Conquest - 20-27 Oct 2013
Embarkation day: We drove down to Slidell the afternoon before embarkation, feasted on softshell crab, crawfish, and shrimp, got a goodnight's sleep, had breakfast at the hotel, made a last minute trip to Walmart, and headed for New Orleans and the Erato St. terminal, where the Conquest was docked. We arrived at the terminal just after 10 AM, and got in line with all the other cruisers who also had arrived early. After paying the parking fee, we drove up the ramp to the luggage drop off area. Dominick met us, gave us his name and porter #, and took our bags. (A note of caution here: even though he viewed our boarding passes, and assured us he would put the priority stickers on our bags, he didn't, and our bags weren't delivered until after the safety drill. In fact our room steward delivered the final bag around 5:00 PM!) After dropping our bags, we proceeded to the 4th floor parking area and were very fortunate to find a spot right next to the elevator!
We took the elevator to the ground floor where we were directed to the priority line to security and the carry on screeners who are on the 2nd floor. I'm not sure how long the screener had been on the job, but he spent a few minutes breaking the seal on two of our 3 bottles of wine, shaking them, looking at them in the light, and then took them to another, older screener to look at. He looked at me, the bottles, and told the younger one to give them back to me.