I am NOT fond of the bus gates either, it totally messes up any order of priority boarding. The bus is crammed full, and I always manage to be one of the last passengers off which has meant my carry on is not near my seat. It IS a lot smoother than my first experience back when they first started using the bus gates, but that is not saying much. On the other hand, I much prefer the bus gates at SEA to the bus gate experience I had in CDG where instead of a little over 2 hrs layover I got to my connecting gate as they were boarding my group (back then it was Sky). I find it ironic that I used to dread finding out I would be flying out of N gates and now that I really want to fly out of N I am consistently either in C or D bus gates.