Thanks for taking the time to meet Jeannie and I on the EPIC. I will just add a few of our takes about the cruise. This is based on several Harrah's cruises and several hosted by the Monte Carlo and Palms that we have been on over the past 18 months.
-Delta diverted one of four of our bags, unfortunately for me, it was the one I had all of my cloths in. The bad news is there is no service to the first stop (Costa Maya) so I did not get my cloths until the end of the 4th day. The good news was Joshua, the Harrahs cruise division representative, gave me 5 casino shirts to wear for a few days. The other good news is how nice and effective the EPIC's efforts were in pestering Delta every day and making sure they got it to me asap. They also, sent us Champaign and chocolate strawberries when it did arrive to boot.
-As I recall when talking with the two Harrah's reps accompanying the group, there were about 30 couples from Harrahs's, some on the cruise promotion (like us), some on their 7star cruise and a third category I can't recall. Unfortunately we met almost none of them as only 3 couples showed up at the photo shoot and only one couple plus ourselves showed up at the Harrah's dinner. It was a good time getting to know both Joshua (who does nothing but cruise) and Jennifer a host at Harrah's LV and her husband. A free very nice photo album also with stock picutres of the ship and our sailing date and at the dinner they were all great and I look forward to running into her next time we are at Harrahs.
-We enjoyed Cirque, Blueman and the Legends in Concert shows. They were better than all previous cruises, but still pale in contrast to how spoiled we are seeing all the big shows in LV.
-We have been very luck in the past on cruise ship's casino's but it was not to be this time. We did receive almost $1,200 in ship credited to our final bill for our play which is very generous based on all of our prior cruises.
-We were amazed that so many things were in disrepair on a ship at sea for 7 months. The escalator that Tom mentioned, public sinks and toilets, bill breakers usually didn't break bills, just tickets, many slot machines "out of order" each night, room TV didn't work when I tried to book shows from it or review my bill, etc.
-Drink service in the casino was hit and miss. Some nights fine, others we couldn't get a drink for over an hour even after getting a floor person to try to get a server for us.
-As Tom mentioned, the mini suite was wierd, with the no bathroom as he described. The only twist I can add was we had no tub but a 6 foot plus long shower which was odd since everything else was so squeezed in. I think it must have been built for a long tub, but they only put in the worlds deepest shower.
-For such a large ship, it was small and very easy to get around for us. It may have been where we were located but everything was very close and easy to access.
-Best stop is Roatan, Hond. We loved this island a year ago we we were diverted from an unfriendly scheduled stop to it. We keep thinking of buying a home there, but not too sure about the stability of the goverment, but lots of land avaialable to buy and build on and some built places available for sale at more reasonable costs than most islands.
Dave
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, coachvee@... wrote:
>
> Hi Gang:
> Hedy and I returned from a seven-day Caribbean cruise on NCL's newest
> mega-ship, The Epic, this past Saturday and a number of members of this group
> -- most of them Harrah's players -- have asked me to do a report on the trip
> so I'm going to give it a shot.
