PenguinLife

I can't help on price, but do want to comment that the spa onboard offers discounts off and on through the cruise, including something like 50% off on port days which include departure day.

I can't comment on the specific cabin (we were a few cabins forward of there on Emerald 3-4 years ago), but it is a great location, love those big Caribe deck balconies, they are half covered and twice the size of the balconies on the higher decks.

Also includes hand made shakes and malts on ships with ice cream stands

If you are sailing out of the Houston Cruise terminal in La Porte (not port of Galveston, Carnival, RCI, etc dock Galveston about 25 miles as the crow flies from the Houston cruise terminal) where Princess currently docks (and will until next summer), the commute is about 45 minutes to IAH and about 20-35 to Hobby (HOU) in typical / favorable traffic conditions. The real problem though it the potential of fog in Galveston bay which can often cause the ship to be several hours late docking. Fog is most prone to happen Feb - April, but can happen any time air from a cold front meets the warm water of Galveston bay. This fog will usually burn off by mid morning allowing ships that were scheduled to dock at 7 am to make it to the port before noon. There are of course always rare exceptions to this.

p.s. personally I would not book anything much before 4 pm departing IAH

There is a wide range of needs for "assisted living" many elderly people just need someone around to do those daily household tasks that they can't do anymore, but are otherwise healthy and don't have any advanced medical needs. And while I guess I can see an appeal to it, I think certain practical matters would likely get in the way as it seems one would still need a "home base" to operate from, somewhere to have a permanent mailing address, and a place to keep things beyond what you can carry from cabin to cabin on a cruise ship..

It looks like this is a 5 night cruise with 2 half day port days in the same tender port (in port 24 hours 1pm-1pm) so that does make it a little more manageable. Hopefully there will be some place in port where he could eat, and worst case he may be stuck with only fruits on the two sea days.

South Florida is about the last place I would pick to try and have a sample of American culture. You have Ft. Lauderdale beach area, which someone I once new that worked there always referred to as Lala-Land where people driving Ferrari's are common, but go just a few miles inland (or even a few spots near the coast) and you get into some extremely high crime areas where you would likely be killed if caught stopped in a Ferrari or at the least have a very unpleasant day. Then of course you have the Cuban culture in the Miami area, and the swamps of the everglades once you get more inland. So judging the U.S. based upon any one sample you are likely to have in your limited time would be a bit like judging England based on watching either the tv show "The only was is essex" or perhaps "The Vicar of Dibley" if you picked some spots inland near the everglades.

Ike

We always pack a few all in one detergent and dryer sheets in a zip lock bag in our luggage, one nice thing about them is there is no liquid to potentially spill and they take up little space. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/january/home-garden/purex-3-in-1/overview/purex-3-in-1-ov.htm

Are the perks of the reward system really worth it anyway,

sail with them a second time and get a small % discount and a smaller deposit option

sail with them 4 or 5 times, and get a 50% discount off travel insurance, sail with them

5-6 times and get to skip the long line to board, or at least to sit in the waiting area to board

15 times and you get priority tender access

Whats the big deal, sure maybe the skipping in line would be nice, we are 1 day away from Platinum on Carnival and have not been on a Carnival ship in 3-4 years, and getting to Platinum is not a big incentive to book another Carnival cruise, much the same goes with Princess. We book cruises based on where they are going and if the timing fits our schedule first, and which is the best value, then we give preference to the lines we like. So sure we like Princess we also like Holland America and we will even tolerate Carnival if its a deal, but when it comes to loyalty clubs does it really matter since all of the above are owned by the same parent company and they shuffle their loyalty programs around to compete against themselves.

Ooops, I guess referring to people with the name of the political party that was in power in Germany from the early 1930's through mid 1944 is a bad word around here.

The real problem last year was during the debarkation which was a mess in every way, but was made worse by the escalator ****'s the port provided that made sure everyone trying to go down the escalators were spaced properly and had free hands for the handrail while dealing with luggage. This caused a major traffic backup as they forced so many people with what they determined were too many bags, to be divert to the limited number of elevators which blocked access to the escalators, and backed up the line to the gangway. Even with all this work by the escalator ****'s they still were not controlling the problem of the line at the base of the escalator backing up leaving the people stepping off the escalator with no place to go and piling up on each other.

PenguinLife, we will be on CB out of Houston end January. we have booked transfers thru Princess. I'm assuming this means they will take our baggage to ship. we won't have to carry them through all the crazy sounding lines you spoke of.[emoji10]

I suspect so, though even with the drive up customers the majority of luggage is handed off at the curb, we still always have a carry on or two with medications, etc. The luggage problem seems to be more a carry off than a carry on one as you must leave your handled baggage outside your cabin door by midnight the night before docking. Or those doing an express bebarking carrying all their own bags.

Hi, I am glad to see this thread as we just booked an aft facing balcony on the Caribbean Princess for the week before christmas week. We are about 3 hours drive time to the Houston Cruise terminal, and have sailed out of it once before in Nov of 2014 on Emerald Princess.

Is it (Houston Cruise Terminal) as bad as everyone says, the short answer is YES, but since we are in driving distance it does not bother us as much. Who ever designed the Houston Cruise terminal is probably great at designing regional airports in warm / tropical locations, but has no clue how to design a cruise terminal where you get a rapid influx of people in just a few hours going both ways. Entering parking traffics loops back over the exiting parking, and then back over the entering again, and foot traffic is not much better as once you clear security, the line to the bank of check in agents loops across the post check in waiting to board seating area, which then bottle necks at the escalators up to the gangway level. (these same escalators are a bottle neck coming back as they don't allow much luggage on them) Oh don't forget the high narrow modern looking canopies over the outdoor sidewalk area that does nothing to stop blowing rain, and not enough que area indoors prior to the security check point. When we were there it did not help that the previous cruise was the TA and first time for the ship to be at this port. Boarding was delayed by about 2.5 hours, then we were 5 hours late leaving port due to an early season cold front. There is a narrow 3-4 mile long channel from the cruise terminal out to the main ship channel that runs east/west which gets shut down by strong cross winds. We had 6 or 7 tugs helping us out to the main ship channel with 30+ mph cross winds, I watched most of the operation from our starboard (south) side balcony cabin, at one I was worried we would run aground when we had a prolonged gust and the tugs had their engines revved up full and were still being blown back into the channel markers. Once we made the south turn into the main ship channel the tugs left us and it was smooth sailing the 30 miles to the gulf. Returning 5 days later was almost as much of a mess, we were delayed a couple of hours due to fog, but this did not explain our nearly 5 hour delay getting off the ship, which was a complete disorganized mess where they failed to call groups over the PA system, confused which groups should be in which lounges, etc.

Reney, I was thinking the same thing

Now that is what I call fine print

One advantage to late seating is no one is rushing you to finish eating.

When I was there a couple of weeks ago it seemed to only be a suggestion to smooth out the boarding process. I feel much of the problem with the Bayport terminal is not its size, but instead is the traffic flow layout, size is also a bit small, but a few modificaiton and the traffic flow could be much better.

Is this kind of weather typical for November in Belize? I'll be on the Emerald sailing Jan. 18, 2015 and Belize is the only port of the 3 the ship stops at that I was really interested in, for cavetubing. Hopefully weather in this part of the Gulf of Mexico will have calmed down by then.

This part of central America (including Roatan) gets the majority of their rainfall between mid October and mid January, so yes it is typical.

I would tend to suggest getting your own transportation to a hotel in Kemah or Seabrook, and see if they have a shuttle to the port. You might check out the Kemah Boardwalk Inn as they have free cruise parking for drive ins, so I suspect have a free port shuttle, and is likely much nicer than anything you will find around IAH. For the IAH area motels, if you plan on having dinner after you arrive or breakfast most do not have on site restaurants and only continental breakfast and there are very few dining options nearby. The only exception I know of with a half way decent dining option is the steak house at the Holiday Inn IAH at JFK and Beltway 8 (Sam Houston Tollway), it is an older but fairly nice Holiday Inn, popular with the small fly in conference crowd. I have a certification class I go to there every 2 years.

Hubby and I prefer the older demographic to the younger. .... For us, a cruise where the average age is 75, we would be overjoyed, as there would likely be less competition for pool and hot tub relaxing, as well as less likelihood of children running about knocking into others. We think of cruising as a treat that we deserve after years of working and we do not wish to have to do battle with other's children.

Being about your age, tending to agree about preferring an on average older demographic, and having experienced such a cruise where the average age was around 75 on board a couple of years ago, I can say that the experience was a bit disconcerting. On that cruise I was probably one of the few people still in my 40's (their may have been a handful in their 30's on whole ship) that were not part of a 3 or even 4 generational family trip, and it was rare to see anyone that was still in their 50's. If you saw someone walking around the ship that did not have gray or obviously colored hair, you automatically assumed crew member, .... Dinner time conversation while interesting in a way, did seem a bit limited in range of topics when everyone else has kids older than you are...., I honestly am not sure the exact average age of the passengers on that cruise, but I will say that my mother is an active 75 years old, and if she were on the cruise she would appear on the young side of average, so I know I am not exaggerating about average age on that cruise, or at least not by much.

I wonder if they gave the passengers any reason for the delay, or left them mostly in the dark like they did when we were onboard 2 weeks ago.

Watching the vessel tracking this morning it looks like Emerald Princess had to slow down / wait at the main ship channel for other traffic to clear the narrow channel into the Bayport terminal. As they were approaching the junction with the channel to the Bayport terminal tracking showed 5 other ships in the narrow channel, 3 outbound and 2 inbound.

We had much the same experience with our first Princess cruise, everyone says it is luck of the draw, we just finished our second Princess cruise last week, it was a shorter cruise, but one with many experienced Princess cruises, and the average age was MUCH younger.

In all fairness last winter was probably the worst winter in 50 years for much of the U.S., and so far this winter is not shaping up much better, with much of SE Texas reporting various record lows the day of or the day after these first 2 Emerald Princess Houston departures this year.

Sorry about cutting my earlier comment short, but I was busy here, and since the topic everyone seems to be concentrating on is the poor design of the Houston cruise terminal I thought I would give my take.

I suspect whoever the architect of the cruise terminal was, had little or no experience designing cruise terminals, and probably based much of their design on layouts for regional airports of similar overall capacities. The problem here is that traffic flow patterns are very different between the two and as a result there are serious issues.

1, vehicle traffic flow for drive in passengers loops past luggage drop off then loops around taking up the left lane for entering vehicles and all entering cars have to pass through 2 toll gates, this may be fine for an airport with traffic spread out, but when you are trying to get 1,000 cars into the lot in 2 hours it does not work so well. Also the exiting cars have to cross the line where the entering cars are backed up. (think spiral loop that crosses itself) prepaying online only speeds the process to a limited degree.

2, Exterior awning are of the high arched variety over the walkways and part of the pickup area, which is great for having an open feeling, and ok for sun shade, but not so great for blowing rain.

3, There is not enough interior queue area prior to the security check points (which have ample number of x-ray / metal detectors if all were manned), which tends to cause the line to spread outdoors under the limited shelter of the awnings mentioned above.

4, once past security the traffic layout for the main ticketing counter and the associated wait seating for ticketed passengers is a similar cross flow spiral mess as the parking.

5, Once boarding starts the next bottle neck is the escalators going up to the small second floor which feeds the skywalk style boarding gantry, the port has a rule that passengers must have a free hand to use the escalator otherwise must use the elevator, which is a big problem for walk off passengers at the end of the cruise.

6, Then there is the channel going out the main ship channel, ship channel traffic, and weather both fog and winds. This narrow channel runs roughly east / west for about 3 miles before connecting with the much larger HSC ship channel (at one point a few years ago part of this was the 10th busiest shipping channel in the world). In the winter months this means you have cruise ships with large sail areas travelling down a narrow channel broadside to the wind when a cold front blows through. This was the main cause of delay for the first two cruises so far this year, although part of the delay was also caused by fog both times in the morning hours when the ship was coming into port, delaying arrival by about 2 hours each time. Availability of tugs to help under adverse wind conditions may also be part of the cause for delays here.

7 In addition to these factors there are a number of human factors going on at this port both on board ship and in the terminal that add to the mess, ranging from poor traffic flow coordination, lack of training and staffing for security check point and possibly the ticketing counter, lack of communication onboard the ship about the state of docking, etc.

Can these things be fixed, some probably can, but this would likely require some investment into the port facilities such as moving and adding more toll gates to the parking lot, widening the entry road, etc.

Having said all that the other regional ports are not without their own flaws