This was our first cruise on a small ship. Our previous 4 cruises were with Holland America and Princess. The American Eagle is a new paddle wheeler and we were on it's christening cruise. She holds about 140 passengers and, being new, there are some wrinkles to work out. I suspect many of these can be corrected, some not. First, the average age of the passengers is probably 70-75. Some with walkers or other mobility issues. Why the designers felt one slow elevator was sufficient for so many senior citizens I'll never know. Many were not able to climb 3 or 4 flights of stairs to get to or from their state rooms and the single elevator resulted in long waits for many. Really!

Next issue is the ventilation system. The only way to keep the dampness out of the room is to run the air conditioning constantly. After a while, even down south, it gets too cold in the room. One the AC is off, the moisture in the room builds up quickly and everything gets damp. Even the slider to the veranda has so much condensation on the inside, you can't see out it.

While in Baton Rouge and tied up at the dock, a wicked storm came through with 70 mph winds and tornado warnings. Every room on the port side received water damage as the strong winds pushed rain under the sliding door and wet the rugs. Really wet. It's not easy to dry out carpet so it took about 4 days for that to get corrected. The crew did what they could. This didn't help the moisture issue I'm sure. Read more