The Houston Bayport cruise terminal was new to us but we decided to give it a go for a Thanksgiving family cruise with 4 new cruisers in our group of 8.

We arrived around 10:30-11:00 AM on embarkation day and were surprised by the sheer cold weather we were having. It was surprising that the terminal enforced a rule wherein only passengers in the same cabin as platinum / elite cruisers had preferred boarding privileges with them. Prior to this port, we were all able to board with our Platinum members.

We were onboard by 12:30pm and after eating a nice lunch and attending the muster drill, we were informed by the captain that we would be getting underway in approximately 2 hours due to needing tugboats to guide us out due to high winds which were two hours away. A 6pm departure turned into a 10:30pm departure, which turned into a ??? departure. Eventually we went to bed and awoke in the morning still looking at the Bayport parking lot, which meant we had not left yet! 18 hours later we finally pulled away from the pier, but were informed that we would for sure miss out on Roatan as that was the furthest port from Houston. Instead of heading to Cozumel we headed to Costa Maya for our first port on Tuesday. Due to not having any advance notice for this port we opted to not book any tours, and were sorely disappointed with the port. Read more