Background: There were 7 family members (ages 60, 58, 36, 34, 34, 7 and 4) traveling together. My parents are nearing Diamond+, DH and I are Platinum, Sister and my children our nearing Platinum.
Seattle Pre-cruise: We stayed two nights before the cruise at the Ramada Downtown. This ended up being a great location. It was clean and quiet. On pre-cruise Thursday we did the fun Duck Tour, the Space Needle and Pike's Place Market. We had breakfast and coffee at Top Pot Donuts (featured on Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels) which was one block away from our hotel. Great coffee and huge donuts! We took advantage of the Sunset Special at Anthony's Bell Street Diner for a really late lunch/early dinner. We had a shrimp cocktail, choice of salad or chowder, entrEe and dessert for $19.95. Anthony's offered great food, a good deal and super view of Puget Sound. We had breakfast the next morning at Max's at our hotel. It was tasty. The hotel arranged van service for us to the port at $8 per person.
Embarkation: We arrived to the port around 12:30 p.m. We motioned to a porter to help us with our 13 bags and he was quick and friendly. We waited about 2 minutes before the check-in process began. This didn't take long and we were off to board. The longest part of boarding the ship is walking to it!
Awesome closet, roomy, great location!