Grand Princess Review
Grand Princess - Central America/Panama Canal
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Embarkation: We live in Idaho so flew into Houston the day before embarkation. My DW and I are professionals in our early 50's and we invited her Father to come along on the trip. He is a very active 83 year old who still plays tennis regularly.
I had pre-arranged transportation to Galveston with Galveston Limo. They're on the web and did a great job for us. Nothing fancy, but they got us there and back. I paid up front with our card and they had us on the list both ways. We stayed at the Hilton and took a taxi over to the ship as we didn't want to wait for an available shuttle. We went over to the terminal at 10:00 a.m., and dropped off our luggage with the porters. They are the guys in the Hawaiian shirts with the luggage carts. Just grab a guy, give him your luggage and a few bucks. We then spent the morning on the strand shopping and looking at the ship (drooling). The taxi was 26.00, and the driver said that this was a good time to come over as later in the morning the drop-off line is much longer. He said that one group sat in the taxi for quite a while and ended up with a much larger fee of over 50.00.
The terminal was very busy unloading the Grand and another ship that was in port so we didn't hang around there any longer than we had to. The Strand was a good time, we got some last minute stuff for the ship and went back to board about 1:30. The terminal was very busy, but there was a lot of counter help and we signed documents, showed our passports and were in line for customs after about 10 minutes. The customs line took about 20 minutes and we were on the ship. Of course lunch was being served in the Horizon Court and our room was ready (Baja 609), and our luggage was already there. I really recommend dropping the luggage off early, and coming back later to board. The atmosphere of the strand and nearby shopping is a lot of fun with cruisers getting ready for the "big trip" We didn't leave port until almost dark which was a couple of hours later than the advertised departure. We watched them load luggage until the very end. I'm sure some didn't get their luggage until we were well out of port.