Friday, 8/7 My family of 9 travelled from DFW area to New Orleans, leaving at 7:30a driving straight thru, arriving New Orleans around 5:30p. Checked into Drury Inn on Poydras ($109/night with free parking for the week for the cruise, which saved $70 at the terminal). Rooms were nice. Saturday, 8/8 It started raining that morning, so we waited a little bit and then loaded up the cars and two of our crew dropped the rest off and then took the cars back and walked back to meet us (15 mins). We paid the bellman $1/bag (he made a little speech about collecting for his services and waited until he was paid). Embarkation You first enter thru some glass doors, at which point you must show your photo ID and completed Fun Pass. You proceed up the escalator. You are given a health questionnaire to complete while waiting in that line. You go thru security. You proceed to a line according to your cabin deck number. Your passport/photo ID is not needed after this point. The next person you speak with is the actual check-in person, so you need your Fun Pass and the credit card that you used when completing your online Fun Pass. Then you proceed to the spot where they take your Welcome Aboard picture (you can opt to bypass this). You then get in line for your Sail N Sign picture and then you're thru and onto the ship. We started the process at 12:15 and were on the ship at 1:00p. The rooms were ready within 20 minutes of our boarding. We had lunch on the Lido deck. The Mongolian grill was a huge hit with my guys. They have a really spicy dish and a milder one. The French fries were great, as was their chicken nuggets—really good flavor! It felt great to be back on a cruise, and we were excited for the days ahead. We went down to our rooms and started unpacking (I don't recall when luggage arrived, but it wasn't too late.)

Food Breakfast was very good. I very much enjoy a good bowl of oatmeal with butter and brown sugar, and was pleased to see that every other day they alternated between grits and oatmeal. The eggs were very good—on the Lido deck the consistency was very fine (or small, not sure how to describe it) and I very much liked them, but inside they were normal consistency (not sure why the difference, but there was a difference). You could go for a lite breakfast or a full-blown breakfast, and it was nice to have the choice. Lunch was always very good, and the hamburgers were reported to me to be outstanding. Again, the Mongolian grill was a huge hit with my 10-year-old son and my husband. One day, I had a turkey wrap made (at the Pizzeria), so again, it was very nice to have so much variety. Dinners every night were fabulous, with the warm chocolate melting cake being the biggest hit at our table, and ordered every night. My husband each night ordered at least two different entrees, and sometimes seconds of an entrEe. The service was excellent in all aspects, be it casual dining or the dining room.

Spa/Gym I worked out every morning, enjoying the use of a full circuit of machines. (I'm not a gym member—just work out of my home to P90X, so it felt really good to have the use of all the different machines, as well as the treadmills and elliptical.) I have one complaint about the entire cruise, and it comes from the gym department. Several times they misprinted the gym classes on the Capers, and on the last day at sea, they printed a stretching class at 7:00a and an aerobics class at 7:30a. I made it to the gym by 7:08a and knew that I had missed the stretching class, so I just did some circuit work until 7:30a. Well, time gets close and several ladies are there for the class, and we are informed by the exercise instructor (a guy from South Africa) that there was a misprint and there is no aerobics class that morning (he has a Pilates class scheduled for 7:30a which you have to pay $12 for and there were 3-4 ladies signed up). I jokingly inquired if they don't show up, would he lead us in aerobics, but he did not commit. Well, I'm on the elliptical, watching the clock and at 7:45a, no one has shown up for the Pilates class (instructor is still standing around). So, my gripe is that he knew there were 4-5 ladies interested in the aerobics class still in the gym and he could have/should have said he would lead an aerobics class for those ladies that made the effort to be in the gym at that time of day based upon what was printed. That's lazy to me. (Other than that, the entire cruise was fabulous!) On the first day at sea, the spa did some giveaways, and one of them was 50% off of the men's facial/shave. So, I signed my husband up. He did this right before our formal night dinner, and as they got started late (and failed to tell me what time it would get over), we were 30 minutes late for dinner. But, no big deal. Again, he very much enjoyed it. I don't think I would pay full price, though ($95) Read more