We had a great time. Our party was three older teens, my wife and myself, my sister and mother in law. Seven total. We flew in to Seattle the day before, from Detroit and stayed at the Holiday Inn Downtown. I was not familiar with Seattle, I found it easy to get around. I used a car service, A Plus Town Cars, booked ahead, to get from the airport hotel, to ship, and back to the airport and the service was Excellent. It was maybe a couple of extra bucks but no waiting in lines, loaded and on your way in seconds, door to door service.

Embarkation - We got to the terminal just after 11, checking in was quick and we had a 30 minute wait to board. The rooms were ready when we boarded, which is excellent if you have ever boarded and waited a couple of hours to get into your room. The room was smaller (we had two, one for the girls, one for the guys) but serviceable, once the Murphy bunk was lowered and the fold a bed unfolded, space to walk was a premium, but we always had the veranda to escape to. We had staff open the partition between our verandas, which made for more room and a 'connection'. We brought aboard water, pop (soda) and some wine for the stateroom and never a mention was made from any one. To save some money, we purchased in advance beverage cards for liquor/wine and pop, this gives you some feeling of a 'discount'. Bar prices were typical to other cruise lines but HAL seems less high strung about the process. You could buy a bucket of beer, five for four pricing AND if you didn't drink it all at once, you could take the unopened bottles back to your room. Other lines will open all five of the bottles right away. Our cruise crowd was 'older'. Our kids enjoyed the opening icebreakers so they could meet their peers. A good touch on HAL was "Generation Next" for 18 to 25 year old to meet up. After two days, we didn't see too much of our kids, they were always heading off to meet someone somewhere.

At Sea Day. Good, cool weather kept most folks in side. Read more