Our Party - Me, wife, daughter (3 years old), son (1 year old), father, mother, brother, grandmother, aunt

Staterooms - 8013: grandmother and aunt 8017: father, mother and daughter 8019: me, wife and son 8025: brother

Day 1 - Embarkation - We arrived in Galveston at 11:30. We had not worked out the parking situation beforehand, but I remembered reading that EZ Cruise and Lighthouse were the highest recommended lots. We went with the latter and were very pleased with them. We were in the terminal at about 11:45, and were on board the ship at about 12:30. There was a rather large crowd waiting to board in the terminal, and we were able to bypass it because our grandmother was in a wheelchair. The gentleman at the parking lot said that the passengers from the previous week's cruise had taken a long time to disembark, so that further delayed the newly-arrived passengers. Regardless, embarking was rather smooth (despite having to wait for them to reprint my son's SetSail pass - the printer for the SetSail passes had been broken and they were trying fix it). Once onboard, we went to the Windjammer (WJ) for lunch. Decent food. Afterward, the staterooms were ready. We went to our room expecting that the crib we had requested would be in there. It was not, and despite several calls to housekeeping, guest relations, etc, we could not get our hands on the crib so our son could take a nap. The crib was delivered at about 4:30, and a nap was futile (our son was ok in spite of that). Our stateroom attendant was Jing. Although she was very sweet and always offering help, we thought she seemed a bit overwhelmed (at one point, she told us that she had 46 staterooms to look after...not sure if that's a lot, but it sure seems like it!!!). That evening we took our kids to early dining. Our waiter was Joseph (don't recall the asst's name, but I'll explain why that is in a sec). Dinner was good. Turned in that evening after an OK first day. Read more