Glad you are joining in and watching. We did this one out of New Orleans as we got a much better deal than we could in Galveston at that time. Also we had never cruised down the Mississippi which is something we wanted to do as well.
The drive does suck sometimes we also have cruised out of Mobile and I posted a Thanksgiving one on here.
February will be out of Galveston for us. We typically look for best deal and then we enjoy going on different ships as well.