PenguinLife

The danger in doing as mentioned and packing it in your bag is the potential of thousands of dollars of fines and potential jail time.

I can't comment on the accommodation, but as to the area around Hobby the area is far from the worst part of Houston, but not what I would call nice either, there are not a lot of dining options that come to mind in the immediate area, mostly fast food. The nearest hotels with dining options within walking distance I can think of would probably be the cluster of hotels and casual dining spots just east of I-45 at Bay Area Blvd (exit 26 I think) between I-45 and Hwy 3 on Bay Area Blvd, this is 10-12 miles south of the airport just off I-45 towards Galveston (about 30 miles from the Galveston cruise terminal). There are 8-9 hotel/motels along this half mile stretch of Bay Area Blvd and probably 15-20 casual dining options, and even more fastish food.

Eltigre don't be too worried about the rain, just pack appropriately, we are doing the same cruise in December.

Apparently the law has been on the books for a long time and previously was only enforced at land border crossing points, but Texas decided to start enforcing it for cruise travel also about a year ago.

In this case it is a question of trade offs for the Caribbean as Hurricane season traditionally runs June 1st - November 30th, then the central American rainy season runs through January. Also many cruise lines only run Caribbean cruises Nov - May before repositioning for summers in Europe or Alaska..

November - January is the rainy season for Roatan, they get something like 75% of their annual rainfall in these 3 months, so this is to be expected. Having said that I spent a week on Roatan in November 7 or 8 years ago and while it did rain almost every day there was also sunshine almost every day for hours at a time. While it is true to expect random showers in the tropics any time of year, the showers on Roatan this time of year tend to last a bit longer than the typical afternoon thermal showers the rest of the year.

Shogun, I have to wonder if some of that may be due to newer immigration laws, also many of these complaints I see, like the shower shampoo dispensers can also be seen as being more environmentaly friendly.

Vote is to put them in something they will be comfortable wearing, if the kid is uncomfortable then it is that much more chance they will be vocal about it and let everyone know they are not happy.

In our experience on other ships, noise is not bad as long as you are a couple of cabins over from the elevators. Overall I think it should be ok, easy access to forward stairs and elevators, but not right on top of them.

I parked with the official port parking once, never again....

Our preferred independent is Galveston Park N Cruise across the street from the port, no shuttle bus, but easy walk and you can drop off luggage before parking, we have also used Lighthouse with mixed feelings about them, mostly the employees gave off a vibe about not being happy to be there.

The thing that gets me also is all the luggage restriction we find with modern air travel, it just becomes a big hassle to pack formal wear that will only be worn for a few hours.

Much the same happened to us on our 5 day aboard Emerald Princess last November out of Bayport, it was the first cruise of the year with the ship arriving from a TA so added coast guard inspection, etc.

It is a dice roll regarding fog that time of year. I will say this much though, we had a weather delay on our cruise out of the Houston Bayport terminal last November both departing and returning. On returning we had standard debarking and cleared custom's at 12:55 pm, Express people started leaving the ship around 11 am, scheduled was 7:30 am. The odd thing about all this is we were less than 2 hours late arriving at the port due to fog, but nearly 4 hours late debarking the ship.

We have done 2 cruises on Princess (3rd will be next month) and 1 on HAL a couple of years ago. In our limited experience the things that were most notable to me were that the crew on HAL are much more interactive with the passengers, the Vista class ships are much smaller than the Grand class with Princess and overall everyone seems a little more concerned with passenger satisfaction. The HAL cruise could have been a disaster due to weather conditions, but the crew did their best to make it enjoyably anyway, even though we missed 2 of our 4 ports of call and experienced 30+ ft seas and 75+ mph winds, one of the things I was most impressed about was the effort the captain and bridge crew went to to make sure they avoided the worst of the conditions during meal times..

Out of those I would probably suggest the Hampton Inn on NASA Rd 1 in Clear Lake, there is also a Hilton on NASA Rd 1, but it is farther down and there is not much else in its immediate area. The Hilton is sort of a highrise hotel in the middle of nowhere and has been there forever, I am not sure, but I would guess it was built in the 1970's.

p.s. I am now not sure about the Hampton Inn on NASA Rd 1, shows up on the Hilton web page, but google says it is permanently closed. Next alternative would probably be the one on Bay Area Blvd in Webster, father away, but more dining options in walking distance.

p.p.s. google steet view shows the Hampton Inn on NASA Rd 1 gone, construction style fence around it and roof collapsed when viewed from the east, looks like probably a fire sometime in the last few months as their were reviews dated 6 months ago. News reports show fire in May.

I am sure you will find much to see and do in and around Houston in your free time before your cruise, but I just wanted to prepare you a bit about Houston. It is an extremely expansive city, which is reinforced by its mostly flat terrain free nature, the greater Houston area is now about 75 miles across east to west and even more north to south in places, and on its west side is home to the widest freeway in the U.S. (the Katy freeway section of Interstate 10) a 20+ mile long section of highway, 26 lanes across at its widest point. According to the Houston chronicle, "

The Katy Freeway at Beltway 8 is 26 lanes across.

Here's how that breaks down: 12 main lanes (six in each direction), eight feeder lanes and six managed lanes."

If you want to see the Katy Freeway, I don't suggest trying it any time around rush hour.

Driving across Houston on any of the freeways (side note Houston now has a number of E-Z pass only toll roads, so if you rent a car you may want to opt for the E-Z toll option for the car) away from downtown you will feel like you are on an ever repeating expanse of urban sprawl, as you pass clusters of auto dealerships, office complexes, malls, and national chain dining options over and over again. Having said that here are a few things to see and do within fairly close proximity to the Bayport cruise terminal

The Johnson Space Center Museum and tour of NASA's Johnson Space center, this is about 10-15 miles from the port on surface streets, The museum was privatized about 20 years ago, and personally I feel it is a bit over priced for what you get, they even charge $6 for parking, then $24 per head at the door, but is still something worth seeing if it is your first trip to the U.S.

If the weather is nice during your visit and you enjoy historical spots, you should also check out the San Jacinto Monumnent / battleground as well as visit the Battleship Texas (just across the road), this is also about 10-15 miles from the Bayport terminal, The Texas is the only surviving Dreadnaught class battleship in the world, was built in 1912, and saw service in both world wars.

If you want to explore out a little farther, I would suggest driving down to Galveston (25 miles south of the Space Center), and while there go to Moody Gardens, a well kept secret with a world class indoor aquarium, also indoor tropical greenhouse, Imax theater and even a steamship style paddle boat ride that travels up and down the bayou along the intracoastal waterway. Cost for a day pas is $60 per person, this covers all the attractions including the Imax movie, it is easy so spend 3 -5 hours here and still not see everything, tickets are also available for the individual attractions, If you only have time to do one part I would suggest the Aquarium.

While there if you are interested in aviation you may want to go next door to the Lonestar flight museum, or if you have kids with you and need something a little more energetic to do there is also the Schlitterbahn Galveston water park, all 3 are within walking distance of each other.

We did the Crab Shack last November on our 5 day aboard Emerald Princess out of Houston, it was offered 2 nights in a row, first night we made reservations and it was only moderately busy (50-60% seating capacity), service was extremely slow, nearly an hour to get our food. At best I rated the seafood as ok, lots of it, but seasoning was lacking, however we do live in south Louisiana and can get better seafood within walking distance of our house. The second night they were so slow they were begging people to walk in making announcements in the evening on the PA system.

Be careful if you just decide to book on price near NASA as there are some cheap motels in the area in less than desirable areas (the type with bulletproof glass in the lobbies).

We probably need a bit more information like how are you getting to there, are you flying into Houston, which airport IAH / Bush or HOU / Hobby, how do you plan to get to the hotel, ....

We are booked into one of the aft facing balcony cabins on deck 9 (Dolphin deck) next month and from my research you may want to also consider D-732 and D-733 as an alternative. These are side facing balcony cabins at the aft of the ship, from what I have read about them they were designed as handicap accessible cabins but the doors will not open wide enough for handicap access so are not marked as such. Princess shows that the beds can not be put together as a queen, however a recent thread shows photos of one of these cabins arranged with the beds set as a queen, it is just a tight squeeze to get past the corner of the foot of the bed, possibly a good trade off for larger overall space. If you opt for it I would take print outs of the photo of the cabin in queen mode in case the cabin steward says it can't be done.

Ifihadaboat: It was perfect timing here reading your last post, as my macaw just started screaming that she wanted breakfast as I read it.

Houston is not much of a walking town, but if I had to pick an area between HOU (Hobby airport on the southside, not IAH / Bush which is on the north side) and galveston, about 15-20 minutes from the airport I would likely suggest one of the motels / hotels on Bay Area Blvd just off I-45 between I-45 and Hwy 3 / Galveston Rd (Exit 25 I think, across I-45 from Baybrook Mall). There ae a number of choices along here, Holiday Inn Webster, Best Western Webster, La Quinta, etc. There are also numerous casual dining establishments along this roughly half mile stretch of Bay Area Blvd, from Taco Cabana to Red Lobster, or Outback steakhouse, even a few local places.. If you decide to stay in this area I would suggest scouting out exact dining choice on google maps before booking motel to avoid having to cross 8 lanes of traffic on Bay Area Blvd.

Ike

One suggestion if planning on spending a weekend night in Enis or Corsicana in April - May, get hotel reservations early as the Scarborough Renfest will be going on in Waxahachie

ps we have used Galveston park and cruise across the street from the cruise terminal and like them. Their lot is long and narrow so they have a golf cart to shuttle people and luggage to the corner of the lot closest to the ship. You mention wheel chair, so I thought I should mention the sidewalks around there were in bad shape last time used them a couple of years ago. Having said that there is probably only 50-75 ft of sidewalk to deal with near the parking lot and they may have been repaired since then.

I have sailed out of Galveston 5 times and Bayport once (second time will be next month) and feel that the traffic flow getting into and out of the terminals is about the same. Galveston has issues dealing with the fairly narrow space they have to work with between the dock and the major street that runs parallel to it, by contrast the Bayport site is on a larger plot of land but has a poor layout. In my opinion whoever designed the Bayport cruise terminal probably never designed a cruise terminal before, but did have experience designing modern regional airports, as it has that feel that newer smaller airports have with the circle through drop off and loop back to a central parking lot. The problem is with a cruise terminal you must accommodate a large number of people entering and leaving at once and a traffic flow pattern that loops back over itself does not do this well.

Transportation cost will depend on the size of your party, with three a shuttle bus may be a little cheaper than a taxi, but not much. For hotels near IAH, I generally suggest the Holiday Inn at JFK and Beltway 8 / Sam Houston Parkway just south of IAH unlike most of the other airport hotels it has a real restaurant on site (southwest steakhouse style) with fairly good food, they also serve a real breakfast. It is an older but well maintained, and remodelled Holiday Inn, I have been going to a certification renewal seminar that has been held in one of their meeting rooms every 2-3 year since 2004, plus other business trips to the area and have never had any problems with them.