Seattle Travel Answers

If your group can handle public transportation, the Light Link Rail operates until 1am, midnight on Sunday. The International District Station Bay A is about 1 1/2 blocks from the King St Amtrak Station. Here's the link to that site. soundtransit.org/Schedules/C...">soundtransit.org/Schedules/C...

There aren't any hotels nearby with airport shuttles. Locals may have some better ideas.

And here's the link to the airport map. portseattle.org/Sea-Tac/Maps...

Here's the quide to SeaTac from Sleeping in Airports: sleepinginairports.net/usa/s...

Is the train usually on time? Sometimes the trains here are several hours behind. Unless all of your group of 13 are relatively young (but not children) and agree to forgo their sleep for that night, I'd just go ahead and go to a hotel.

Not to mention you definitely won't want to "hang out" around the train station. Downtown Seattle (particularly around the station) is super dodgy during the day, never mind overnight.

grandmaR wrote:

Is the train usually on time? Sometimes the trains here are several hours behind. Unless all of your group of 13 are relatively young (but not children) and agree to forgo their sleep for that night, I'd just go ahead and go to a hotel.

When you get your seat assignments in Vancouver BC ask them to give you seats on the water side of the train, if possible. The view of the sun setting behind the Olympic mountains is usually pretty good, and it should be happening about the time you hit the track that runs beside Puget Sound.

As to what to do between 10:10 at night and 7 in the morning, you aren't going to find much of anything open during those hours.  The station closes just after that train arrives.  Stuff like the Space Needle closes at 11 at best, which gives you no time to get from the station to the Space Needle.  There are a few bars and night clubs of questionable repute that will be open until 2 or so, but none of them are ones that I would suggest going to at that hour of the night.

To get to the Link Light Rail Line, you exit the station, cross the dead end street that is right there and the entrance to the station, climb the stairs that is right across the street from the station entrance (you can see all this on Google Street View), walk north to Jackson Street, walk east several blocks. Between the old shell of Union Station and 5th Avenue you will find a set of escalators going down, and that is the entrance to the light rail train tunnel. You need to buy tickets before you go into the tunnel, and the vending machines are on the street level before you get on the escalators.  Make sure you get on the escalator going to the platform on the west side of the tunnel, as the one on the east side is only for trains going north. You want the trains going south.

This is the staircase you need to go up, above the parked cars:

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As one responder already indicated the train from Vancouver is often late. From the Amtrak station on King Street you want to get to the light rail link at Pioneer Square. Some recent changes make it pretty easy to follow. From Pioneer Square to SEA-TAC via the light rail link it is about 20 to 30 minutes. Light rail should be running until about 1 am. First train in the morning from downtown btw is about 5 am. Depending on what airlines you are flying determines how comfortable you might be at the airport trying to rest before your flight. If it was me I would probably just spend the night at the airport lounge waiting for your early flight in the morning.

The train from Vancouver is generally on time, there is nothing to hold up the train once it leaves Vancouver, and it will leave on time, as you will clear U.S Border Security at the Pacific Central Station in Vancouver prior to departure. I have ridden this train many times and we have never been late into Seattle

Yes but there still won't be much to do downtown in Seattle.
Also I don't know about the Seattle airport in the wee hours of the morning. Will anything there be open (like to eat?)

I posted the link to sleeping in airports which covers Seattle.