This is going to be very long and detailed.
This was our first cruise as a family and the first NCL cruise for my husband and myself. It had been more than 20 years since we’d been on one (his was a Carnival and mine was a Royal Caribbean). I stressed a LOT over the plans and ‘what was going to happen’ since I am stress prone and there wasn’t much information out there. I am writing this all down to help anyone else with the same sorts of questions or whomever just wants to “know how it is going to go down.”
We arrived in Seattle a day early so we couldn’t take advantage of the shuttle to the ship, but we found one at our hotel we could pay for. Once arriving at the dock, there was a LOT of people and I was pretty overwhelmed, but everything went fairly smoothly. We had to dump our big suitcases there with the staff (which I was unaware of). We did not get our bags until after 8 PM. We could have gone swimming had we brought our suits or something in our backpacks, so you should plan accordingly.
The cabin was far more spacious than I thought. The extra bed comes out of the ceiling (the room steward takes care of this) and the shower was fabulous. Lots of room for storing luggage as well as putting clothes and toiletries on shelves.
We stayed at the Staypineapple the first night (we got in a day early). That hotel was AMAZING. Seattle itself was a bit sketchy, lots of drunk and high people everywhere. The city was beautiful though.