Hope the following will be of interest/help to anyone thinking of booking Alaska for next year.

EMBARKATION.

Pity RCI don't use Canada Place. It seems much more amenable and user friendly than Ballantyne. We stayed in Richmond the night before the cruise and it was a half hour by taxi to the entrance to Ballantyne and another half hour before we reached the Reception area. What seems to happen is that taxis arriving with boarding passengers are filtered into an area where they can also pick up passengers just back off the previous week's cruise. One more thing to watch out for. Be careful which line you go into when you are inside the Terminal. Its easy to join the line for taxis away from the port instead of the Check In line. Quite a few people were caught out by this. Once through security, it was very straightforward. We were there at 1130 and on the ship by 1215. Read more