My wife and I (first-time cruisers together) took the last cruise of the summertime 2011 Alaska season and we were totally satisfied. The boarding process from Seattle was simple: there is a dedicated cruise-ship facility at Pier 91 (even some Seattle residents don't know it is there). I in-processed within a scant twenty minutes through the two security lines. The security lines are similar to Airport TSA, but there's no obsessiveness like the perpetual "orange alert" announcements and the shoes-removal/belts-removal/billfolds-removal to gain entrance to the passenger lobby (where we await our actual ticketing to get on-board). Once we pass into the Ticketing Lobby, there are twenty attended ticket-windows to make registration quick: you get issued a plastic "SeaPass" card that serves as your "everything," and within another ten minutes I was on-board the ship (it's a quarter-mile climb up the stairs and gangplanks to get on-board, and a Security Desk along the way takes your picture and makes you swipe your boarding-card to get through).

Shipboard entertainment in various forums started right-away at noon, and some well-prepared cruisers came with swimsuits in-hand to begin their hot-tubbing and outdoor-pool swimming right away. You can get into your staterooms already if you need to change clothes or get organized. You can lock your valuables away in the personal safe in the room, or relax, but the checked-bags do not arrive until hours later (the baggage-handling process takes crates and cranes and conveyors and carts to get it all on-board and sorted-out for the 2000+ passengers). Show-tune music plays right-away indoors in the reception area with a live string/keyboard/drum combo, and elsewhere on-board there are singers and pianists. Outdoors a dozen casual-dance performers (called the "Rhapsody Entertainers") do a poolside deck dance-show, to 80s and 90s tunes.

From noon-until-2:30, before departure, you can get comfort-food at the large 9th-deck dining hall, with entrees like roast-beef/fish/chicken-patties, sandwich fixings, hamburgers, hot-dogs, salads, various soups and vegetables, and simple desserts like pies-cakes-puddings. It's all included in your ticket-price (the story of the little-old-lady who on-the-cheap decided to bring her own food, and didn't understand until the end that the dining was already paid-for in her ticket price, is one of the shipboard tales of woe that we all eventually hear!). If you're in a big stay-together group it will be hard to find contiguous empty tables, but couples and small groups can easily find tables to share with fellow cruisers. You don't have to get the soft-drink and wine packages if you don't want them: at meal-times there are serve-yourself soft-drink, tea, and coffee machines (and the tap water is delicious with no-charge) but of course casual desires for soft-drinks will benefit from the bottomless-cup package if you don't want to pay $3.50 a can and you drink like a fish. For this 7-night cruise the pre-pay bottomless-cup package was $40 to buy in advance (before boarding the cruise), and $50 to buy upon boarding (you get a souvenir cup to use/reuse and a marking on your cruise-id-card that declares your having paid for the bottomless-cup privilege). The wine package lets you pre-purchase various quantities of assorted wines in bottles that your dining stewards will keep for you to enjoy with your meals (and take-with if you want), at an average cost of about $20/bottle (750ml). Read more