Background: I give fair warning that this review is a novel! I took this cruise with my husband, we are in our 20's/30's. This was my 8th, and my husband's 6th cruise. It was our first trip to Alaska and first time on Norwegian. We have previously sailed Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Princess, and Celebrity.

Seattle/Embarkation: We flew into Seattle 2 nights early since we had never been before and stayed at the SpringHill Suites Downtown on Yale Ave. A cab from the airport was about $30-35. The hotel seemed very new and the room was on the modern side and quite spacious. The hotel had a free shuttle to the Space Needle/Seattle Center, Westlake Center/Pike Market, and the Convention Center/downtown. We spent the day before the cruise exploring Seattle and going to the Space Needle, Sci-Fi Museum, Pike Place Market, and doing the Underground tour, which was recommended by someone on the CC message boards. It was a lot of fun and the tour guides were great. For $14/pp you can't beat it!

The day of the cruise we took a shuttle from the hotel ($4.50/pp I believe) to pier 66 where the cruise left from and arrived at the pier around 11:30. They hadn't started boarding people yet so they were handing out boarding #'s to each passenger as they entered. We were in boarding group #27. We checked in (painless, no long lines, well-organized) and took a seat (there were plenty, along with refreshments for those who wanted something to drink) to wait for our boarding #. We were on board by 12:30. The boarding process was very quick and organized overall. Read more