CarolynFH

I agree - it’s going to be tight. I’d either book a later flight or have a plan B to implement if you miss it.

Continuing south on the service road from your hotel is an Outback Steakhouse, a Red Lobster, and Mia’s Table which is very popular. If you continue south and take a right at the light onto Research Forest, there’s a host of sit down and fast food places, including Killen’s BBQ and Lama Mediterranean, and more farther along Research Forest. Or if you make a U-turn at the light, there are several places in the shopping center, including Katz’s Deli and Another Broken Egg. IOW, there are many places to choose from!

Which sodas are available on Princess ships? Coca-cola products? Pepsi products? Any zero-sugar products?

You might try calling them, or send an email via the link on the CC website. When DH and I cruised on the Magic in January, we hadn’t cruised with DCL since 1998. He was recognized as Silver when we boarded, I was not, although months earlier when I had logged into the website I was. After the cruise, we didn’t receive an email copy of our folio, so I sent an email and received an email back asking me to call. It turned out that somehow the system had made several profiles for me, even though I used the same email address at all times, so she had to merge all the profiles into one. Then she checked DH’s email address, and he had more than one profile too! She said the system does that sometimes, and given issues with Disney’s IT in other areas, I’m not surprised. So again, you might contact them - maybe they’ve duplicated you too and can merge those other profiles back into your Platinum profile.

There are a number of new and nearly-new hotels in Shenandoah (The Woodlands), south of Conroe. I’d look there.

Yes, our first DCL cruise was on the Magic in 1998. Our next was in January 2024, and we had Silver status for it.

You might like a very small ship like the Admiralty Dream https://www.liveaboard.com/cruise/alaska/admiralty-dream or one of her sister ships. We enjoyed a fantastic voyage aboard her some years ago, watching humpbacks bubblenet feeding and a brown bear teaching her triplet cubs to catch salmon, among other adventures.

Actually, it was a surprise to us to find the bus at the Portland airport, because I had been told by ACL we’d have to make our own way from there to the hotel. It’s been two years, so my memory isn’t clear, but I believe my husband struck up a conversation with someone at baggage claim and found out from him that there was a bus, and IIRC it may have been there to pick up other passengers but agreed to take us (a small group formed via word of mouth). IOW, if ACL says you need to make your own way from airport to their hotel for embarkation, that’s what I’d expect.

My memory is fuzzy, but I think the option to prepay gratuities appeared as an option during the booking/checkout process (as did the option to buy trip insurance through DCL) or as an option shortly after we booked. We booked via the DCL website, BTW, not sure if that makes a difference. The options to prepay gratuities and to buy insurance always showed at the bottom of the screen whenever I checked on our reservation, too, with an indication that we had done so.

We flew from IAH (Houston) into the Portland airport the day before embarkation. On the way home, we flew from Spokane to Denver and then DEN to IAH. There were three of us, so it was less expensive to rent a car and drive to Spokane than it would have been to take ACL’s bus. The ship docked in Clarkston the evening before disembarkation, so we took an Uber that evening to the Lewiston airport to pick up the car, I think due to either the rental car agency’s hours or the ACL bus schedule to the Lewiston airport, or maybe both, and were able to park the car very near the dock. We arrived at the Spokane airport just a few minutes before the ACL bus did.

@websailor and @DaveinCharlotte In April 2022 when we sailed Portland to Clarkston, we planned to take a taxi or rideshare to the Holiday Inn, but when we got to baggage claim we found out the ship had a bus there to take us and our luggage, free of charge. So you might want to check with ACL (and might need to check again as time gets closer). The ship docks directly in back of the hotel - we were excited to see it from our hotel window when we woke up that morning! We simply put our luggage right inside our hotel room door before breakfast, and the staff picked it up and transported it from there to our cabins. All we had to do was walk from a rear exit of the hotel onto the ship. It was very easy and efficient. The most stressful aspect was having Covid testing done that morning, and of course you won’t have that now. The dock in Clarkston is the same - directly in back of the hotel. We didn’t stay at the hotel, so I’m not sure how embarkation works from there.

We cruised Portland to Clarkston in April 2022, and I’ve decided that I’d like to cruise the other way if I get the chance - because I’d like to have a better idea of Lewis and Clark’s experience! The eastbound cruise reverses their path. And I’ll also agree that cruising from the very dry, less scenic Snake River to the much more scenic Columbia River and finally to the Pacific Ocean would be desirable too.

We had Pirate Night on the fourth night of our 5-night cruise on the Magic out of Galveston in January - HTH. And yes, there’s a beach area at the end of the pier. You’ll just want to ride the shuttle from the ship to the land - the pier really is 4 miles long!

I’ve always read that if seasickness might be an issue, midship as low as possible would be the most stable cabin location. Then I look at deck plans, trying not to be directly above or below a theater or dining room, from which noise might enter our cabin.

For our January cruise on the Magic, we prepaid the gratuities so they were included in the amount we paid off prior to sailing. Prepaying made it easier for us to budget, and also we didn’t end up with a large bill at the end of the cruise. When the time came, we gave additional cash tips to certain CMs based on our interactions with them.