My husband and I took our first vacation to Alaska this year and we decided to do it via cruising. I'm in my early 30's he's in his early 40's, we have no kids. We had a hard time deciding which route to choose, which would have dictated our ship. The NCL Star was going to Sawyer Glacier, the NCL Pear to Glacier Bay. A coin toss (haha!) decided for us and we booked the NCL Pearl to Glacier Bay on the 1 June - 8 June departing from Seattle. We never, not once, regretted this.

We had our edocs mailed to us through our travel agent weeks before we sailed. As advised we filled in the advanced guest registration form on the NCL site, this saves a lot of time at embarkation so don't forget to do this!

We flew up to Seattle two days before and spent Saturday exploring that lovely city. On Sunday, which was embarkation day, we decided to get to Pier 66 at the port of Seattle an hour or so before embarkation time, which was 12.00 noon. We fully expected embarkation to be a nightmare, many people who we had spoken to had said to expect long queues, horrendous complications. We got to Pier 66 at 11.15 a.m. and by 12.00 noon we were walking up the gangplank and onto the ship with a glass of champagne waiting to greet us by one of the smiling stewards. Embarkation was a breeze, we dropped our luggage off first as soon as we got to the dock and the rest of embarkation was so smooth I really can't praise the staff there enough. Read more