I think it depends on which cruise line. I don't know about Norwegian/Celebrity, they're at a different pier, but when I sailed on Princess (which shares a pier with Holland America) back in May on the first Alaska sailing of the season, there were problems. A friend of mine works at the pier for Princess, and she said that there were problems with Homeland Security taking FOREVER to screen everyone getting off the boat, meaning the folks who were supposed to get on the boat that afternoon were stuck waiting in line for hours on end. Then the next sailing, the ship (the Diamond Princess) was damaged in an accident with the Ooosterdam in Victoria (caused by heavy seas) and had to be towed back to Seattle to be checked out (the ship was mostly fine, just a bent rudder, no injuries). So the ship got in very late and they ended up leaving about 6 hours late, meaning they had to skip a port in Alaska. But since then, it's been worked out and the delays have been minimal. My parents sailed out of there in late June and everything was fine then, there was no delay for them getting on or off the boat. My friend who works at the pier recommended to us that if you want to totally avoid lines, either get there super-early (like 10:00 AM) or much later, like after 2PM.