cuterlmt

When I did my reservation earlier this month, the CAS rep told me it was $20 per person per day, for a total of $140 for a 7 day cruise.

I have always had great trips on NCL. The best though was on the Sun in 2005 in the casino. I won every single day in the casino except the last day when I lost 19 thousand. I still walked off the ship with 42 thousand more than I started with all from table games. It was great when I wiped out all of the chips in the dealers rack twice. Cashing in 29 thousand once and they had to get more cash from the safe, great feeling. It was an awesome trip. There were 27 family members. I paid all of their bills at the end of the cruise and felt great doing it. The best part was that I had not planned on gambling much on the cruise and had only a 1 thousand dollar gambling budget. With my play I was also comped suites on my next two cruises. I had to slap myself a few times when the trip was over to see if I was dreaming or not.

What in the world did you play? And what a kind thing you did, paying the bills for everyone.

Yes, martincath, you did. I still haven't decided about flying to Seattle or Vancouver. Hubby does not want to spend much time in Seattle, and would rather hotel in Vancouver. You actually hit the nail on the head about what I'm thinking - flying into Seattle, taking bags to Amtrak for the evening train, then doing a little walking to Skyview Observatory or the other tall building (can't remember the name of it), and then taking the evening train to Vancouver, hotelling that night, and then going to the ship the next day. Then when we return, spending a couple days in Vancouver touring (thanks to all the great info from you Vancouverites), and then flying out of Vancouver.

The plane trip to Vancouver has 2 stops with changes and long layovers, and the plane trip to Seattle is non-stop. I think I'd prefer that. The trip back from Vancouver is one stop, and not hours and hours of layover, so I think that option is more reasonable.

I think the one concern I had and why I asked the question earlier was how difficult it is to get through customs, etc. And thinking it was easier to do the train back to the U.S.

Again, thank you all for the wonderful information. I have spent many hours reading it all, and trying to make our plans. The planning has been wonderful! And our trip is six months away!

yay for bottled water! I may just ask hubby to ask for a case to take back to the room. Just kidding of course. Thanks for the info.

Another related question. We have not yet made our flight arrangements. Our ship leaves Vancouver, and we'll return to Vancouver as well on the 2nd part of our vacation. Is it better to fly into Seattle and then take the Amtrak to Vancouver, and then do the same when we finish our trip? Versus flying in and out of Vancouver?

Thank you for all the great info!

Do they have the priority boarding and separate waiting area in Vancouver? And what drinks are free? Anything? Thanks for the info!

Love all the suggestions. I think my hubby will want the tower with ice cream.... lol.

Can you recommend a nice restaurant for lunch between Amtrak station and the Skyview Observatory? It doesn't look like they have much of a restaurant on the top? And I know my hubby will want to have some kind of lunch/dinner before we get on the train to go to Vancouver.

Thank you!!

Thanks for the info about the skyview observatory and the café. If we fly into Seattle, we may just hoof it from the Amtrak station for a few hours over there before we leave for Vancouver.

I looked at the deck plans and just wasn't sure, but I think it is. And thank you for the video! Thanks for all your help.

How can I figure out if the cabin we have is one of the inside sideways cabins that folks say has more room? And does anyone have any pictures of them? Thank you!

Thank you for your wonderful trip report. I enjoyed your writing and your pictures (albeit way too few!). We will be headed out on the same back to back cruise in August/September 2017. I don't remember seeing what floor you were on. Were you in an inside stateroom? Do you have any pictures? We are in 321 so I think it is comparable to what you had.

Thank you again for your wonderful report. So much to look forward to!

Thanks for the good info. Can you answer whether or not you'll just have one cruise account, or they'll close the first one at the end of the first cruise and start a new one for the second? Looking forward to our first back to back!

Great info. Thank you so much. Thankfully I have several months to obsess about it. lol.

It's not really free - still have to pay the port fees and taxes and "administrative fee" but it's a lot less than we would have spent, and we wanted to do an Alaska cruise.

Thanks for the responses.

I thought about the evening train so that we can be in Vancouver the night before. Will it be safe to get from the Amtrak station to the YWCA? and is there a dining option close and safe? actually we might just eat on the train.

You're right about our timing - we were going to explore Vancouver when we get back from our cruises, but we may have a little bit of time to do that if we have the morning before the cruise.

So much great information here! I am taking notes! Thank you all.

Thanks for the information.

We'd like to fly into Seattle because the layovers are horrible to get into Vancouver, and the added cost to go to Vancouver is outrageous - it doubles the cost of our flights. We've never been to Seattle (or Vancouver for that matter), and we want to take the train from Seattle to Vancouver. My hubby is a train fanatic. So I really don't want to do the quick coach.

We don't want to rent a car. I'd rather walk or take public transportation to look around.

I'll keep looking at priceline and groupon, etc.

Is the Amtrak station downtown?

Is there a super shuttle type transportation from airport to hotels that would be less expensive than cabbing it?

So we're flying into Seattle the day before our cruise out of Vancouver. Looking for a reasonable hotel near the Amtrak station since it looks like we need to get there early to take the train to Vancouver for our cruise the next day. Looking for reasonable, under $150 if possible. Happy to do priceline or groupon or whatever. We'll have a little time to sight see, and have a nice dinner.

We are ok with doing a shuttle from airport to the hotel, ala Super Shuttle or quick shuttle or whatever. Do not want to do mass transit as we'll have lots of luggage for our two week trip. Taxi is ok too - I've read conflicting things about flat rate versus not depending on where your hotel is.

Thanks for all the information in the thread. I have been reading for days since we have scheduled our cruise!

We won two cruises, so we decided to do a back to back from Vancouver to Seward and then from Seward back to Vancouver. We still qualified for the "free at sea" promotion so choose the three specialty restaurants for both cruises. We have the same room so we'll be good. Hopefully I picked a good room - although really, how can any room be bad on a cruise? Looking forward to reading everything I can in the next 6 months on Alaska and the Sun and NCL.

Thank you so much for your review! We are just in the planning stages, and are so excited! Thank you, thank you!

Victors was great! We just got back from our Sapphire Princess cruise and visited Victors. We walked from the port (that was a bit scary), took the water taxi and walked down to Victors. Had a seat and stayed there most of the day, with little breaks to hit the water.

A couple things - the directions I found here were great. It was easy to get to, and not much of a walk. HOWEVER, getting through the hoards of sales people and taxi drivers was a pain! There were lots of folks selling stuff. But they were pretty good when you told them no.

The garlic shrimp and coconut shrimp is great!! I highly recommend it. There is a lot of shade.

Also, I don't remember who posted the spiky shell, but we found one!! Thankfully, not in our feet, but picked it up, and that would hurt.