I have our cruise all lined up but have just recently heard of some problems in getting off the ship and through customs/immigration at Seattle. Our ship is to dock at 7 AM (late August) and our flight leaves at 12:10 PM. When I booked everything, I was told this was enough time. Anyone have any new information as to if I need to make changes?

Thanks

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.

It is possible to be among the first to walk off the ship. The tie up often comes with screening and sorting out all the checked baggage. If you have no bags other than what you are carrying yourself, it can be a huge time saver.

We just returned through Seattle on 8/22 from a Holland America (M/S Amsterdam) cruise to Alaska. We used the Holland America "express disembark" option, which means you carry your own bags off the ship and through the terminal.

We were allowed to leave at 7:15, but we finished breakfast and headed towards the gangplank around 8:00 am. There's a rather long walk to the terminal building, but it was pretty efficiently handled, especially considering that the Sapphire Princess was also disembarking then.

The immigration check was very fast, and while the customs lines were long, they moved quite quickly. It took us about 30 minutes to get from the ship's gangplank through the formalities to the taxi stand, and we were at the SEA airport ($30 taxi ride, but I'm generous with tips ...) by 9:15 am.

The airport was PACKED with people, mostly cruise tourists with *lots* of large pieces of luggage. Getting through that took the mostly time and anxiety, and yes, there wasn't an empty seat on our SEA/SFO flight.

Have fun!

Typical Sea-Tac summer airport madness!!