I could have not asked for a better way to spend my 40th birthday. My partner and I went on this cruise with our best friends. This was our first cruise so I went into this not know what to expect and with an open mind. My best friends had been on several cruises previously including NCL.

We arrived in New Orleans during the NBA All Star weekend. We originally booked the Royal St. Charles Hotel but when we arrived we were informed there was an issue on one of the floors and we were transferred to their sister hotel the Queen and Crescent. The hotel room was nice and roomy. On vacation to me a hotel room is where you sleep and we were here for one night. I would stay at this hotel again as it is in the French Quarter and close to Bourbon Street and Harrahs Casino. We had lunch at Mothers which was an experience and highly recommended. It is an institution and the food was good. Dinner was at Dickey Brennans and this was wonderful.

Sunday 2.17.08: We took a 10 minute taxi ride to the port and arrived at the port by 11:45. Our bags were quickly taken and we headed inside to start the process. Our friends breezed through the check in and boarding process since they were latitude members and were on the ship in less than 30 minutes. From the time my partner and I checked in to the time we set foot on the Spirit was about 1 hour. We did not find this bad at all. We ordered drinks, signed up for an excursion and then went to lunch. We did find out they had a special on wine. Buy six bottles and the 7th bottle was free. Since 3 of us drink wine with dinner we took up this offer. Read more