We (4 adults and 2 teenage girls, 14 & 18)) left Houston on Saturday morning to drive to New Orleans. We arrived at our hotel, The Renaissance Arts (a Mariott hotel), Saturday afternoon. What a lovely hotel it is, and just a few blocks from the Julia Street Terminal. We did lots of sightseeing (the men mainly at Harrah's, spending more than the rest of us did shopping) and ate dinner at the Voodoo Garden in the Blues Cafe. Not such great food but lots of neat things to see.
The next morning after breakfast at the hotel (which was really good by the way), we drove to the terminal, arriving about 10:30am as the previous cruise passengers were leaving the parking lot and so we got right in with hardly a line! We got to park close also. We had so many bags that we had packed them on top of our Chevy Tahoe and wrapped them up good in plastic and then a plastic tarp (as we had had so much rain!) so it took us a while to get them all down and unwrapped. A nice porter helped the guys do this while we ladies directed them.
Upon entering the terminal, we only had a couple of people ahead of us in the fun pass line and so we quickly were served, got our sail and sign cards and were on our way to the waiting room! They let us board about 11:30 so we didn't have to wait long at all.