Embarkation for Alaska from Seattle

[Taykee1]

I have read many threads from cruisers who discuss getting on the ship early and having lunch. Seattle departure time is 4pm. Anyone who has taken this cruise on the discovery could you please tell me approximately what time they will start boarding passengers. I have a checkout time from my room at 12pm, really don't want to be dragging our bags around seattle for a couple of hours, would be great if we could go straight from hotel to ship and board mid afternoon. 

[Shelly97060]

11:00 am is a good approximation. If you plan to check out if your hotel at noon you shouldn’t have any issue going straight to the ship at that time.

[fellswoop]

I would encourage you to become familiar with the Princess app to complete your precruise checklist, and when your cruise becomes close, you will be allowed to pick your boarding times. You need to jump on that as soon as that is available to get your preference. With my most recent cruise in LA, (port of San Pedro) those who came early were allowed to check in but had to be seated until their time was called.  

I did Discovery Alaska in Aug and check in was a terrible free for all. We waited in line just for security for over an hour and then there was the check in line. I have a feeling they will or should be changing the check in process in Seattle because in LA it was 17 min from getting out of shuttle to boarding the ship. 

[MileHighAko]

Last month (September) we departed out of Seattle. We were boarding group A (11:30) so had an Uber scheduled for pickup from our airport hotel at 10:30 AM and arrived at the pier at about 11:00 AM. We had a lot of bags so we found a porter and tipped him to take our luggage, and we got in line that moved quickly through security and then checkin was a breeze. We waited in the elite/suite waiting area for about 20 minutes, and were on the ship before noon. We explored the ship a little, got connected to the wifi, and then had lunch in the MDR. It was a good experience for us.

[skynight]

4pm is the scheduled sailing time. All passengers have to be on board around one hour before that. Normal boarding begins around 11:00/1130am. Once you arrive you should be able to board fairly quickly.

[iamaqt2]

Boarding in Seattle usually starts around 11 am.  Suite/Elite and Platinum board early, then passengers with special needs, then they call out general boarding groups.  Lunch is served in the MDR from 12-1:30.  So plenty of time to get on board and enjoy a leisurely lunch.

[Italy52]

3 hours ago, fellswoop said:

I would encourage you to become familiar with the Princess app to complete your precruise checklist, and when your cruise becomes close, you will be allowed to pick your boarding times. You need to jump on that as soon as that is available to get your preference. With my most recent cruise in LA, (port of San Pedro) those who came early were allowed to check in but had to be seated until their time was called.  

I did Discovery Alaska in Aug and check in was a terrible free for all. We waited in line just for security for over an hour and then there was the check in line. I have a feeling they will or should be changing the check in process in Seattle because in LA it was 17 min from getting out of shuttle to boarding the ship. 

We had the opposite experience.  We sailed in August on the Discovery and were on the ship rather quickly.  We had a 11 AM check in and it went very smoothly.  Perhaps there was a glitch in your boarding process that day??

[Sea Hag]

38 minutes ago, Italy52 said:

We had the opposite experience.  We sailed in August on the Discovery and were on the ship rather quickly.  We had a 11 AM check in and it went very smoothly.  Perhaps there was a glitch in your boarding process that day??

We also sailed on the Discovery in August and basically just walked onto the ship after going through security. Very happy.