Saturday, September 30, 2017- Disembarkation, Seattle

Saturday, September 30, 2017- Disembarkation Seattle

The ship slipped into Bell's Harbor and tied up in the early morning hours.  Room checkout time is 9:00 am and disembarkation began at 7:00 am.  We had to force ourselves out of bed by 8:00 am to go and have breakfast.  Janet was hoping to have one more pub dog at O'Sheehan's, but they were serving a breakfast menu which included a platter that was basically a full English breakfast, which we indulged in.  It didn't dawn on us until then how convenient O'Sheehan's would have been for Franklin and Betty since their room was on the same floor and less than 100' away.  

Disembarkation went smoothly, aside from having to wait forever for an elevator to take our luggage down to the disembarkation floor because all of the down-headed elevators were full of passengers and luggage.  We eventually hopped on a nearly empty up-headed elevator and then rode it to the top and then back down to the Promonade deck, which was where disembarkation took place.  

As we headed to the curb, we were intercepted by a NCL/Shuttle Express employee who said that they would match any airport fares offered by Lyft/Uber/Taxi.  So we were able to get them to lower their usual $25pp price to 2 for $30. They said we would have had to wait longer for an Uber or Lyft, but that wasn't true.  The Uber and Lyft rides were all just a few minutes out.  The Shuttle Express loaded up 65 passenger buses to capacity before dispatching them to the airport, so we ended up waiting for 15 minutes until 9:40 am for the bus to be loaded to capacity.  We still had a comfortable and easy ride to the airport, and discovered a part of the airport we had never been in before.  The Shuttle Express buses dropped us off in the parking garage, where there was a huge area dedicated to reception for cruise ship passengers and traffic.  We still had to walk all the way through the Terminal to where our Whidbey Sea-Tac Shuttle would pick us up, but we arrived with plenty of time to make our 10:30 pick up time.  

In summary, this was a very short cruise with a very limited itinerary, but it did give us a chance to spend some time with Betty and Franklin.  Franklin has been a real angel to help Betty so much, and he really has an appreciation for what she can and cannot do.  He does tend to allow her to try to do as much for herself as possible, even though it is sometimes difficult and painful to see her struggle.  Betty remains sharp as a tack and clever in figuring out how to overcome the disabilities her Parkinsonism have saddled her with.  We had an enjoyable time, but now as veteran cruisers, we missed some of the amenities that we have become accustomed to on our Princess cruises, so Princess will remain our default cruise line of choice.  Having spent nearly a week without seeing the sun was also not the most enjoyable part of this cruise, so we look forward to our upcoming Japan Cruise, where the weather should be much more to our liking.  

Regarding our "Perks", we learned that the $50 per person onboard ship credit can not be applied towards gratuities, and can't be spent in the casino either.  We ended up booking the Craigdarroch Castle and Victoria Highlights excursion to spend that onboard ship credit, effectively reducing the cost of the excursion from $80 per person to $30 per person.  The shipboard credit can only be applied to excursions booked while you are physically on the ship at the excursions desk.  If you book excursions in advance of sailing, you can't use your onboard ship credit to pay for them.  

The Ultimate Beverage Package, which has a retail value of $75 per person per day, would really only be a good deal if someone were an alcoholic who would reliably have at least 6-8 alcoholic beverages per day. While most of the cocktails were $11-12 each, and wine or beer was $6-8 each, the mandatory 18% beverage gratuity is based on the full $75 retail package cost whether you have 15 drinks or none, and it is collected up front before you even board the ship.  That was $13.50 per person per day.  We felt obligated to try to take advantage of the perk whenever we could, and did manage to explore most of the cocktail menu choices, but we would have enjoyed ourselves just as much without the drink package.  We could have saved ourselves from a few extra thousands of calories in alcoholic beverage consumption. We really wish they would just knock $500 off the room price, but that's not how they roll.  So if offered, take it, but you'll be on the hook for the $13.50pp/pd mandatory beverage service gratuity charge, so plan on having at least one or two drinks per day to get your money's worth.  If they offer a free beverage package AND free beverage service gratuity, then take it and have fun.  BTW- the Ultimate Beverage Package does NOT include any COFFEE drinks or fresh squeezed breakfast juices, so bring your travel thermos.  It does include soft drinks so we were able to sneak a few to Franklin and Betty.

The worst deal we got suckered into onboard was Norwegian's onboard messaging service.  Before the cruise, we were reminded to download the Norwegian iConcierge Ap to our smartphones, which trumpets the ability to stay in touch with others onboard through text messages and voice calling.  What they don't tell you is that the communications package is not free.  It costs $9.99 for the duration of the cruise.  That may sound quite cheap, and that's what Franklin and I thought, so we signed up.  However, the Ap only sends messages and calls if both the sender and recipient both have their Ap's open and phones on simultaneously.  So if you don't keep the Ap open and your phone on ALL THE TIME, it's totally worthless. Franklin and I each sent multiple messages and attempted to make calls, but the only time anything went through was if we were sitting across from each other at the dinner table with our phones out and on with the Ap front and center.  Princess also has the same messaging service, which is worthless because there is no sort of notification to the recipient that someone has sent you a message.  The big difference is that Princess doesn't charge anything for its service.  

A useful perk that we got was a free internet package.  We got 250 minutes worth $125. We've never used shipboard internet because it is crazy expensive and slow.  They don't charge by the MB, but run the clock whenever you log-in to the ship's internet via Wifi.  At first, we were very careful with making sure all non-essential email accounts were deactivated, and everything that had to be uploaded was prepared and ready to go from the moment we hit Log-in.  Then the moment you see that the email program has downloaded the last email, you hit Log-off, and then read your emails off-line. We found that we were able to download all our essential email, and upload my daily blog entry in less than 15 minutes per day.  We did not upload any photos via the ship's wifi.  Instead, because our ports of call were in US ports, we had AT&T cellular service while we were in Alaska, and were able to upload all our pictures when we were ashore.  Victoria was in Canada, but as soon as we left, we were back on AT&T as soon as we crossed into US waters again.  On the last day, we still had 90 minutes of unused internet time, so I guess we could have uploaded or pictures as well, and not worry about running out of minutes.  It did help that we could use our AT&T data in Icy Strait Point, Hoonah, and Juneau, and as we sailed through Puget Sound.  Perhaps on a more international cruise, we might have come closer to burning through our internet allowance, but that was certainly not the case on this cruise.