It is interesting to me to see the love and hate for different cities. I was born in New Orleans and alot of the problems are the tourists and certain areas. There are lots of resident problems as well as with any city, but if you like the New Orleans TYPE food in opther places, you will love New Orleans because it is 100% better than the want to be versions. Yes it stinks, yes people talk funny, yes you will see things you can not unsee, but hey you are there to get on a cruise ship.
As for me, i would rather sail from NOLA than Baltimore anyday. And I may be wrong, but I think the extreme coast issues have the itenerary problems that so many peolpe complain about. Yes it would be great for one trip to save on airfare, but limited on options of where they tend to go. West coast tend to go to Mexican riviera which has never sold well for DCL and NYC seemed to have a good many discounts, but if I remember right ( i could very easily be wrong though), they were high priced to begin with and terrible times of the year for alot of families.
It has been interesting to see how terrible Galveston sold until they left and now they seem to book up pretty well and I know alot of people will book jsut to get on the ship regardless of where they are going, at least once, but not repeatedly.
Back to NOLA vs Galveston, NOLA definitely has alot more to do than Galveston, but just to move 1.5 - 2 hours east does not make a ton of business sense either. Or at least in my head anyway