Traveling to the Cruise Ship

Our trip took us from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago and then from Chicago to Seattle via United Airlines. We had an about a one hour delay in Chicago, while the airline changed a front tire. United Airlines advertises that they board on time – which they did. However, they don’t always leave on time, as we sat in the plane while they changed the tire.

Once in Seattle, we had to retrieve our luggage and then find the Celebrity Cruise Line rep and turn our luggage over to Celebrity. This went very smoothly. After transferring our luggage from United to Celebrity, we had to trek across the entire length of the Seattle Airport terminal to find the Celebrity Cruise line desk. At the desk, we were assigned a motor coach (Midwesterners would say bus) and given a box lunch. The box lunch was included in the fare. From Seattle, we were shuttled to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, via a Gray Lines Motor Coach. The bus ride was tolerable, very much like flying coach on an airline and took four hours.

The motor coach took us directly to the Cruise Ship terminal, where, just like flying we had to go through the metal detector and x-ray machine. After being interrogated for the 3^rd time that day, we then went to a Celebrity Customer Check-In desk, where we provided them with personal information and a credit card number, which was used to create our Celebrity card. The Celebrity card was the way payment was rendered on board ship. It was also our room key, and our pass to reboard the ship (along with a photo id).

[email protected]

Unless otherwise indicated, all text and photos copyright1995-2000 John Engle