To celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, my wife and I took our children and grandchildren (27 people in total) on an Alaskan cruise. We had done a three-day river cruise, but that was the extent of our cruise experience. We've had family reunions for each of the last twelve years, but as our family grew it has become more difficult to find a location that would accommodate everyone's favorite activities, food choices, etc. Also, try going into a restaurant and ask for seating for 27 people. A cruise seemed solve a lot of problems. We got preliminary quotes from several cruise lines. We settled on Celebrity. Our anniversary was June 28th so we selected a cruise on the Infinity that left port on June 27th and returned July 4th.
We arrived in Seattle on the Wednesday before sailing and stayed at the Hampton Inn in Tukwila. I had arranged for a bus to take all 27 of us sightseeing on Thursday and then to the pier on Friday. That worked out well. We had two dinners at the Claim Jumper Restaurant near our hotel and all enjoyed our meals, particularly the huge desserts.
Celebrity uses Pier 66 in Seattle and they are very organized to handle the crowds. We arrived at the pier about 1:30pm and found that the embarkation process went smoothly.