I've been on other AK cruises with Holland and Princess, but we decided to try Celebrity this time. The AK cruise is easy from Northern CA, at least it was before Covid. This time we flew to Seattle 2 days early, because there have been so many delays on airlines. We stayed one night in Tacoma and one night in the Belltown area of Seattle. My 41 year old daughter was traveling with me, this was her first real cruise.

We had reserved a rental car at the airport in Seattle, and I was very impressed with the efficiency of their system. In May, my husband and I had flown to MN to visit family. The "system" in MN was a nightmare. In Seattle we pick up our luggage and walked to a large shuttle bus near the baggage claim area. All of the rental car customers were bused to an enormous two-story facility where all of the rental car companies had desks to service reservations. The lines were short and service was quick. We were told to walk to an elevator which took us downstairs where our rental car was clearly labeled. A bar code had been attached inside the driver's windshield. At the exit the barcode was scanned and we were cheerily sent on our way. The man said, "Just leave me a little bit of my city". That was the beginning of our very pleasant trip. Seattle was as wonderful as I ever remember it.... some people warned us to steer clear of Pike Place Market. Apparently, the tourist didn't get the message... .we were all glad to be back there.

I had had weeks of of trouble registering for the cruise online. The operators take calls from all over the world and apparently no one is responsible for correcting errors. Early in the process , my daughter's name was misspelled, and in spite of repeated calls nothing was getting corrected. Her plane tickets were issued with the wrong spelling, and weren't corrected until two days before our trip. I had to become irate and frantic, in order to find a manager who was motivated enough to remedy the situation. Read more