Just a few days before our cruise, we received the good news: we had been upgraded from our GG Obstructed View Guarantee to a BA balcony cabin! I love Princess! We left South Florida on June 8 to stay overnight in Orlando before our very early flight to Seattle on the 9th. Arriving at the Seattle airport around 2:15, we were picked up by the Cedarbrook Lodge shuttle and taken to one of the most awesome hotels ever. The Cedarbrok lodge is just a couple of minutes from the airport, but is like a secluded hideaway lodge built with beautiful natural woods, spread out on a lovely property of gardens and walkways easily enjoyed from floor to ceiling window vistas. The staff and amenities are top of the line. Sumptuous breakfast is included, and there is a wonderful restaurant, bar, and lounge where great food and drinks are prepared, and the fireplace and pool table add a homey touch. Rooms are grouped in buildings which share a common living room, complete with complimentary snacks, drinks, and ice cream. We were almost sorry to leave the next morning when the shuttle came to take us to the Light Rail for our ride into downtown to meet our ship. The trip took about 40 minutes, in which we feasted our eyes on the beautiful scenery that surrounds Seattle. Once off the train we hailed a cab to pier 91. My husband discovered he had left his binoculars in the car back in Florida and we had the cab driver stop at an REI on the way so Phil could get another pair. Wouldn't dream of going to Alaska without them, especially since we were getting a balcony (more about that later).
We got to the port around 1:00 PM, and boarded by 1:45. That was a longer wait than we had ever experienced with Princess, but not as bad as some other embarkations on other cruise lines. Once aboard, we were guided to the elevator which had an attendant to push the buttons! When we opened the door to our stateroom on deck 10 (Caribe), we couldn't believe how huge it was, and how huge the balcony was. We happily imagined having our breakfast delivered to our balcony each morning and spending countless hours using our cameras and binos in the next 7 days. We headed up to the Horizon Court for lunch, and encountered a long unmoving line of people waiting to use the Purell. Finally we got into the food court area and found many good things to put on our plates. We were seated quickly by a waiter, who brought us our drinks. The food was very much to our taste--salads, soups, sliced meats and mashed potatoes with gravy. So far so good. We went back to our room to rest a bit, frankly still suffering some jetlag and exhaustion from the long trip. That's when we discovered that the bed was as hard as a rock even with the egg crate our travel agent had requested. When our stewardess Marjorie came to introduce herself, we asked her about it and she came back with a nice pillowtop that helped quite a bit (as a quick aside, sadly, the beds on the Star are terribly in need of replacing; they are just plain worn out--each morning when we got out of bed the middle looked like a hammock).
Then at 4:30 came the muster drill. After the Concordia incident, we had decided to take a more serious approach just in case the unexpected were to occur. We brought a ziploc freezer bag and once onboard placed our passports, a charged cell phone, a credit card, some cash, some medications for my husband and some small snacks in case his blood sugar dropped. Once the ship was under way I tucked this tiny "ditch bag" into my purse whenever we left our cabin. The muster drill was very thorough. The crew took roll by scanning our room cards and we had to wait until all the passengers were present and accounted for. Once the drill was over, we became part of the enormous crush of cruisers heading back up to their rooms.
C304 was an accessible cabin, very large, large balcony, huge shower area, next to the elevator but we heard little or no noise. Good closet space and bathroom organization.