My Very First Cruise to Mexico

Picture this… It’s 2004 and I’m going to go on a cruise to Mexico with two of my college friends from Paris who are studying at Georgia Tech. None of us have ever been on a cruise before. We decide to book a Western Caribbean itinerary to Mexico online using one of those barebones customer service travel agencies. At this point, I had not been to New Orleans in almost 10 years. I had only written directions on how to get to the port. Based on those directions, I couldn’t clearly picture where the Port of New Orleans was located. What could possibly go wrong?

This blog article provides an interesting contrast between cruising then and now. A lot has changed over the years. I would definitely call this an old school cruise, because none of my subsequent cruises were ever like this one.

One of the first things that a travel agent will recommend is to never fly to your cruise on embarkation day. It’s always best to arrive at least the day before and stay in a hotel. Our plan was to drive eight hours from Atlanta and stay for two nights in Slidell, a suburb of New Orleans, in order to explore the area before the cruise. For those on a budget, Slidell has cheaper hotels than New Orleans, and it’s a 30 minute low traffic commute to New Orleans. Our hotel was under $100 per night, but it was a very basic room with two queen beds.

The drive to the hotel was uneventful, and after dropping off our bags, we quickly wanted to see New Orleans.

These are just some of the pictures that we took around New Orleans. On the first night, we saw the New Orleans French Market and then had some Beignets at Cafe Du Monde. The next day, we walked around and explored the sights. A guy told me that if he can guess where my shoes came from, I would owe him $20. Those were probably my Doc Martens that I bought in Seattle, Washington, so it was a safe bet that he wouldn’t be able to guess. Well, he came up with some story about how my shoes came from around the corner and down the street towards him. I think I was nice and gave him $5 for cleaning up my shoes.

For anyone who has ever cruised before, you’re probably really wondering about that embarkation lunch photo with me in the yellow shirt. We ate at a restaurant in the French Quarter at 11:30AM, because we were under the impression that the cruise started at 4PM that day. To play it safe, we thought it would be best to be at the ship no later than 2PM, just in case anything went wrong, similar to getting to an airport a little early for your flight. Keep in mind that the check-in process with the selection of an arrival window didn’t exist back then, and there were no suggestions as to when to arrive at the port, other than you had to check in at least 30 minutes before departure. Today, the deadline is 90 minutes prior to departure, and the arrival windows usually start around 10AM.

So, we looked at the driving directions and ended up following US 90 west out of town until the directions no longer made any sense. Panic began to set in, and we happened to find a Sheriff’s station under an overpass. I asked where the cruise port was located, and they looked very surprised. “The Port of New Orleans is in the French Quarter, what are you doing way out here?” At that point, it was a race to make it to the port in time. It felt like we caught every single red light, but we got there at 3:20PM and I unloaded all of the bags and passengers. I had them start the check-in process while I parked the car. I laugh about it now, but the parking lot where we parked for lunch earlier that day was closer to the port than where I parked my car for the cruise! You might wonder why we didn’t know that we were so close to the port earlier, and it’s because a lot of tall buildings blocked the view of any ships.

Now there was another problem. My friends were citizens of France, and they were not properly checked in. Believe me, I reviewed the instructions many times. I was able to enter our citizenship information, but there was no place to enter any passport information. At the time, I was using the travel agency’s portal to provide all of the check in information. Today, the check in process has been very streamlined and is done directly on Carnival’s website. If you have a good travel agent, they will remind you when and how to check in for your cruise. They can also answer any questions about the best way to get to the port.

We ended up standing in the empty terminal for roughly 30 minutes, while they were working to check us in for the cruise. One of the ship’s officers eventually came to the desk and worked some magic with the computer to let us on to the ship. We crossed the gangway onto the ship with all of our luggage at exactly 4PM. At the same time the horn blew the emergency signal for the muster drill to begin. Here are some pictures of the Holiday that I took during that cruise.

We had just boarded the Holiday and headed straight towards our room on Empress deck 7 aft to drop off luggage and grab our life vests. As we approached the room, the door was wide open, so we went in. Right at that moment, our cabin steward saw us and seemed a little disappointed that the room would be occupied. We had an ocean view guarantee room for three people, and I guess the room assignment was made at the very last minute. On top of all of that, we were one life vest short, so the cabin steward had to run and get another one. We then headed to the muster drill, located in an indoor lounge near the aft of the ship.

This was the only muster drill that I’ve ever been to where you had to bring your life jackets. On top of that, you had to demonstrate that you knew how to properly put one on and fasten the straps. Keep in mind that I had just been through a very stressful situation, and I was not in the right mindset to deal with putting on a life jacket. I figured that I could slide by and nobody would notice. Of course, I got spotted and called out for not having my life jacket on properly. So I was humble and said that I needed some help. They were nice enough to assist me, and the muster drill was soon over.

I simply wanted to go back to the room and lie down for a little bit to relax and unwind. When we got to the room, I got out my blue sail and sign card to open the door, but it didn’t fit into the slot. Again, the cabin steward was right there and told us that we needed to use our room keys. We never got any room keys, so we had to go to guest services to get them. Guest services seemed very surprised that none of us had a room key, but they issued one to each of us. The room key looked like a cross between a plastic card and a computer punch card from the 1970’s. I’ve googled for images of something like this a few times over the years, but nothing similar has ever appeared in any search results. This is a stark difference from the Carnival Celebration, where you tap your sail and sign card to open the door.

I was finally able to relax a little bit and then change clothes for our first meal ever aboard a cruise ship. We were assigned to a round table that fit six people. The other three guests at the table were women from Memphis, TN, and we ended up meeting for lunch and dinner every day. We emailed pictures to each other after the cruise, but have long lost touch. That’s about all that I can remember in detail. Memories tend to fade a bit with each passing year, which is why taking photos of your vacations is so important.

Lately there have been a lot of rumors about the midnight buffet coming back. Of course, these rumors are false. Most cruise lines don’t offer the midnight buffet anymore due to cost saving measures and to eliminate food waste. Here are some photos of what the midnight buffet used to be like.

I believe we had a total of three days at sea with a stop in Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel. We took an excursion to the Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza. We all climbed the Kukulcán pyramid, which has since been closed to public access for several years.

Some pictures of Cozumel. Here we decided to walk around town and not take an excursion. We made it a poor man’s beach day near the port.

Overall, the trip was a success. There were many things about this cruise that were different from any subsequent cruise, such as the vague check in process, life jackets being required at the muster drill, tendering at Cozumel, and the lack of any balcony rooms on the ship. Despite coming close to entirely missing the cruise, I wouldn’t trade these memories for the world! The older ships in Carnival’s fleet definitely have a certain charm about them that the newer ships lack.