Serenade of the Seas Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,675 reviews

Serenade of the Seas - Alaska

Review for Alaska Cruise on Serenade of the Seas
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ncamy
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jul 2006
Cabin: Grand Suite
Traveled with children

Warning -- this is long, so just skip to the parts you are interested in and enjoy. I'll be glad to answer any questions. This was a nearly perfect vacation for us, thanks to both the great weather and the advice I got from here and another website.

Precruise Flight: My husband, daughter (age 12), and myself flew from Charlotte, NC to Seattle on Northwest. We left Charlotte around 9:30 am and we changed planes in Detroit after a quick layover. We knew the layover would be too short to eat so we had packed a cooler with lunch for the plane. About 20 minutes in the air out of Detroit, we were peacefully eating our lunch enjoying the blue skies when the plane suddenly bumped, then dropped 500-1000 feet. My sandwich literally flew out of my hand and hit the roof of the plane. The lady behind me lost her shoes, and everyone was screaming. It continued to shake for about 90 seconds. Then the pilot came on and said maybe it would be best if we kept our seatbelts on. Thankfully it was smooth "sailing" from that point on. Our only other glitch was that we discovered that we had forgotten to transfer all of the shows we had purchased for our iPod so it forced the 12 year old to read and play her PSP. Guess what? We lived.

Seattle: We landed in Seattle around 2:00. It took forever for the luggage to come out but it did finally make it. I was still glad that I had done all that cross packing, and I was doubly glad that I had tied colorful ribbons to our black suitcases. We rented a trolley and shuffled on out to the taxi/ shuttle area. I had a reservation with Shuttle Express which turned out to be a very slow option. Next time I will just take a taxi for $3.00 more. At 4:00 we finally made it to the Comfort Suites where we met my SIL. Now we were running about 2 hours behind schedule so we didn't have time to visit. We changed clothes, got a cab and headed for Ballard. We really enjoyed the Chittenden Locks and the fish ladder. There were a lot of fish running in the ladder, and we saw several boats go through the locks. From the locks we walked 0.6 miles along a pleasant bike and pedestrian path to Ray's Seafood. We had reservations for the nicer restaurant part, but when we got there it was such beautiful weather on the deck upstairs that we opted for the Cafe. We had dinner with a couple, son and girlfriend of an old family friend, whom we had not seen in about 18 years. Fun! The best part of the meal, other than the view, was when they started passing out blankets as the evening chill set in. It was hilarious to see 50 people wrapped up in bright orange blankets just to get the opportunity to sit outside. From Ray's we took a taxi back with the most eccentric cab driver I have ever met. He gave us a mini tour on the way back, showing us the Lenin statue and the Freemont Troll. He dropped us off at the Space Needle where we got wonderful views of the nightscape.

Cabin Review

Grand Suite

Cabin GS
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