All Aboard the Royal Princess to Alaska

It had been lots of fun exploring Seattle all morning and into the early afternoon with the City Pass. It was time for us to do what Brittany and I came to the Emerald City for—to get on our Princess cruise to Alaska.

 

Brittany hopped on one of the e-bikes and kept up with my mobility scooter on the way back to the Homewood Downtown. We picked up our luggage and waited for the van to take us to Smith Cove Cruise Terminal at Pier 91. Since there are so many (mostly Alaska) cruises going out of Seattle there are two different piers in the city.

The van wasn’t set up for wheelchairs, but the driver was able to lift my lightweight scooter. into the back and then help me into the van. There were two other women in there who were as excited as we were about the upcoming cruise.

It was the first time I went on a cruise when you were allowed to embark whenever you wanted during a five-hour window. We were about in the middle and it wasn’t at all crowded. We checked in and made it on the ship in about 20 minutes.

It would have been even sooner if I hadn’t accidentally checked the bag I put our Princess Medallion bracelets in at the last minute. The bracelets are used for everything from check-in to opening your room and ordering food. We had to wait until we got our IDs checked and room keys before we were allowed on the Royal Princess. It still wasn’t very long.

I’m not usually a such a specific planner when I’m getting on a ship. This trip was so special to me as my bucket list journey and Brittany’s first cruise. I decided before we got to the pier that we would have lunch on the ship at Alfredo’s. I had heard nothing but good things about it.

The one thing I didn’t calculate was that we would be starving after an early breakfast and a later than expected boarding. We decided to forego dropping off our carry-ons and checking out our room and went straight to the restaurant.

I still wasn’t going to skip was a glass of bubbly to toast our trip. I ordered a prosecco and Brittany got a beer, and we devoured some bread as we ordered our lunch.

We chose the Antipasto and the Caprese for appetizers. Along with the fresh, warm bread, we quickly warded off hunger.

For a main course, I had the eggplant, rolled and stuffed with ricotta, then topped with sauce and more cheese. It was very good. Brittany decided to just go for the pizza. It was listed as something for one person, but it was quite big. It looked fantastic and I needed to taste it. As a New Yorker—with an Italian background—I am picky. I was quite impressed with this one.

We decided not to go for anything on the Alfredo’s dessert menu. Ever since we booked the cruise with Princess and found out we had the Princess Plus Package, we were curious about the Premier Desserts. These concoctions looked delicious. We were entitled to two free ones poor day. That seemed impossible, but we were each ready to try one.

 

We were not the only ones who were anxious to check out these massive desserts. There was quite a line at the Gelato Shop. We weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere so we ordered and found a table to relax at. We could see the Piazza from there and the music was playing as people were settling into the ship.

It was tough to make a choice on the Premium Dessert Menu, but we figured we had a week to try them all. I went with The Godfather, vanilla gelato topped with chocolate sauce and a fudge brownie. Brittany did The Michelangelo, a chocolate chip muffin with vanilla gelato and a topping of raspberry and chocolate sauces. It was finished with a big twister lollipop. Yes, they were both as good as they sound.

After we finished our sundaes, we went to our cabin. Our luggage hadn’t quite come yet. The room was bigger than I expected. There was plenty of room for my scooter to get around and for us to spread out. I had been prepared with lots of ideas to make use of the space.

Since we had an accessible bathroom with a shower seat, it was bigger than most. Our luggage arrived and I started unpacking in there.  I had brought an inexpensive door shoe organizer and unpacked cosmetics, hair products, sunblocks, makeup, and more so we didn’t have to fill up our tiny sink top.

I continued to unpack, and Brittany did some exploring around the ship. I was resting with my feet up when she returned. We decided to go to dinner a little early. I had made arrangements originally for 7:00 pm in the Concerto Main Dining Room. All the restaurants on the ship went by reservations, which could be made for whatever time you wanted.

Dinner was great starting with the first night. The Asparagus Risotto sounded great, but I was feeling a need for meat. I asked if I could have the risotto as an appetizer and was told it was no problem. Brittany got in the ocean mood with a prawn appetizer and fish main course.

For dessert, it was Vanilla Mascarpone Blueberry Cremieux for Brittany and Hazelnut Souffle for me. Brittany also tried out a hot chocolate cocktail. We were definitely going to enjoy the sweets on this trip.

We were both exhausted from the previous 24 hours and didn’t feel like doing much after dinner. I decided to take the elevator up to the pool deck. I had seen videos online of the light show over the pool each night. It was even more beautiful in person and the music matched perfectly.

 

I went up to the cabin soon after that. We would have the entire next day to see, do, relax, and eat around the Royal Princess.

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I was hosted on this trip, but opinions are my own. 

Visiting Seattle Before Going Aboard My First Princess Cruise

Brittany and I had traveled to a lot of places, but we were getting ready for our most exciting adventure ever. We were heading on a cruise to Alaska.

This was to be Brittany’s first cruise and my first trip to the 49^th state – which actually was the 50^th state I would be visiting, therefore completing the United States. It was the most planned trip I ever took. I put a lot of time into every detail. The fact that I was traveling in a mobility scooter made it a little more challenging, but everyone I spoke to in advance was very helpful.

The cruise we had chosen was roundtrip from Seattle, Washington. I had been to Seattle three times before and it was a city I really loved. I didn’t want to just have it be a jumping point to get on the ship, especially since Brittany had never been there.

I worked with the Visit Seattle team to plan out a trip that would have us see a lot, without a lot of transportation, both before and after the cruise.

I usually fly out of Champaign, but we needed a late evening flight, so we had to go to Chicago O’Hare, about two and a half hours away. We had a friend drive us and everything went smoothly to get on our American Airlines flight. I was even able to get us an upgrade to Main Cabin Extra. I hadn’t flown in that in a while and it was really nice to have the extra room on an almost five-hour flight.

It was nearly midnight by the time we arrived at the Homewood Suites Downtown and we were both exhausted. We dropped our bags and went right to sleep.

Since there was a two-hour time difference from the Midwest, we ended up waking up early. We enjoyed the hot breakfast at the hotel and decided to head out for sightseeing. CityPASS had given us a code for the pass that would give us tickets to five popular Seattle spots.

I divided the places we wanted to go to between the ones that were easier to get to from the Homewood and the ones that would be closer to the place we would be after the cruise, the Hilton Motif. It was an easy walk (for Brittany, and scooter for me) to our first stop, Chihuly Museum and Gardens. 

Even though it was a Saturday, we had gotten an early start, and nothing seemed crowded. We showed our pass and went right into the museum.

I didn’t know a lot about Dale Chihuly beyond the beautiful art he created with glass before this. I had just seen a few pieces among the museums around the world that had them. I knew the Chihuly Museum and Gardens featured a selection of only the Washington artist’s works.

Everything there could only be described as breathtaking. As we went from room to room, my mouth was constantly saying “wow” and Brittany, who dabbles in art herself, was wide-eyed at every creation. I am not sure if I was more impressed with how the glass pieces were created, or how perfect the color combinations were.

The gardens were just as spectacular, especially with the view of the Space Needle in the background. That would be our next stop.

I’m not sure how, in all my trips to Seattle, I had never made it to the Space Needle. It was easy to take the elevator to the top in the wheelchair. It was just a separate elevator that we needed to get on going down.

The view of the city, ocean, mountains was certainly different from the Chicago observation deck.

We could even see our cruise ship from there. Many people were taking selfies in different positions. It certainly helped that it has the world’s first revolving glass floor.

The top of the Space Needle also has a wine bar and a coffee bar. The latter sounded really good, but we were running tight on time and really wanted to go to the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP). I’m glad we did because it quickly became one of my favorite museums in the country.

MoPOP is focused on entertainment, especially music. The place is huge, and you could easily spend more than a day here, especially since it’s filled with videos to watch and music to listen to. 

The music is from everywhere, but there are exhibits highlighting local bands and performers, such as Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Foo Fighters. I also spent some time browsing the Hip Hop exhibit and looking at the pile of famous guitar.

The television and movies represented in the exhibits Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction, Roleplaying, Scared to Death, and Fantasy included artifacts from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Wizard of Oz, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller

We were hungry, but were saving lunch for the ship, so we just had a snack at the museum’s Culture Kitchen before we headed back to the Homewood Downtown. We packed up our carry ons for easy boarding. We were soon heading to Pier 91 to board the Royal Princess on a voyage to Alaska. 

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I was hosted on this trip, but opinions are my own.