DW and I are approaching 20 cruises, sampling all mainstream lines except perhaps MSC. This is somewhere around our seventh Princess cruise and our second cruise to Alaska, the first being a Seattle round trip aboard the Sapphire Princess in 2010. Although we really have no brand loyalty, we consider Princess our favorite.

June 18 – Flew to Seattle, 10:40 p.m. arrival, overnight at the Best Western Executel. The hotel offered 24hr shuttle service and a decent enough breakfast. We found it to be a fine place to lay our heads down for a few hours.

June 19 – Following breakfast we took the shuttle back to the airport for a Princess Motorcoach transfer to Vancouver. Had a bit of delay at the border as some crazy, screaming pedestrian woman attempted to board our bus and was pursued and detained by the customs officers. We arrived at the cruise terminal about 1:30 p.m. and were on the ship about 20min later. We enjoyed a very nice sail-away, although it was cool and cloudy. Read more