Our family of 5 - comprising myself, my girlfriend, her youngest daughter of 13, her oldest daughter of 17 and her oldest daughter's best friend of 18 - were looking forward to this cruise with huge expectations. This cruise was a graduation present for the oldest daughter and as such we were so happy to make it happen and couldn't wait to see her face! This was my first cruise (and the kids) and my girlfriend couldn't wait to see us all enjoy something as cool as this!
1) The drive. Not bad at all! Being from South Central PA, we were less than 4 hours away from Bayonne - an easily doable drive which proved to be smooth for the most part.
2) Arrival - ok... I understand the port is pretty much undergoing that "pull itself from the brink" stage and it is evident that there is much work to do with the port before it reaches any stage of glory... so no need to beat up this point... but it was a madhouse pulling into a "unloading" zone, sucking the bags out of the vehicle so fast that you'd have thought I had hydraulics, and then winding my way all the way back around to get into another vehicle line to get parked in the port lot. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I sat in that line of cars going through 2 booths for over 45 minutes... and the people in the booths sure weren't in a hurry... seemingly taking their time with everything - I couldn't help getting the feeling that they were trying to say "after all, where else ya gonna go buddy?" - they were nice and all and smiled a lot - but SLOW!