PenguinLife

A lot depends on if you want some things to see and do in the area, or if you are just wanting a place to stay for the evening before the cruise with enough stuff around it to stretch your legs and kill a couple of hours. If the latter I suggest one of the hotels near the Kemah boardwalk, there are several dining options at or very near the boardwalk, 2 or 3 hotels within easy walking distance (one on site, 2 or 3 within a 5 minute walk). Most of the hotel options in Kemah or Seabrook are good, just depends on how nice you are looking for. Note the better dining options are away from the boardwalk itself (the boardwalk is a commercial enterprise and all the dining there are major chains (Landry's ,Buba Gump, etc.) If you want local try T-Bone Toms steakhouse, Tookies Burgers (across the bridge in Seabrook near the light at NASA rd 1)

We used lighthouse once a couple of years ago, when our usual, Galveston Park N Cruise was full, overall our experience was not bad, but they did seem a bit terse. Do they still have the old transit bus for a shuttle, the one that looks like it should have retired 40 years ago?

My advice is stay away from the official port parking, the first time we cruised out of Galveston we used the port parking, nearly an hour of circling through parking lots (3 lots, crossing 2 side streets) at walking speed before being directed to a parking space, but I guess they had to have a reason to employ all those flag wavers. Since then when sailing out of Galveston we have used one of the commercial lots, some have shuttle buses that allow luggage so you don't have to drive through luggage drop off before parking. Our favorite is Galveston Park N cruise, no shuttle bus, just an on site golf cart, but they are just across the street from the port, one wide street to cross and you are there, 2 minute walk at most.

The Horizon Court buffet has an omelet station at breakfast and you can ask for any combination of available ingredients you want.

Yes, but those omelets are usually cooked way to fast to get a good omelet

The same goes if you want a different type of cheese on your omlet, ...

It just depends on what you want, all 4 are fairly new ships, built within about the last 5 years, 3 are large 3,500 - 4,000 passenger ships then there is the Oasis of the Sea which when introduced brought cruising to a whole new scale carrying over 6,000 passengers. Personally I tend to like smaller ships (by todays standards) with 2,000 - 3,000 passengers, as the big ones just seem way too impersonal. With the 2000-3000 passenger ships it seems you get to know your fellow passengers a bit better even on a 5-7 day cruise, in this regard the smaller the better. By contrast as passenger counts get higher it gets harder to get to any personal connection with the fellow passengers, instead it is just a sea of strangers. A few years ago by chance we were on a cruise with a couple of my wife's cousins (they live about 200 miles from us, and we typically only see them at family reunions, etc.), this was aboard the Carnival magic with over 4,600 passengers aboard, over the course of a week on board we only ran into them a total of 3 times. Additionally with the larger ships the whole process of just getting on and off the ships at destination ports seems to be a challenges even with multiple boarding gangways as the ships themselves often overwhelm the capacity of the docks to handle that many people at once. So given all this I would reluctantly pick the Regal Princess with a passenger capacity of 3500, and one of the largest ships in the Princess fleet.

Yeah......post cruise depression is real, and only treatable by booking another cruise. Don't want to go back to work? Can't understand why your fridge isn't stocked with ready-made salads on decorative plates? Bewildered by that pile of laundry or a un-made bed? Confounded by a day without a Patter laying out your choices? Yep- you've got post-cruise depression! See your TA ASAP!

Also the scenery never changes outside the bedroom window at home

Nina, when did this policy go into effect, we had a free upgrade last Nov from obstructed ocean view to balcony

The mistake I tend to see across the various cruise lines we have been on is they almost all try to come up with large audience events crammed into a small venue. This includes the ice and fruit carving which are often so well attended that you need a pair of binoculars to see what is going on. Instead they need to repeat these sort of things to smaller crowds, and have other daytime entertainment particularly on sea days, many people are foodies these days, so perhaps food prep demonstrations in horizon court during the afternoon "closed" hours with bite size samples. I for one would love to see an afternoon sampler in Horizon court with foods from the various home countries of the galley staff. Much the same can be done in other entertainment venues, there is no reason they could not do a light and cheerful afternoon name that tune in the piano bar, or even a trivia game...

I for on hope that Princess reconsiders this potential change and brings it back to all ships, better yet bring it back as a daily item.

Does anyone know which dining rooms are currently being used for anytime dining on Caribbean Princess and at what time each one opens if they open at staggered times?

I know this is not exactly recent, but when we were aboard Emerald Princess last November I don't recall seeing anything that seemed particularly worn, other than issues with some of the elevator buttons (it was an ongoing joke with the passengers about having to push the elevator button 2-3 times to get them to register) and part of the Movies Under the Stars screen, which will hopefully be updated to HD when in dry dock..

If you want a big covered balcony check out the message threads and photos on E733

The thing that the cruise lines need to understand with this whole idea of staggered boarding is that many passengers have little control over the exact time they will arrive at the cruise terminal. They may be flying in and face delays, may be driving to the port from some distance and don't want to risk being late due to being stuck in traffic, etc. The only ones that it really may work for are those that spend the night or live near the port, which is often a minority of the passengers, particularly when you exclude those with cruise transfers.

Had a free upgrade last November from obstructed ocean view to Baha Balcony on a 5 day to Mexico (Cozumel and Progresso).

You should also be aware that as of last year Texas now has a tax collection station set up just after clearing customs to collect taxes as people disembark the ship with their "duty free" alcohol bought in Mexico.

Just a couple of points on the food topic, lunch is served in the MDR until (I think) 1 pm on boarding day, but tends not to be advertised. Lunch is also generally served in one of the MDR's on sea days, but usually not port days, Lunch MDR menus change daily. The princess dinner menu is 2 pages, one changes items, one is the every day items, there is some talk online of some changes to the menu coming over the next few months, so you may want to check back closer to your cruise in March on this topic.

Since you mention being Foodies, in my opinion the best food on board excluding the speciality dining venues can be found in the MDR breakfast, lunch and dinner, with some good treats and snacks found at the International Cafe (although some items are a bit hit or miss), room service chips and dip, fruit plates, etc. are also good and are sized by the number of people eating.

Ike

Free upgrades do still happen, we had one last November where we were upgraded from a specific (minimally) obstructed ocean view, to a balcony cabin.

JEM4205, can you tell us what model scanner you use, and what frequency ranges you have found being used?

My only comment is when it comes to formal wear make sure you pack all the accessory items, (cuff links, dress socks, shoes, etc.)

One does not have to be elderly to break a leg, or even get the flu at the wrong time.

We had one on a Carnival cruise a few years ago out of Galveston, passenger was part of a large wedding party onboard and was in a car accident on the way to the ship, boarded anyway and waited until we cast off to seek medical attention. It was determined that the passenger had internal bleeding while we were still within sight of land at the end of the ship channel (about 30-40 minutes from leaving port), so the ship pulled off to the side of the channel with the other waiting ships and a coast guard helicopter was sent out to rescue the passenger. In our case the process went VERY slow, the helicopter arrived about 30 minutes later just at sunset, circled the ship for nearly 40 minutes before starting the series of lowering crew members and basket down and lifting the injured person and a companion off the ship. Total time was over 2 hours for the process, much slower than is shown on TV. Each basket hoist to and from the helicopter was interrupted by the helicopter moving out over the water and hovering for 5-10 minutes. I would have thought they would want to do things quick before it got dark, but it was pitch black out by the time the helicopter finally departed.

I suspect Newfoundland is a lot more populated / developed than the passage to Alaska and therefore has better cell coverage.

Ike

p.s. I just looked up the inside passage coverage for AT&T and it is better than I thought from Juneau south inside passage coverage looks to be about 30-50%, but from Juneau north to Anchorage there is almost no covrerage until you get into Anchorage.

Not specifically what you asked, but we were booked into a specific obstructed view on Emerald Princess 11-11-14 and were upgraded to a balcony a couple of weeks before sailing.

For hotels near IAH I suggest the Holiday Inn at the intersection of Beltway 8 / Sam Houston parkway and JFK, it is an older Holiday Inn, but fairly large and has a decent steak house restaurant. For the last 12+ years I have been going there about every 2-3 years for a certification update class that is held in one of their meeting rooms.