The Norwegian Epic - one of the mega ships in the Norwegian Cruise Line fleet
"The thing I don't like about cruising is all these people who don't speak English."... An ignorant, myopic, xenophobic American woman aboard the Norwegian Epic in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, November 12, 2017
The Norwegian Epic, a nearly quarter mile long 316 million pound mega ship, sailed from Barcelona, Spain at 1800 h local time on November 5, 2017. Thirteen very fast days later she was tied off at the cruise terminal at Port Canaveral, Florida, near Cocoa Beach and the Kennedy Space Center. My wife and I were aboard the Epic as she cast away from the pier in Barcelona and as we watched the sun set over an ancient fort overlooking the harbor we had already resigned ourselves to the trip being over almost before it began.
We had booked the cruise in August 2016 and with our early booking (and incredibly good per person rate for the cruise) which entitled us to accepting two inclusive packages from Norwegian. Our options were 1) unlimited drinks, 2) a 4-restaurant specialty dining package, 3) 250 minutes of Internet use, and 4) reduced rates on shore excursions.
Because we usually make our own plans when in ports, and since this cruise offered landings in only two ports, we instantly rejected the reduced rates on excursions option. 250 minutes of internet for $125 seemed like an easy thing to pass up considering the value of the other options. Later Cathy purchased the Internet package and had nothing but constant problems with the service. We were glad we didn't choose internet for our "free" package.
What we chose were the specialty dining package and the unlimited drinks package. Both, it turned out, were no-brainers to choose and the next time we cruise on Norwegian (which means the next time we cruise) we will select those same two options. They turned out to be the most cost-effective options possible.
The Itinerary
Although our cruise departed Barcelona on November 5, we boarded an American Airlines plane in Tampa on October 28 bound for Miami where we connected to a nonstop flight to Barcelona, 9 hours away. Because I am the absolutely best husband on the planet, I used some of my American Airlines frequent flier miles and and flew us to Barcelona in First/Business Class.
While following Jimmy Buffett's song line instructions and "reading departure signs in some big airport" we found the gate for the American Airlines flight to Barcelona. I'd return there in a heartbeat.
This was Cathy's first real first class experience including being seated in lie-flat seats that converted to a bed. We left Miami a few minutes early, not long after the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for Palm Beach County about 50 miles north. To say the departure was bumpy was an understatement. The in-flight service was impeccable, the dinner (and breakfast) we were served were tasty and filling, and the hard sleep made possible by the lie-flat seats made the entire 9 hours worth the 100,000 frequent flier miles it "cost" to fly in First Class over the pond.
One of the highlights of the trip was adding tiny Andorra to my list of countries visited - it was my 119th country
We arrived in Barcelona early, quickly cleared Customs and Immigration then found a bus operated by Andorra by Bus and took off on a 3-hour drive across the Catalonia countryside to the tiny country of Andorra on the Spain/France border. Andorra was the 119th country I have visited. We spent one night in Andorra then returned to Barcelona.
The bus station in Andorra. Catalan is the language spoken in this beautiful country. Its a mixture of Spanish and French with just enough Portuguese thrown in to flummox you. There was a White Wagtail foraging along the stream when I took this picture.
For my birthday, October 31, we flew to the Balearic island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean where we spent three nights. We did some SCUBA diving with the excellent folks at Scuba Ibiza Diving Center, then returned to Barcelona on November 3. On November 4 we spent much of the day exploring Barcelona with the superb local company Barcelona Day Tours. Travelers simply cannot go wrong booking a trip with this company. Ask for Elena as your guide - you will not be disappointed. While in Barcelona we stayed at the Barcelona Airport Hotel which, not surprisingly, is quite close to the airport but about 20 minutes by taxi from downtown. The rate was ridiculously cheap for this 4-star hotel and we look forward to returning to Barcelona if only to stay here again! The breakfast alone was worth the nightly rate.
Departing Barcelona aboard the ship on November 5 we set a course for Malaga, Spain, about 500 miles south.
For hundreds of years this ancient fort has been perched like a Peregrine Falcon overlooking the entrance to Barcelona harbor
Unfortunately there was an on-board medical emergency overnight and when we woke up on November 6 we were a mile or two offshore from Isla Ibiza (where we dove 5 days earlier). The unfortunate passenger was dropped off here for medical care shortly after sunrise and we continued on our course for Malaga.
We spent November 7 in Malaga and thoroughly enjoyed it. Established in 770 BC it has to be one of the prettiest cities I have visited in Spain and in much of Europe for that matter.
Cafe de l'Abuela near the cathedral in Malaga was a perfect place to chill with a glass of Spanish red wine and simply watch the city come alive.
Walking around Malaga was made so much easier by the highly-polished marble streets
Central Park in Malaga epitomizes the beauty of the city
Departing Malaga we spent 4 days at sea before arriving at Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel Island in the stunningly beautiful Azores.
Sunrise over Ponta Delgada harbor, November 11, 2017. I absolutely love this island!
We had stopped here on a Transatlantic cruise in 2014 and I thought I would never see the island again. While here we completed a 2-tank dive with the good folks at Best Spot Azores Dive Center located just a 5-minute walk from the cruise terminal. Cathy dove with this PADI resort in 2014. We dove today with a Brit living in Lisbon. Bruno the owner of the company, and Diego a PADI Instructor served as our divemaster. Despite the bottom temperature 60 feet beneath the surface being a chilly 63 degrees we enjoyed two great dives and look forward to going out with this company again.
There are five dive shops within a stone's throw of the cruise terminal in Ponta Delgada. At least 3 of them are PADI shops and one is SSI (Not sure about the affiliation of the 5th one). Despite the competition you cannot experience a better dive than with Best Spot - just make sure to wear a 6 ml wetsuit!
The following images show the approximate route we followed on this journey.
The Cruise Ship
We spent 13 nights in Stateroom 10097, a Mini-Suite located forward on the starboard side of the ship
The Good Parts of the Trip
Norwegian Cruise Line certainly knows how to throw a party at sea! We found the food to be superb (again), the service almost spotless. Our housekeeper ("Motor-Mouth Melody") had a bit of an issue we never figured out, plus the service in O'Sheehan's restaurant sucked at best. Other than that we enjoyed so much about this ship. Entertainment in the Epic Theater was outstanding and included the Epic Beatles. When they took the stage our second night at sea I though I was looking at the real John Lennon and the real Paul McCartney - they looked that close! Plus a friend of ours, Parker Lawhorne from Sarasota, is a Costume Supervisor on the Epic. Parker went to school with one of Cathy's children for many years and we knew he was on the ship. Looking at the quality of the work he put into productions like "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" made us both wonder why Parker isn't working on Broadway! One day soon I'm sure he will be.
We enjoyed four "Specialty" dining experiences as part of the free packages we were given. These included Moderno, a Brazillian steakhouse (where I ate shrimp), La Cucina, an Italian restaurant where I ate shrimp, Cagney's Steakhouse (where I ate shrimp) and the Japanese Tappenyaki restaurant where, not surprisingly, I ate shrimp. When not in a specialty restaurant we usually had meals in the Taste Restaurant on Deck 5 and in a pinch had dinner (or a lunch) in the Garden Cafe (buffet) on Deck 15.
By far the most entertaining meal we enjoyed was at Teppenyaki, a Japanese hibachi restaurant. Our "fake Japanese chef" (his words) from "South Philly (Philippines) was hilarious and made the experience even more memorable
Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner at Taste Restaurant comes complete with an ocean view - if you arrive early enough to grab an ocean view table!
The Garden Cafe on Deck 15 was the place to go for a bounty of food whether breakfast, lunch or dinner
Entertainment options were almost endless. Cathy found a group of fellow knitters and was usually gone for three hours every morning learning from others how to make her sweaters even better. There was music everywhere and of course the requisite smoke-filled casino that we merely waked through enroute to somewhere else. The Epic also has the famous "Ice Bar" where you dress up in an Arctic parka and drink your drinks from glasses carved from ice.
The walls of the Bliss Lounge will be forever damaged after 13 nights of "Johnny" destroying songs from the stage during karaoke
For us, however, the most entertainment was the nightly karaoke performances in the Bliss Lounge. Every night this guy calling himself "Johnny" would take the stage in the Bliss Lounge and belt out the most horrific karaoke you've ever heard. Honestly! In Sarasota we have a place called Stottlemeyer's where on Monday night they offer up what we call "Shitty Karaoke." However Stottlemeyer's is a professional production compared to how incredibly bad Johnny is! We always drank double shots of every drink we had in the Bliss Lounge - I think because of Johnny!
The Bad Parts of the Trip
Despite all of the great aspects of this cruise and of Norwegian Cruise Line, there were a couple of not-so-good parts. First and foremost was the lousy (damned near atrocious) onboard Internet service. The following letter, that Cathy sent to Norwegian the day after our return from the trip, explains it all.
November 20, 2017
Guest Relations
Norwegian Cruise Line
7665 Corporate Center Drive
Miami, Florida 33126
Re: Reservation Number 32090291
Dear NCL;
My husband and I are Gold Latitude Rewards
members. This
past Saturday we completed a great cruise aboard the Epic on her transatlantic
repositioning journey from Barcelona to Port Canaveral. We look forward to another transatlantic very
soon.
While on board the ship I purchased
your 250 minutes of Internet plan for $125, and my husband and I both paid
$9.99 for the message component of the Norwegian application on our cell
phones. Almost from the first day I had
difficulty connecting to your internet service.
At the same time my husband and I found that messages we sent each other
on the app were taking up to two DAYS to reach each other’s cell phones, and
that included when the phones were lying next to each other in our stateroom!
Because I am an IT professional I made
double-sure that each time I attempted to use the Internet I logged out after being
online. In spite of my cautious
approach, twice I discovered that your system had not logged me out, and all of
my available minutes had been used – even though I did not use them. I informed the internet manager on board who
agreed that the issue was NCL’s problem not something I had done wrong. Your manager immediately reinstated the
missing 150 minutes. Imagine my shock and disgust when I checked my onboard
account and found a $7.50 customer service charge for adding back minutes that
were lost because of the inefficiency of your system! That was not something I should have been
charged for – it was your mistake and your responsibility to make it right.
Each time I brought up the issue of
inadequate internet performance with your onboard manager I was told to “use it
overnight when fewer people are on the system.”
I don’t know about you but I prefer to sleep overnight, not spend the
night awake trying to use a service I paid to access 24 hours a day.
During our penultimate day on the ship,
your system once again showed that I had not logged out (when I had). I captured screen shots on my cell phone as
proof that the remaining 150 minutes were exhausted. Rather than standing in
the interminably long line of other travelers at the internet desk, I just
resigned myself to the fact that I had wasted a lot of money on your internet
service and decided not to fight it any longer, or pay more fees to have the minutes
restored.
One thing this debacle taught me was
that I will never again waste my money paying for onboard internet that
obviously does not work. The same is
true for my husband and I using your onboard cell phone application. Granted $9.99 is not a lot of money. However, it’s the principle involved here –
we purchased a service that your system is too inadequate to properly deliver. This was a major lesson learned for future
cruises on Norwegian no matter if it’s a 3-night trip on the Sky to Nassau or a
15-day Panama Canal cruise. We will simply wait to use WiFi in each port
visited.
I sincerely hope you can fix this
problem for your sake because there were a lot of very upset guests on the Epic
who experienced the same shoddy service and heard the same excuses.
The other annoying part of the trip was smokers. The rules for the ship explicitly state that guests cannot smoke on the balconies. In fact I think the only place they can infect others with second-hand smoke is in the casino. However not a day went by I sat on our balcony and inhaled smoke from some uncaring guest upwind from our stateroom. I'm not sure how Norwegian can catch and censure guests who break the rules - maybe smoke detectors in each room are the answer - however something needs to be done to eliminate the health hazard to non-smokers posed by those who want to fill the air with carcinogens.
The Ugly Part of the Trip
Anyone who has participated in a cruise knows about the silly drill we all go through before departure where we spend 45 minutes learning how to put on a life jacket. Cruisers also are aware of the usual backlash that happens at the end of the cruise when we all attempt to exit the ship. However nothing, absolutely nothing, can match the clusterfuck we experienced trying to exit the Norwegian Epic once it docked in Port Canaveral. Rather than rehash it I'll simply post the letter I wrote to Norwegian Guest Services.
November
20, 2017
Guest Relations
Norwegian Cruise Line
7665 Corporate Center Drive
Miami, Florida 33126
Re: Reservation Number 32090291
Dear NCL;
My wife and I are Gold
Latitude Rewards members. This past Saturday we completed a great
cruise aboard the Epic on her transatlantic repositioning journey from
Barcelona to Port Canaveral. At least
the cruise was great until we encountered the debacle of disembarking in Port
Canaveral.
Rather than doing the
“Easy Walk Off”, we chose to let you handle our luggage, and we chose the
“Green” zone for a 9:00 a.m. departure. Things
started to go downhill early when at 8:30 our housekeeper Melody (Deck 10,
Forward, Starboard) was miffed that we were still our stateroom and were impeding
her ability to make up the room for new guests boarding for the ship’s next
cruise departing that afternoon, despite information we had from Norwegian
saying we could remain in our rooms until 9:30.
To assuage her concerns,
we immediately left our stateroom and assembled outside the Bliss Lounge at
8:45 a.m. There we noticed a humongous line of Easy Walk Off guests who were
not having a very easy time walking off the ship. We were directed to wait in the Bliss Lounge
where we sat until 9:45 a.m. before the 9:00 a.m. Green Zone was called. When we reached the security checkpoint just
before stepping off the ship, we were told that “because of Immigration and
Customs” we would have to wait “a few minutes” before we could exit the
ship. “A few minutes” began at 9:50 a.m.
– after standing in the hot sun with no water available, we finally stepped off
the ship at 10:45, only 1 hour 45 minutes after we were supposed to originally
depart. Meanwhile there were still tons
of guests onboard who had later departure times than we had, and they likely
were as upset as we were with this debacle.
Once in the Customs area
we were told by an immigration officer that the hold up was because “Norwegian
let too many guests off the ship at once and that immigration had insufficient
personnel.” Thus, nobody accepted
responsibility for this mess and instead the two major parties (you and
Customs) passed the buck to each other. After
standing in line for what seemed like ages, we FINALLY reached a Customs agent
at 12:05 p.m., a mere 3 hours and 5 minutes after we were supposed to
originally depart the ship and be on our way home.
Whomever is to blame for
this mess needs some immediate people management training. There simply has to be a more efficient way
to disembark a ship load of passengers.
Don’t you have some systems engineers on staff who can identify
passenger flow problems and find ways to eliminate what happened in Port
Canaveral yesterday? I can imagine the
rage felt by some travelers who had to get on a bus or grab a rental car to
make a flight out of Orlando in early afternoon. If they were in the “Green Zone” with us and
had planned a 9:00 a.m. departure to catch a 1:00 p.m. flight they were SOL and
I would imagine you are receiving a ship-load of angry comments from those
travelers.
Its frustrating enough
that we have to endure the ridiculous “safety demonstration” on entering the
ship the first day where we spend 45 minutes learning how to attach a life vest
(by the way after 13 cruises I STILL do not know how to board a life
boat!). Its beyond annoying to have to
endure what a ship load of passengers experienced exiting the Epic yesterday in
Port Canaveral. NCL management and the
people on the ship responsible should be ashamed of themselves.
Summary
I had not been on a cruise until Cathy and I sailed to Grand Turk aboard the Carnival Victory in October 2013. The Transatlantic cruise we just completed aboard the Epic is my 13th cruise and our second Transatlantic. We both decided that Norwegian was our preferred cruise line after spending 14 days aboard the Norwegian Star on her repositioning cruise from Copenhagen to Miami in October 2014. I still think the Star is the best ship in the Norwegian fleet; Cathy has fallen in love with the Epic.
There were a few negatives about this trip but they were surpassed by so many positives its almost impossible to count. At the conclusion of this cruise we now both have Gold status in the Norwegian Latitude Rewards program and are only 13 nights short of Platinum status. Thirteen nights is a simple Transatlantic crossing and right now we plan to do one from Miami to Rome (15 days) in April 2019. Norwegian offered an onboard opportunity to purchase $1000 worth of deposits for future cruises, and receive $500 in onboard credits for the cruise we were on. It didn't require a major in math to determine this was a great deal so now we have $1000 worth of deposits collecting dust in our Latitude Rewards accounts. Something tells me those dollars won't be collecting dust for long.
I used to scoff at people who participated in cruises until I took part in my first cruise. Now I am hooked and can't wait until we board another ship, and preferably one headed south. If you haven't been on cruise, make sure you do so soon. If you have been, then make plans to return to a ship sooner rather than later. If you are a wise and frugal traveler, make that cruise reservation on Norwegian Cruise Line. You'll be a happy cruiser when you do.
The only thing I do not like about cruises is putting everything behind you at the trip's conclusion.
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