Reebster

Hollywood itself was very disappointing to me, so you may want to head farther afield. We saw everything that needed to be seen there (wax museums, Graumann’s, walk of fame, etc.) in about four hours. Restaurants were touristy chains and overpriced. It is worth considering heading farther afield (LA Farmer’s Market is pretty close to the tar pits and has great food and shopping,) Santa Monica Pier, etc. I won’t ever book a hotel directly in Hollywood again because after the first day, we had already seen everything.

Post-COVID, a lot of cruisers prefer smaller ships and will pay a premium for them. Plus the megaships can’t dock in Alaska, South America and some ports in Europe and Asia, so going smaller has been a pretty smart decision for NCL, since it allows them to charge higher prices but still sail at capacity.

We did arrange to rent the car in advance online through Avis. There are more companies now to choose from, and I think there's now a Jeep rental service as well, but I highly recommend the drive. We enjoyed it more than the White Pass train because we were able to stop whenever we saw something interesting, so it wasn't just non-stop scenery (which truly is amazing). You'll need to have your passports on you if you drive because you'll cross into Canada (which was no hassle at all, I think we saw one other car) and they will usually stamp your passports.

We rented a car in Skagway and drove through the Yukon Territory. We stopped in Carcross to do some walking around the town, had lunch at a place along the way and stopped at a place where you could play with sled dogs, All very affordable, and the scenery was incredible and we still made it back in time to do the afternoon excursion on the train.