tetleytea

I just looked it up. The eclipse shadow moves at around 1500mph. A cruise ship moves what, 25 knots? I heard planes were able to achieve 74 minutes of totality yesterday, but a cruise ship just can't do that. The best you can do is position the craft. I was looking into whether an eclipse cruise looked interesting. If the ship's course cannot lengthen the totality, that makes it less so, but the physics of it is just not there. A ship's speed can't compete with a celestial body's.

How much time of totality did the HAL ships get? Did the pilots make any attempt to track the eclipse path, so you would get just a hair more time?

That is true. While you CAN do Fairbanks to Seward in 4 Alaskan summer days, it is better to slash part of it and focus on a smaller locality. Seward+Anchorage in 4 would work.

After all the rigamarole with boarding and waiting, walking it does not take that much longer than the bus.

Oh, I would want the balcony.

The alternative is we don't go. I have to work.

I'm seeing some buzz online that the Royal Caribbean internet is reaching a point where remote work on the cruise ship is starting to be feasible? Is that mostly accurate? For my work, I basically need to navigate a remote "Windows" screen (really Linux) stateside with a mouse, and hold Zoom calls. Are the ships' internet now at a point where I can reasonably do that now?

When we visited Turks & Queso (as I was told to call it), I looked up an operator online and reserved it. It turns out it was this guy's only golf cart. He was not well off financially, and our business was his world. The cart was a clunker, but it got us around the whole island. I've had easier places to navigate (as in Skagway, Alaska. There is only one road), but we only got lost very briefly. It was okay. I felt very safe there compared to, say, Jamaica or Dominican. I think we paid for everything with credit card.

Get a party of 4 and rent a car. Cost effective in both ports. Even with the absurd rental car price in Skagway.

Those cruise line buses in Ward Cove are horrible. The lines to get into town are terrible. And to get back to the ship, you have to return 1 1/2 hours early--and for a NCL round-trip Seattle cruise, that port stop in Ketchikan is already very short. Taking the public bus the opposite direction to Totem Bight sounds like a great idea. Or an excursion, or pretty much anything that lets you not have to take those buses. We did Ward Cove twice: one time we did the Zodiac excursion (which was awesome), and the other time we hired a driver who dropped us off at Ward Cove--quite a bit after all the bus passengers had boarded the ship already. That bought us an extra hour of actually touring stuff.

Make that 4. Glacier Bay.

We went on a late train departure, so it was not sold out. It did not matter which side you sat on--if you wanted to switch seats at any time, you could--or even go out back. However, wildlife was probably also less plentiful, because we went later in the day.

You've got to love when you read all those excursion blurbs in the listings, and it says, "...and then you will enjoy a scrumptious lunch, catered by our tour guides." You go on the excursion, and it's this ice chest containing sandwiches in plastic bags. (p.s. which I don't mind--I just find it hilarious how they oversell it)

I don't know whether it is unusual or not, since I've only taken one non-independent Princess excursion ever, but I will say that if they bait-and-switch what the excursion is after you've paid for it, AND it is not unusual to issue OBC instead of a refund because you no longer want to go on that excursion which Princess just changed, then I would say we have here a very bad thing. And I am glad that I have gone independent. edit: I will also add that I booked independent NON-refundable excursions for a Princess cruise before, which we were unable to actually cruise on because United Airlines ended up unable to fly us to the port. The independent tour operators offered us REFUNDS on their NON-REFUNDABLE tours, because of those circumstances beyond our control.

I noticed that mileage may vary. Sometimes they want $80 for the carts, but we got it for $60. It seems who charges admission, who gives free stuff, etc. can vary depending on high season.