We sailed on Vision of the Seas on the June 8th cruise. This will probably be lengthy, but hopefully it will make someone else's trip to Alaska better. This was our third cruise, all on Royal Caribbean. All of our cruises have been on the vision family ships(Enchantment and Splendour were our other two). Royal had been so good for our first two cruises, we saw no need to try anyone else.

We flew out of Charlotte and had a direct flight to Seattle. We actually live along coastal South Carolina, but saved over $800 flying out of Charlotte instead of Myrtle Beach on US Airways. To be safe, we flew in a day early and planned some sightseeing around Seattle. Our flight was actually 30 minutes early! We stayed near the airport-most hotels have shuttles. Our family bought bus passes in advance for our day in Seattle. We visited the Museum of Flight(a must if you like aviation), Space Needle, EMP, and Science Fiction Museum. Note: Boeing sponsors free admission on the first Thursday of the month in the summer to many of the museums around Seattle. All of these attractions were first class.

We left the hotel for the cruise ship dock at 11:15 on Friday. We took a limo service which cost us $60 for our family of four. I'm not sure how much Royal charges for airport transfers to the dock, but I figured it would be at least $15 dollars apiece. Check in was very efficient(too efficient for us). We thought we would just check our bags and walk over to the fish market until we could get on the boat, but they moved us right to the boarding process. We were on the ship by 12:10. We were eating lunch at the Windjammer by 12:45. The boat left right at 5:00 and the weather was absolutely perfect for Seattle in June. Read more