First off, I must thank those of you that contribute to this board for the wealth of information I garnered. The information I obtained from all of you definitely had a major impact in this cruise being a huge success.

Background: We are a couple in our 40s and 50s. We started talking cruises when deciding how to celebrate our 10th anniversary. This was my first cruise and Elliott's second (many years ago). We invited another couple to join us and were delighted when they accepted. We booked our cruise about 3 months out and went with a package put together by our travel agency. There were 50 of us from Hawaii.

Embarkation: It looked quite chaotic when we arrived at the pier in Seattle, but found the entire process quite painless. NCL employs adequate personnel to efficiently direct everyone, and we were on the Pearl in about half an hour. Read more