Epic Dining

While sailing the Norwegian Epic I had the opportunity to dine in several of the dining venues, with mixed results.

Taste is the more casual of the two main dining rooms.  I had lunch and dinner here with mixed experiences.  I found the staff to be friendly here, but they were hit and miss on the service.  Some servers were very good and on top of things, others would forget to bring things you had asked for.  I did eat with someone who had special dietary requirements and found that the head waitress (or whatever their title is) did try to meet that request.  But I didn't find they were as aggressive about it as they could have been.

Manhattan Room

Manhattan Room is the formal main dining room.  I ate one dinner here.  The staff was very good and quite attentive.

I believe both main dining rooms had the same menu everyday with base items on it.  Then everyday they would have a few special items offered that were local to the region we were in.

Cagney's Steak House has a $25 up charge and from what I can tell offers better choices and cuts of meat as well as also offering Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail.  The food and the service here were better then the main dining rooms, but it was also pretty quite in the restaurant.  I think this is a good choice for the steak lovers out there.  There was also a Moderno Churrascaria a Brazilian meatfest! One of those places where they bring around different types of meat.  I did not eat here, but I heard good things from those who did.

Shanghai's Chinese Restaurant was a disappointment at $15.  I would compare this to a better Chinese restaurant you can find in many places throughout the US.  Except that it had the worst fried rice I've ever had, it was sticky and flavorless.

Teppanyaki at $25 this was similar to going to any other Hibachi place in the US and for a similar price.  But, like every other Hibachi place it was fun experience with good food.  And they had really good green martini's.  I wish I remember the name of it, but I had too many!

O'Sheehans Neighborhood Bar and Grill offers breakfast and then regular food for the rest of the day.  This is a nice spot for a quicker breakfast (without going through a buffet).  They offered a quick breakfast or you could get breakfast to order.  In the afternoon and evening they had a Irish Pub menu - burgers, fish and chips, meatloaf, chicken pot pie...  This was a nice casual place to eat, but after 2 or 3 meals the menu got boring.

The Garden Cafe on the pool deck was, in my experience, above average compared to other shipboard buffets for lunch and dinner.  I rarely encountered a line here, and found a wide variety of food options.  But they had the BEST pretzel breadsticks, I miss those!

I covered the Spiegel Tent Cirque Dreams in a previous post.  I believe they had just changed the menu there and I thought the food was good, but you really go to see Cirque Dreams and not for the food.

Sorry, but I did not get to eat at the French restaurant, the Italian restaurant, noodle place or the sushi place.

Epic Entertainment

Yes, I know the name of this post is cheesy, when you name a ship Epic, you ask for it!

When Norwegian launched the Norwegian Epic the entertainment obviously had to match the name, it had to be epic and I thought they did an excellent job!

I'll start with my only complaint and get it over with.  With so many people on the ship you had to make advanced reservations (pre-boarding or on the first night) for many of the shows if you wanted to guarantee to get in.  However, if you couldn't get a reservation there was usually a standby line, which I hear got everyone in.  This system, while reducing the chaos at these shows, took a lot of the spontaneity out of the cruise entertainment.

On the first night of the cruise I went to see Cirque Dreams.  This is not a Cirque du Soleil show, but its the same type of performance: acrobatics, music, clowns, and in this case - audience participation. I'm not a huge fan of this type of show.  I enjoy it, but I also get a bored after about 45 minutes.  The nice thing about Cirque Dreams is that it's a dinner show so you have a little distraction from the show which helped prevent the boredum from setting in.

Cirque Dreams takes place in a Spiegel Tent, whatever that is, the setting is like a theatre in round.  It has two floors and the seats upstairs are cheaper (there is an additional fee for this dinner and show), I also thought they were better as there are fewer sight line issues and you're not picked for audience participation.  You do need to show up early to get seating, which is especially important if you get the premium seating on the main floor - if you come late you'll end up in the back of the room and you'll miss what is going on in the air during the show.  The food was good, very tasty.  I don't remember what they served, though I know it was a new menu for my cruise, but there was a sampling of different appetizers, main courses and desserts.

Blue Man Group's Theatre

I would recommend Cirque Dreams to anyone who likes Cirque du Soleil types of shows and to anyone who has considered seeing a show like this.  You can't beat the price ($20 or $30) on this cruise to find out if you do enjoy it. 

Next up is Blue Man Group, I had not seen this before and I enjoyed the show.  I'll admit I didn't get the plot of the show, but there were lots of cute and goofy things to keep me entertained.  I know this show isn't loved by all, but for the price (included in your cruise), it's certainly worth seeing.  I hear it's pretty similar to the shows done in the US; however, they do have audience participation.  Consider yourself warned.

Steven Sorrentino as Sonny and Cher

Steven Sorrentino is a Vegas comedian who was on our ship for the summer.  Tickets to his show were particularly hard to get.  I enjoyed his show, I laughed a lot.  His "victims" ranged from the Marx Brothers to famous people in the 1970's so I would say his audience would primarily be for the 40+ crowd from the US.  I know the British didn't get most of his jokes.
There were quite a few things that I did not see - some Spanish Ballet, which I heard was very good.  A puppet show, which I heard you couldn't see the puppets unless you were in the front.  Legends In Concert, which I heard mixed reviews of.  The Second City was not on our ship, they took off for the summer.  I was disappointed by this, they were on my cruise in Hawaii and were very good.

There was a Beatles band, I thought they were very good, but the crowd didn't seem to get into it so the experience wasn't great.

But my favorite entertainment was Howl At the Moon where their motto is "it isn't how well you sing, but how loud."  In case you're wondering it's dueling pianos.  One of the nice things is that there are 3 people so they rotate their breaks and the show never stops!  Maybe I'm a cheesy 35 year old, but I loved just hanging out and singing along.   They took requests and often made funny and entertaining renditions of songs and other times they just did a nice ballad.  Good times!