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bonvoyagie

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About Me

  • Location
    Portland Oregon
  • Interests
    Traveling and exploring new places
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    NCL
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Alaska

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  1. I would cancel the excursion and wait to see what the weather is like. Too many times the port is foggy which really limits the view from the top. I also believe that the tickets are cheaper at the tram.
  2. The town was afraid of breech of contract law suits so they are honoring ship reservations made prior to the ban vote.
  3. OK I was only looking at cruise time tables website.
  4. Well I hope you make your hotel reservations in Vancouver early, rooms around the cruise terminal book early. As for flights, I suggest that you start by looking at the web to get an idea of what is available, bear in mind the ship docks in Seward and it takes a few hours to get to Anchorage.
  5. I see that the Star sails from Buenos Aires to Rio in late March the next cruise is late April in Europe. Anyone know what is happening in between?
  6. Go to guest services and ask for extra room keys. These keys only open rooms and cannot be used to charge things onboard.
  7. There are several threads about this here on cc. The most recent answer to this question is that the SN suites butler service ends at midnight. The SM suites have a 24 hr butler.
  8. We stayed at the Denali Bluffs Lodge and the helicopter place is at the bottom of the hill next to the Lodge's driveway. We bought our tickets through the tour company although you could also buy them direct from Temsco helicopters. We paid around 500.00 each for a 20 min ride to the glacier, about 20 min on the glacier and 20 min return.
  9. Once onboard they do not care too much about where you sleep and hang out. The front desk can provide extra room keys so that you can all get into each others rooms. These are only room keys and will not be able to charge to your account(s). One other thing to note is that the ship can also make a difference as to how you can do this. For example on the Jewel class ships, the cabins that can sleep 5 or 6 people are usually suites so only those people registered in those rooms will get the suite perks. I believe that the away and away+ ships also have the same thing. The only ships that do not have havens are the Sun, Sky, Dawn, Star, and Spirit as they are the oldest ships in the fleet.
  10. For 2025 NCL will have the Joy, Encore, Bliss and Jade in AK. The first three will be working out of Seattle, the Jade will sail between Vancouver and Whittier. As for time of year, some of it depends on what you want to see. Weather is always variable . We have sailed in AK mostly in June - both early, mid and late to early July and have had inconsistent weather all four times. The whales are there from spring to late summer so seeing them is a given. Bears too are out of hibernation and on the prowl for food mid summer the salmon runs begin. Eagles are pretty much a given all the time. Most of the excursions are up and running by mid May, some may have a limited season due to daylight reduction in the spring and fall. We did the same itinerary as the Encore on the Pearl back in 2012 also in late June - it was a wonderful trip. If you are into glaciers, then see if you can find a small boat tour of either Dawes or Sawyer Glacier out of Juneau - this will take all of your time in Juneau so you would have to forgo whales and Mendenhall glacier but we did this in 2012 and had a great time - almost better than glacier bay - we saw way more calving on Sawyer than anywhere else.
  11. I would at least speak to an officer on the ship, they stress that they are fined if anything goes overboard to the point of losing their rights to the park.
  12. Having done 4 AK cruises now I have seen three glaciers - Dawes, Sawyer, and Glacier Bay - Hubbard was both foggy and iced in so we really did not "see" it. The SB Jewel offers visits to Icy Strait Point as well as Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan - The NB Jewel subs Glacier Bay for ISP and offers longer stays in the other ports. Of the RT Seattle cruises I would go with the Encore simply because of Glacier Bay for two reasons - first GB is awesome with several different styles of glaciers plus a park ranger who explains it all, and secondly it is rarely iced out - unlike either Dawes or Sawyer Glaciers. However if you do decide on the Bliss then try to book the small boat excursion into the glaciers, you will see either glacier up close and perhaps witness calving. As for travel, we live in Portland OR so getting to either Seattle or Vancouver BC was not a big deal and with proper planning you can easily fly into Seattle and take a bus or train to Vancouver BC. If you do the NB Jewel flying home from Anchorage is not that big of a deal as most airlines use it as a re fueliing stop on their polar routes to Europe so there are lots of flights to choose from that end up in major hubs such as Chicago and Denver as well as Seattle. We flew to Fairbanks from PDX with a stop in Seattle when we did our SB cruisetour last summer.
  13. We did a 14 day cruisetour in June 2023. The tours include transportation and lodging and some tours. Ours started in Fairbanks and ended in Homer. We spent two days in Denali and had the Tundfa Wilderness tour. The hotel we were at offered free transportation between their two hotels, the park,and the local shopping area called Glitter Gulch, we were up on a hill that overlooked the park as well as the Princess Lodge. We were able to take an optional tour while in Denali and that was a helicopter ride with a glacier landing, it was offered through the tour company. Food is about the only thing that is not included and it is very expensive with most breakfast buffets running close to 50.00 per person. At some stops our tour guide has us stop at shopping centers so we could purchase snack foods as well as items for breakfasts and lunch as most of the hotels had some sort of kitchen area - for example we stopped at a Fred Meyer in Fairbanks before driving to Denali, and in Homer we were across the street from a Safeway. In Fairbanks we only had a dinner and found a great Italian place within walking distance of the hotel, and in Anchorage we got breakfast in the hotel before heading out, our tour included a train ride that featured lunch - for a cost. Now that I have been there and done that through a tour company, I would approach this trip differently if I did it again. For starters I would use the train for transportation and probably use the same hotel but spend more days in the park so I could do more stuff. However for a great introduction to Alaska, I found the cruisetour to be a good value.
  14. Book it but make sure that you can change it without a fee. The captain on our cruise allowed people to use the ship to shore phones for free to make changes.
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