I bought 5 prepaid tickets through a coupon promotion for a Monday 5 PM trip, thinking this would be the highlight of my family's visit from Maryland. I expected a 3 hour drive to get there, but the ferry was late and the local traffic was heavy, so it became evident that I might be as much as 5 minutes late. I called from the car when I was 30 minutes away, and again at 15 minutes out and at 5 minutes out, to ask if I should give up or keep trying. The pleasant guy on the phone said he would do everything he could to make this work. I arrived at 5:03. I could see the passengers walking across the parking lot to the boat. My party approached the boat, but we were turned away by the Skipper. He explained that he had sold our (prepaid) seats to customers on standby, so there was no longer room for us on the boat.
This should have been handled better. Either the guy on the phone should have told us that he was going to sell our seats to others by a certain time, so I could stop speeding and we could give up, or he could have not sold our seats to others, knowing that we were on the way and only a few minutes late.
Two locals watched all this from the dock. Afterwards they told me they were shocked at how I had been treated. They advised me that there are two better whale watching companies in Anacortes that would never treat their customers so poorly. They advised me to book with them next time. I'm passing that advice on to you.
The next day Nathan Brandow sent me 5 standby tickets by email. I guess he felt a little sorry for what had happened. Though this was a nice gesture, it was of no practical value. My family was on the way back to Maryland, and it makes little to no sense to drive 3.5 hours (each way) for standby seats, knowing that anyone else could displace us merely by buying regular tickets.