This was our 13th cruise, second time on the Grand. We were wanting to sail on her before she left Galveston. I am 49 and my husband 52.. we did not travel with any children.

We drove to Galveston the Friday before and stayed at the Hotel Galvez. We liked the idea of their stay-n-park. Note: if you are planning on driving to Galveston, plan on getting through Houston before 3pm!! We did not and spent over an hour and a half getting to I45 South. Once we got through Houston, traffic was not bad. All in all from Austin it took us about 4&1/2 hours to the hotel. The weather was nasty when we got to Galveston, but had seen the forecast and knew we would wake up to better weather the next day. The hotel is wonderful, I highly recommend staying there pre-cruise.

Sure enough, the next morning brought much better weather, although, it was a little cool. Forgot to bring my husband a jacket... oops! We had signed up for the 1230 shuttle to the port. We had breakfast and noticed Princess reps in the lobby, they told me we could check in there.. so I got all our docs and checked in. They gave us a pink piece of paper and told us to show it in line. We got downstairs at 1145 to check our bags in the lobby and the driver said they had been paging us and there was room on the shuttle leaving then... we got on, got to the pier at 1210, showed our pink paper to the Princess rep at the security line and the next thing we knew we were whisked away in a separate line in front of all the others waiting in line. We had booked a full Suite. We cleared security and were whisked in a private room where another rep gave us our sail and sign cards and personally escorted us past the photographers to the ship. From the time we left the hotel until we walked into our cabin was about 35 minutes. This was a record for us. We dropped off our carry ons and went to check out the ship. We returned to our cabin at 130pm and ALL our luggage was there. Read more