My husband and 2 sons (15 & 12), and my mother and sister, just returned from our cruise to Alaska aboard the Noordam. We flew from Newark, NJ to Seattle on the day before the sailing and stayed in the Sheraton Downtown. We arranged both the flight and the hotel ourselves and saved a fortune over the Holland America prices for arranging them. We took the Seattle Grayline bus from SeaTac to the hotel. The bus was $10.25/adult and $8.50/child. We bought the tickets in the airport terminal. It was very easy to find the ticket counter and the bus ran quite frequently, so we did not have to wait at all.

We spent the day sightseeing in Seattle all on our own. Some of us went to Safeco Field for a tour, some to the Space Needle and then we all met at Pikes Place Market for dinner.

The hotel arranged for a van to drive us to the pier on Sunday morning, and we arrived there around 10:45am. We did our check in and were done and waiting to board by 11:10am. At 11:30 boarding began and the HAL personnel handled it with ease. Read more