We cruised on the Pearl to Alaska 1-8 June and had a tremendous time on this vacation! We took an upsell and landed in a beautiful AC penthouse at the front of the ship. Thanks to all who recommended we go for it!

We flew in to Seattle a day early and had some time to explore the city. We really enjoyed Seattle. I know a number of folks have recommended the Shuttle Express from the airport but our experience was very different. We made advance roundtrip reservations and the service was so bad, I cancelled the second leg of that trip. We waited about 40 minutes to load a shuttle and felt very bad for some of our "shuttle mates" as they were going straight to the pier and had waited 45 minutes and were starting to get nervous about getting to the port on time. We finally loaded but the driver was not sure of the route and missed the exit for the pier the Princess cruisers were going to...needless to say, they were not happy at all. We spoke with someone else who had arrived the day before us and they had the same bad experience with this service.

As I mentioned, we really enjoyed Seattle and it is now a destination on the vacation list. We stayed at the Best Western Pioneer Square Hotel and were happy with that. The rooms were basic but very clean, the staff was great and the location was very convenient. We really enjoyed Pikes Market and had wanted to do the underground city tour buy the wait was long and time was short.. next time.. Read more