Background My wife and I sailed on the May 13th sailing to Alaska out of Seattle. We are both in our late 20s with not kids. This was my first cruise and my wife's first cruise with Holland America.

Travel We booked our travel through HAL and flew out of Atlanta the morning of the 13th, landed in Seattle about 10:30 am, and were transferred to our ship by around 11:30. The transfer was smooth and there were HAL agents all over Sea-Tac to show us where to go and what to do.

Embarkation The transfer bus dropped us off right by the door to check in. The only complaint I had about check in was the internet vs onsite problem. We filled out our information on line. Apparently so did 99.9999999% of the passengers. Young, old, families, couples, singles, there really wasn't a distinction between who did it online and who did it in Seattle. The problem was that of the 8 lines to check in (not including suites) there were 5 for internet people and 3 for checking in there. So as you can imagine, anyone who didn't do it on line went right through while we waited for 30-45 minutes. I think this is a sign of the times and HAL needs to reallocate their lines. Read more