We booked our cruise last fall based on lowest price I could find. I tried to get a local agent to match the price, only to find out after promising to match it, she charged my credit card before verifying I would not be taking the offer she made that was 100.00 higher than she quoted me and promised me. I must admit, I was a little upset to find out after locking in our price of 1500 for two for a outside cabin- that they would increase the price by 100.00 due to the alaska tourist tax they passed last July. I tried to explain they knew about the tax when I booked in November- but they simply said they are passing on the tax to customers as the fine print says they can. It is interesting to note that 1/4 of my ticket went to taxes, fees and port charges that were not part of the low advertised price of 539 per person- but then it was not the cruise line who voted in those taxes.
We did have 4 other couples want to join us for cruise, with one couple dropping out for health reasons and they lost their 500.00 deposit. They or I did not take out travel insurance. We did find out traveling with 3 other couples was a good size for seating arrangements. It was also fun to travel with friends.
We sailed from pier 66 in Seattle- I choose this cruise because I hate flying since 9-11 and the security hassles. Seattle has done a poor job of traffic planning for arrivals/departures from port and although they are working on a new port- why not band aid this for now? My hats off to Norwegian for taking stress off once inside the building and to ship though. We had friends drop us off to save parking, and ended up paying 80.00 to transport us via shuttle to our vans north of Seattle which still worked out fine.