My wife and I did this same cruise last year. We found New Orleans fascinating, but were surprised at how little had been done to repair the damage caused by Katrina. The French Quarter is fine, as it was virtually untouched anyway, but if you take the P&O guided tour (highly recommended), the rest of the city is a real eye-opener. There are areas where houses were wiped out with little hope of them ever being rebuilt, wrecked buses and police cars etc. Things may well have improved but I doubt if much progress has been made in the past year. Travelling around, you will notice a yellow line on concrete walls, bridges and so on. That marks the height of the floodwaters in the city, which apparently stayed put for three weeks after the hurricane. The local tour guides really bring it home to you how bad it was.

A point to note. When we arrived, Arcadia was moored at the cruise terminal, which is walkable from the city centre. Overnight our berth was moved to the 'new' cruise terminal which I believe is owned by Princess Cruises. Basically it was a run down dock area a long way from the city centre, so we had to use the free shuttle buses or taxis. It is too far to walk and not a particularly nice area. We had to move to make way for another cruise ship coming in, so it is possible that the move may not be necessary this time. Some passengers who had been out at night, came back to find the ship had moved and had to get a taxi to try and track it down!

Hope this helps.

John