First of all, the Houston port has wonderful parking. We arrived early, and to our dismay, the room was already full of people. We got in the long line and waited our turn. Then a message was relayed that embarkation would be delayed due to a "gangway malfunction". To make a long story short, we waited in the "holding room" for 2 hours. When it became full, they set up tents outside where people could wait, The only good point about the 2-hour wait was that our luggage was already delivered to our room.

We found our room in good order, cabin steward polite and friendly, as was most of the staff. As it had been 5 years since our last cruise (more since our last with Princess), we were unprepared for the changes, which were not for the better.

First of all, the food: We recall wonderful meals with too many choices to chose from. This time out, we could hardly find anything to choose. Even the lobster was tough and had no flavor. After 3 or 4 nights of eating salmon, we decided to give it up and just eat upstairs. There at least one could find something, but you had to look. There were far too many ethnic choices and too many sauces on vegetables, etc. The final insult was the "squid ball soup" I am not kidding. They did have some delicious fried shrimp toward the end of the cruise, Hash browns at breakfast were good as well, but I think if I had to choke down those scrambled eggs one more time, I couldn't do it. So we ate mostly carbs, which isn't good either. Read more