We did Legends the first time, though the Michael Jackson guy was really the only one we were interested in. This time, I had no interest in anyone else ("Jimmy Buffet" and "Adele" I think?) so we passed. Also last time, we camped out every night at either karaoke or Howl at the Moon until closing time but this time, I think we only went to Howl at the Moon once and just for a little while and karaoke just a handful of nights, and only for a little while. I was pretty beat by like 10pm each night. I must be getting old. So we were in bed fairly early every night. I'd also wake up freakishly early.
We went to one trivia, I think the second day. It was kind of awkward. The CD staff member running it ended up storming off on like the first question because some idiot drunk man was making fun of his accent. I didn't blame the guy (the cruise director staff member, that is) at all. This cruiser obviously hadn't traveled much from wherever he lives in America because the accent seriously wasn't THAT impossible to understand. The gist of it was that the staff member was reading the first question and the passenger kept yelling out and asking if there was someone else that could read the questions. I understood him just fine and everyone else seemed to as well. It was truly cringeworthy. I honestly commend every single employee on that ship for having to deal with some downright ignorant people. I can't even imagine some of the situations they come across. ANYWAY. The remaining CD staff did kind of playfully give it back to him in as polite a way as they could without him probably then complaining about their behavior. They then kind of made fun of the American accent by reading the questions that way. It was funny.
I think the only other event we attended was a wine tasting on the last day, Valentine's Day. They had a whole bunch of tables beautifully set up for it in Taste, but only nine people showed up, occupying a mere three tables. It was kind of sad. Oh well, we had fun.
Oh, we did go to the "Men Behind the Blue" Q&A. Very worth the hour or so, in my opinion. They were so funny. I live not too far away from the BMG venue here in Chicago but have never gone. I think I'll take my husband just so he can check it out. I'm a musician so I appreciate the musical elements of the show.
Let me talk about food. Oh goodness...me... I'm a very strange eater. Some of it self imposed, some of it not. I've been a vegetarian for the past seven years. I'm also allergic to shellfish. You'd think that'd be pretty easy to avoid, and it generally is, but three of my reactions have come from food that was contaminated without me knowing it, so I travel with an epi pen. Never had to use it, thankfully. So even with all the non shellfish and vegetarian foods out there, I'm additionally extremely picky in general. My first three cruises all had the same MDR menu so I knew in advance what I liked and would schedule dinner around what was being served in the MDRs. I'm a creature of habit. I'm not a huge fan of the new MDR menus. I think we only ate in Taste two nights whereas last time, we ate there every single night. I know my sister missed being able to order her salmon every night. We ate in La Cucina one night, my vegetarian lasagna was okay, but I really loved the bread dipped in the garlic olive oil. We also ate at the noodle bar twice. Hit O'Sheehan's a couple of times for lunch or a snack, got baked goods (a lobster tail and cupcake) once from the Atrium cafe... What we did do which we normally don't, was go to the buffet for breakfast. I believe we did that five mornings out of seven, and got room service the other two. The night before Jamaica, they played Cool Runnings (one of my favorite movies from childhood) on the big screen at Spice H20 so we had a pizza delivered to us out there for that. At home, I generally eat very healthily and I felt like such a pig all week eating mozzarella sticks, spinach and artichoke dip etc. I had planned on jogging a little bit but of course forgot to pack my running shoes. I guess I didn't want to do it THAT badly...maybe I subconsciously forgot on purpose, ha. I really do miss my old MDR entrees though, especially my mushroom ravioli, vegetable risotto, eggplant parmesan (I don't care for the updated version of it, it has a funny taste to me) and pumpkin gnocchi. I'll get over it though. We never ate breakfast or lunch in an MDR this time either. If memory serves me correctly, there were no vegetarian lunch options in the MDR. Or if there were, I didn't notice. They used to have a black bean burger. OH!! There was one day, it was either for lunch or dinner, that we went to the buffet. They had signs up at the burger stations saying that veggie and turkey burgers were available upon request. I was told twice that they didn't have any veggie burgers. =( That kind of sucked. The buns and fixin's looked so appealing to me at the moment and I really was craving a veggie burger. Oh well.
Now about the staff... Many of the reviews I'd read from recent Epic cruises (the three months or so before ours) were pretty negative, especially when it came to interacting with crew members. We found everyone we encountered, as usual, to be nothing but pleasant and helpful. In fact, my normally introverted self almost got tired of having to smile and say hello to so many people as we walked from our forward room way back aft to the spa, or wherever we were headed. Everyone was so nice. Our room steward was great. Like I alluded to before, I really commend everyone on that ship for doing all they can do to try to keep over 4,000 people happy. We're all so different and I know it's impossible to please everyone, but I really think that they do a great job. And some people are just impossible to please so...there's no winning with them anyway. I'm glad to say I never witnessed anyone loudly complaining about anything and overall, people really seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The ship was all decorated for Valentine's Day. My husband and I never do anything special for this Hallmark holiday, but of course since we were apart and they made such a big deal out of it, I actually really missed him that day, haha. Cheesy but true. About five stewards wished us happy Valentine's Day during our walk to the spa that day. I just laughed and said "We left our Valentine's at home!" Not going to lie, it would've been fun having him there with me. That's probably the only time I'll ever say that. He's a sappy romantic, and I'm totally not, so I know he would've done something sweet for me.
As for ports and excursions. Neither of us had ever visited Jamaica, Grand Cayman or Cozumel before, which was good. Brand new experiences for both of us. I'd kind of perused various excursions during my planning process but couldn't really decide definitively on anything. I hadn't talked to my sister much and I wanted her input so we decided on everything after we were on the ship. I think we booked everything on Monday, the first sea day. I'd been super interested in the Bob Marley tour in Jamaica and waffled back and forth on that. I wasn't sure how my sister would handle the bus ride and she didn't really know who Bob Marley was so I wasn't sure she'd be interested. Even with her wearing the behind the ear patch for her extreme motion sickness, it made me nervous. Also, it kept disappearing and reappearing from NCL's website. Luckily, once we were onboard and had the shore excursion guide, I saw it listed so that's what we decided to do in Jamaica and I'm SO glad. In Grand Cayman, we just did a "Discover Cayman" tour which seemed pretty generic (and it was), but I was okay with it. My original plan was to just wander around the port area anyway. The one thing my sister had expressed interest in beforehand was the chocolate making tour in Cozumel. Incidentally, one of my mother's best friends was on the Sun the same week which was in Cozumel the same day as us. She has a time share there and had planned to spend her day there and invited us to join but I forgot to call her before we left Miami. Since we ended up not being able to meet up with her, we decided to book the chocolate tour.
Internet service! As I mentioned earlier, I have a nine year old Maltese whom I consider to be my child. She is extremely high maintenance and I admit it's my fault, I made her that way so my husband is the only human being on earth that I trust with her. I'd trust my parents, maybe, but they're a 12 hour drive away from us. It was absolutely necessary that I be able to check in on her. She's got some health issues and I always worry about her anyway. I'm thrifty (usually) and paranoid so whenever I cruise, I usually just turn my cell phone off entirely. Recently, I've become brave and been leaving it on to take pictures and putting in airplane mode and disabling the data and whathaveyou. I used iConcierge on the Breakaway last year and discovered that I'd still get some of my app notifications but wasn't charged anything by my carrier. So I instructed my husband to send me a brief Facebook message every day to just tell me "she's okay." I'd be able to read it without using any data. I did end up purchasing the cheapest internet package and got 15 additional minutes as a Latitudes perk. Service could be pretty slow and crappy at times. When I purchased my minutes from the internet cafe manager, there was a woman down there complaining and he credited her onboard account back. I probably could have done the same, but I didn't. Oh, the strange thing, and I'm guessing it's because I was on wifi and using "iMessage" but I was able to send and receive text messages from my husband. I freaked out though and only did a few because I was sure I'd be charged (due to my paranoia) but I wasn't. Good to know. So I think I paid $55 for 115 minutes, and there's a one time activation fee of $3.95 I think. So $58.95. Did I really need to do it? No, but oh well.
On to ports and excursions.
Jamaica: Bob Marley day! I wouldn't call myself a Bob Marley fanatic, but I like him fairly well and know his basic biography. I own a couple of his albums. And come on, it's Jamaica. Reggae, Bob Marley... how could we not do this when in Jamaica?? I figured it'd be pretty amusing (a bunch of tourists cruising around in a party bus listening to reggae music) and also educational since we'd really be getting into the countryside. I can zipline or tube anywhere. We piled into our awesomely colorful bus, were given rum punch, turned up the Bob Marley tunes and off we went into the Jamaican countryside. As described, the ride was very bumpy and hilly. Our guide was engaging and entertaining, our driver very good and safe feeling. We stopped at an outdoor bar type of place on the way where I enjoyed a Red Stripe beer, naturally. I know I can get it here, but I felt it appropriate to enjoy one in Jamaica. They also provided us with a "snack" which was included in the tour price. It was one of those pastry patty things. As we got closer to Bob Marley's birth/resting place, the roads got a little scarier. It's only one lane, with drop offs very common and many blind turns. So there was a lot of loud bus honking to alert any possible oncoming cars to our presence. The whole time, we only encountered a handful of cars and it was usually the other car who had to back up until there was room to pass. It wasn't as harrowing as I feared it might be. The shore excursion people on the ship made a point of saying that no, you do not get to indulge in any green, leafy substances on the tour, but truthfully if you want to, yes you can. There was a guy selling it just outside the gates of the Bob Marley compound and I'd say half of our group partook. You can smoke it freely while on the property (supposedly, despite the signs saying otherwise), and believe me, people did. The compound was cool to see, and again, I'm really glad we did it. The gift shop actually had some really cool Bob Marley stuff in it. I didn't buy anything, but it wasn't at all just cheap, tacky stuff. On the way back, we stopped back at the outdoor bar only this time, they'd prepared a buffet lunch for us. Jerk chicken and pork, rice and beans, festival drink, and some sort of sweet bread thing. Oh, this shocked me. When we first got on the bus in the morning, our guide actually asked if there were any vegetarians onboard. I was the only one. I'm not used to people even attempting to accommodate me that way so I thought that was really nice. So anyway, at lunch they had a container of mixed vegetables for me. Cool. This was an utterly fantastic tour. Soooooooo glad we decided to do it.
Grand Cayman: We tendered without incident into Grand Cayman. Our excursion for this day was just a quick two or three hour "Discover Cayman" thing. We drove around, stopped at Seven Mile Beach for a photo op (from the little bus), Hell for 15 minutes, a store selling rum cake for 15 minutes, the turtle farm for like 30 minutes and uh, that may have been it. So a very quick, very scratching the surface type of thing. We walked around the port area, grabbed lunch of pizza (surprise surprise) at a little cafe that had free wifi so we spent some time there. I checked email, both personal and work. Tendered back uneventfully and that was pretty much our day in Grand Cayman.
Cozumel: Chocolate day. I'm not a huge chocolate freak, but I'll eat it, and it sounded like fun. Most importantly, my sister really wanted to do this. We were put into taxi vans and driven a few miles to this "Discover Mexico" place where we met our guide. Now, this was only supposed to be a three hour tour but turned into like a five hour tour. So you definitely got your money's worth, but at the three hour mark, a lot of people were antsy and ready to go so they cut out early. We too had wanted to walk around Cozumel a bit and didn't really get to. More on that soon. So anyway. We had to watch a brief kind of pictoral slideshow about Mexico first, walk through kind of an art gallery second, then finally made it to the chocolate. Now, this ended up being only a small portion of the tour. And that part was great fun. The assistant guy there was awesome. We tipped him. He was also adorable (but only 19 years young). My husband is Mexican so I guess I have a weakness for Latino men. After we made our little chocolate bars, our guided tour continued. We were led through a collection of mini temple models and then finally to a snack bar area where we were told we'd be "taking a break" for 25 minutes but could order food or a drink if we wanted. They had vendors trying to sell us stuff. I wanted a Corona, my sister a margarita, also two vegetarian tacos and a quesadilla. We all had to order food through our guide, which took FOREVER. The snack bar staff spoke no English but from being married to a Mexican and taking nine years of Spanish in school, I could have easily ordered my own food. Heck, I think people who DIDN'T know much Spanish could have easily figured it out. After 25 minutes, we still hadn't even ordered. Spoiler alert, I never got my tacos. I think we were there for an hour at least. It was at this point that people were getting anxious, and I don't blame them. Especially those who didn't choose to eat. They had to just sit there repeatedly telling the vendors no, they didn't want jewelry or a bracelet with their name woven into it. I was never really sure what was happening next or how much longer we'd be there, which is why I didn't push the issue of not getting the tacos that I paid for. I was given a plate of guacamole and chips so at least I got something. After that (when people started leaving) we were kind of forced to sit and watch a group of guys do the Danza de los Voladores (Dance of the Flyers) and hey, that was cool. I'd seen video of it before in Spanish class and knew what it was, but it was neat to see in person. Then we were FINALLY led to the gift shop and after that, our guide had to walk out the street and wait for more taxi vans to drive by so he could flag them down to take us back to the ship. It took awhile. By the time we got back to the port area, we had maybe an hour, if that, to walk around. But in terms of price, we definitely got WAY more than just a chocolate making tour. Unfortunately, chocolate making seemed to really be all people were interested in doing there, ourselves included. So from that standpoint, it was almost too much.
One thing I found about the Jamaica and Cozumel tours was that I spent a LOT of my cash tipping people. On my other excursions from trips past, there was only the one main guide to tip. Not so in this case. In Jamaica, tips were wanted for the bus guide (which I had planned on), the Caribbean band on the Bob Marley compound that played his songs, and the separate tour guide there. In Cozumel, tips were wanted for our main guide (which I had planned on), the chocolate maker guy (which I had no problem with because he was awesome), the snack bar people, and the guys doing the Dance of the Flyers. They actually approached us individually and held out a basket. I tipped everyone, but the problem was, I barely had enough cash on me! I usually leave the bulk of my cash in the room safe and just bring a little bit out with me during the day. I typically allocate $20 for tip. $10 for me and $10 for my sister. So honestly, I'm lucky I had enough cash on me for all that tipping. It really added up. Every other cruise I've taken, I usually come home with more than half the cash I bring. Not so this time, and I know it was because of tips because I never bought anything souvenir wise the entire time.
Weather: We couldn't have gotten better weather. Well, it was overcast the first two or three days and downright chilly feeling on the last day but since my sister and I aren't beach/pool people, that didn't matter to us. It didn't rain at all and the temps were very pleasant in the 70s and MAYBE low 80s one day. The water was smooth as glass. I felt NO movement on the ship at all. I like to feel a little rocking, especially at night when I'm laying in bed but nope, not this time.
We bought pictures this time for the first time ever. We did the package of ten photos for $129. So we ordered two prints of five pictures (one set for me, one set for my sister) and I paid her cash for my portion.
We also used the library/game area for the first time. We checked out a few books to read up on the spa and also in the room at night and we played a few games of checkers. I took a couple of crossword puzzles as well.
If I think of anything else, I'll add it later, but that's pretty much the cruise in a nutshell. We had a GREAT time, just like I thought we would, despite reading some reviews that I admit had me thinking "What the hell happened to the Epic between Jan. 2013 and now?!"