First let me start by saying that we booked our cruise 6 weeks before sailing through a large travel service. We decided to take an Alaska cruise because some of our friends had taken it before and said it was beautiful and amazing; however, we did not choose Royal Caribbean as our first choice and would have taken Holland or Celebrity if it would have been available. This was our second cruise; our first one was on the Carnival Pride in the Mexican Riviera.
Embarkation - As we did with our first cruise, we arrived a day early in Vancouver just in case there was some travel snafu. We stayed at the Pan Pacific hotel right on the shores of Coal Harbor. This is not the cheapest hotel choice but it put us in the center of the city for great shopping and all of the Canada Day celebration. On the day of our cruise we left the hotel at noon, a short 5 minute cab ride to the embarkation pier, and we literally had our SeaPass card by 12:45pm! By 1:20pm we were on the Serenade. Our rooms were not accessible until 1:30pm so we went and wandered the ship.
The first thing we noticed was that all of the access from top to bottom is made in the center of the ship, unlike the wide open access on the Carnival Pride from the forward, center and aft aspects of the vessel. Be ready to fight the elevator game. There are 8 total elevators mid-ship that are broken in to two groups of 4. In between the elevator groups is a 3-D aspect of the ship that identifies the deck you are on. If you stand at this point after pressing the up or down button, you stand a 50/50 chance of making the elevator. If you are at either end of the banks, be ready to run, with your hand out to kick the doors back open, providing you see the doors in the first place! Even the comedian joked about this but it is no joke, especially when there are 50 people leaving the WindJammer Cafe!