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My family was on the Bliss the week of 4.15.23. We booked our excursion through NCL and our meet time was 7:30 am on the ship. Our tour was scheduled to leave the parking lot at 8:30 a.m. They had all of the early morning excursions in the theater and dismissed from there through the staff walkways to exit to the shuttle. There is a bit of a walk on the pier inside shipping containers and then you are loaded onto the shuttle. They did board to full capacity with people standing in the aisle. They were using smaller shuttle type buses as well as one or two larger charter type buses to move people along the pier. We were given stickers to make visible we were with an NCL tour group after disembarking the shuttle. This shuttle was free but only took you to the end of the pier. The shuttle into Skagway from the parking lot had a fee. NCL announced the day before that if you were not on an NCL excursion and wanted off the ship prior to 11 a.m. you needed to obtain a shuttle ticket and groups would be announced. Similar to a port where you need a tender ticket. We left the parking lot around 8:45 a.m. on our tour as we were waiting to see if a few missing people showed. It looked like at the time it was still NCL booked groups arriving on the shuttles as most everyone had stickers. If your cruise line also gives priority to excursions booked through the ship it could be a bit of a gamble trying to get a shuttle ticket/ off the ship within the first hour or two.