Norwegian Encore Alaska Cruise Review: Day 10 – Debarkationfeatured
When I woke up, we were still out on the water, slowly pulling our way into pier 66 in Seattle. My mouth was dry (have we talked about how the air on the ship was horrifically dry?) and I slept all of four hours, but I was fully awake as soon as my eyes opened.
I used to talk about my spidey sense of when my cell service was restored and how that’s what I used to look forward to on debarkation day. My spidey sense now was to check the status of my flight — I still have PTSD from our adventure coming home from the Spectrum of the Seas when we were in Asia. It’s been almost three years, and yet the first cruise we took after, so much closer to home than last time, the first thing I had to check was my flight.
It was on time. We had nothing to worry about. Maybe one day, my mind won’t jump to alternative routes and weather forecasts for flight paths to plan for possibilities well outside my own control. One day…we’re just not there yet.
I probably could have gone back to bed for another hour (me waking up woke Stephanie up and she definitely needed more sleep), but my mouth was so dry that the only thing to do was get up, get dressed and get some water. So I headed upstairs to the Garden Cafe, chanted the Garden Cafe theme song with the guy manning the door (“Washy, washy, healthy, healthy!”) and settled in with an orange juice, a glass of water and a coffee. It was barely past 5:00 AM and Garden Cafe was already beginning to buzz: debarkation plans, cruise memories, stories of the places visited or people met. It’s a more melancholy buzz but as the years have gone by, I find myself less and less sad over debarkation. Not to get all cheesy cliche on everyone, but there’s a lyric from an old 90’s song: every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. And this was the end of our Alaska beginning. But in that end, it was another beginning: we had a trip over the holidays to plan and we were still (knock on wood!) scheduled to sail on the Carnival Pride in Europe at the end of May. End of this adventure, sure, but this had to end for the others to start and there’s always joy and excitement in that.
When I headed back to the room, Stephanie was waking up with dry mouth and wondering why I didn’t take her upstairs with me (…because you were sleeping!). We had started to dock and with an estimated 8:30 AM debarkation time for our group, we figured it was time to start getting ready to say goodbye. She put on a movie for background noise. We spent a few minutes out on the balcony — warm by Alaska comparisons but still a little chilly — snapped a few pictures, gathered our things and closed the door behind us.
The elevators were starting to fill and Garden Cafe was much busier than I had left it earlier, but not so busy that we couldn’t easily find a table. We had a quick breakfast, had a few more rounds of water (hydration is so important when you’re flying!) and decided to go down to The Waterfront for a last lap around.
Before we could even get down to The Waterfront, though, they began rapidly moving through some of the early boarding groups. We were snapping pictures of the pool and water slides and downtown Seattle in general, right about to hop on an elevator to wait on deck 8, when they announced that Port Valet could disembark, right around 7:30 AM.
We had Port Valet and a NCL transfer to the airport ($25 each was still cheaper than an Uber/Lyft), but NCL transfers got later groups. The combination of Port Valet and transfers got us off the ship much earlier. So we slapped our stickers on (which they used to ensure people were getting off in the right groups) and headed down to disembark the ship. Debarkation was on deck 7, and everyone was guided to the Manhattan Dining Room to ping out. Stephanie got randomly selected for a secondary check, which just meant she had to show her passport to a border patrol agent. There were no long lines or chaos…everything was orderly, efficient and calm (a first on a cruise for us!). We entered the dining room to start the exit procedure at 7:33 AM. We were out of the terminal and on a transfer bus by 7:39 AM.
It was a bit easier because we never left the United States, so we didn’t need to pass through customs or do a border declaration, but the process of leaving the ship and getting on the transfer could not have been easier. By 8:17 AM, we were off the bus at the airport. Our bags were already checked through by the Port Valet and we already had our boarding passes, so we quickly made our way to TSA Pre-Check.
SeaTac was buzzing on a busy Saturday morning. It might have been the most busy I’ve seen an airport since Covid. Normally, we’d hide out in a lounge, but we couldn’t get into the Centurion Lounge until three hours before our flight, and the transfer got us to the airport pretty early. Instead, we camped out in the central terminal, where there are floor to ceiling windows overlooking the runways. It was busy, but not the worst way (or place) to spend a few hours. Stephanie finished up some work. I updated my Instagram. Time passed by quickly the way it always seems to where air travel is involved.
Exactly three hours before our flight, we headed to the B gates, where the American Express Centurion Lounge is located. We thought we had timed it perfectly, only to find that the airport buzzing meant the lounge was buzzing and they were at capacity. So we joined the waitlist and 20 minutes later, we were inside the lounge, where an agent showed us to an empty table and we spent the hours remaining until our first flight feasting, hydrating and reminiscing on our trip.
We could have flown home direct, but it was, like, an extra $100 and a full day in the airport to get home at midnight. So instead, we took a layover in Phoenix, which allowed us to at least move, get double the miles and get home at 11:30 PM instead. I’ll never do this in the winter time when flights in and out of Chicago are constantly delayed and cancelled, but for all other times of the year, I don’t mind layovers (but I was also working towards Platinum Pro status on American!).
I cleared an upgrade at the gate minutes before boarding, which happened right on time. I feel like on time flights should be the rule, not the exception, but I face more delays than I do on time flights so I always find it remarkable. The flight was uneventful. In flight service has started to resume, so I had a lovely fall salad and incredible view of Mount Rainier on the way out of Seattle and the Grand Canyon on the way into Phoenix.
Stephanie’s flight wasn’t as uneventful — she was sitting next to a woman who was visibly (and audibly) sick and who warned her she was going to pop a pill to make her pass out. Stephanie couldn’t get out of her window seat and felt a little germaphobe-y (can you be too careful these days anyways?). So when we landed in Phoenix, she was thirsty, hungry and needed to stretch. We had initially planned on going to the Phoenix Centurion Lounge for a couple of cocktails and a snack, but our flight got in 15 minutes late and the lounge was on the far opposite end of the airport where our connecting flight was a couple of gates away from the one we pulled into so we skipped this visit.
We were in Phoenix a few months ago, on our way home from my Vegas birthday trip, and it was interesting how such a major airport had so few things open. I was disappointed to see things hadn’t really gotten better in the three months since: even Wendy’s was closed. We grabbed some overpriced cheese trays and bags of chips and settled in near our gate.
Flight #2 boarded and departed right on time. Stephanie and I both cleared upgrades two days earlier, so we were excited to both be sitting together for the three and a half hour journey home. The food options were exactly the same as they were on the Seattle flight, so I got a fall harvest salad with hummus and fruit twice but it could be worse — we could still be getting the fruit and cheese plates (or nothing at all!).
And then we were home. Mom picked us up at the airport, we showered her in a wealth of printed portraits that, to this day, she does not know what to do with and we got right to work planning the next one!
