Parking and Embarkation: We were going to park at EZCruise but the morning of the cruise Galveston had a huge amount of rain. I tried getting to the lot prior to going for the cruise and the streets were over curb deep in water. I called EZCruise and parked at the Port of Galveston, Lot A. It was $10.00 more than the other, but I feel it was money well spent. From the time that I dropped my wife and luggage until we were sitting on the Lido deck eating lunch was 1 hour. We were allowed VIP embarkation since we had paid for a suite.

Cabin: What can I say about this? We had a Category 12 suite on the Upper Deck. We did this because we were celebrating our 30th anniversary. The cabin was absolutely marvelous. Unfortunately, I fear we may be spoiled and if we are able to cruise again, we know we won't be able to afford the suite. It was a great treat to us. Our cabin steward was Parinda, from Thailand and she was a delight! Parinda came by our cabin about an hour after we moved in. She gave us ways to contact her, informed us of her normal work hours, let us know she would be there when we needed her and out of our way the rest of the time. She took excellent care of us and the cabin, provided us with beautiful towel animals each night, and made sure we always had clean towels and ice in the bucket. FYI, you can connect components such as DVD player and Play-stations to the new televisions. They have component and S video hookups on the bottom rear of the flat panel.

Progresso: We took the Dzibilchaltun Mayan Ruin tour through Carnival. It was reasonably priced and gave us peace of mind. The tour was good, and our guides were very funny and knowledgeable. I came away with a much better understanding of how advanced the Mayan civilization was. We did not shop in Progresso or spend any time at the shops on the pier. Read more