Details of the tour part of a Princess Alaska cruisetour

Thank you so much for posting this! Wonderful review and great information.

Over the years, we have read a lot of Alaska cruise and cruisetour reviews, but your review ranks up there as one of the best! Raye & Marty Trencher. Great photo's, commentary and "how to" advice on getting the best out of your Alaska land and sea vacation. Loved your photo album! You should consider writing for a travel magazine.

Thanks very much for such a great review! Your pictures are wonderful and the information given will be very helpful as I plan for our trip.

Thanks so much for posting this. My wife and I are going next June. We had many questions, which you detailed so nicely for us. We'll use it in our planning.:)

Thanks very much for such a great review! Your pictures are wonderful and the information given will be very helpful as I plan for our trip.

Thanks so much for posting this. My wife and I are going next June. We had many questions, which you detailed so nicely for us. We'll use it in our planning.:)

You are welcome.

That's the reason I posted it. It answered many of the questions we had before we took the tour.

What a perfectly wonderful and helpful review. Thank you very very much. It must have been a very special time for you that morning that Mt McKinley loomed so brightly after those many days of being hidden in the clouds. How great that you got such a fantastic view. Your pictures of that mountain are spectacular.

Thank you so much for taking the time to create such a detailed and informative set of posts re the cruisetour. :):):)

My father and I have wanted to do a cruisetour for sometime and you have answered so many of our questions with your posts.

Happy future travels to you!

Wow! I just read your review and it is excellent! Thank you so much for taking the time and writing such an indepth report.:D

I just found this thread and read it too. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. We will be going on a similiar tour next summer.

Karen

Thanks for the review!

Wonderful review and pictures, thank you so much for posting this. You have really helped me get a better idea of what my vacation will be like (although we are doing a different landtour).

So I guess I won't try eating anything I find in the forest!;)

I love to take pictures as well, and was just curious as to how many memory cards (and how many gigabytes each) you brought on vacation.

Thank you so much, for sharing your trip with us.

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I love to take pictures as well, and was just curious as to how many memory cards (and how many gigabytes each) you brought on vacation.

 

Each of us had a camera with a 16GB memory card in it. Together we used a total of 12.5GB.

Of course we also had spares in case of a problem.

And we backed up the day's pictures to a netbook each evening.

we are planning to do this trip in the summer of 2015 it looks like you had a great trip.

Hi caribill,

Fantastic review! We did the other way, cruise followed by land your and have started sharing our experiences too on our blog, starting with the MCKINLEY express rail service :)

Fantastic review! We did the other way, cruise followed by land your and have started sharing our experiences too on our blog, starting with the MCKINLEY express rail service :)

We think we did it the right way, tour first and cruise second.

Since you did the opposite, what are your thoughts on which to do first?

Many thanks for doing this detailed tour review. We did almost exactly this same tour but on a regular cruisetour in May, and it was wonderful. Your review brought back lots of great memories. We cruised on the Island Princess too. It was a fabulous second trip to Alaska, and I highly recommend it to everyone especially the Tundra Wilderness Tour at Denali, which was the highlight of our land tour.

Susan

Thanks for the detailed review, Alaska is in the plans for 2014.

Doing the Alaska Cruise/Tour end of May, plan to use some of your suggestions. Thanks.

Mike

Great review. Exceptional photos - brought back some wonderful memories!!!

Hi caribill,

Think there is no right or wrong doing either way ... :)

As long as we cover both the cruise and land portion at the end of the day with GREAT weather! :D

We think we did it the right way, tour first and cruise second.

 

Since you did the opposite, what are your thoughts on which to do first?

We are a UK couple doing our first ever visit to Alaska on the same tour/cruise as you did, I must thank you very much for all the valuable information we have gleaned from your review, I would not be able to do all that, I hope we enjoy the experience as much as you seemed to. :)

Thanks for your wonderfully detailed review. Were wheelchair bound folks able to participate in the activities you included? Were the trains and buses accessible to the disabled? Thanks so much in advance.....and thanks again for transporting me to Alaskas beauty.

Thanks for your wonderfully detailed review. Were wheelchair bound folks able to participate in the activities you included? Were the trains and buses accessible to the disabled? Thanks so much in advance.....and thanks again for transporting me to Alaskas beauty.

We encountered no wheelchair bound participants when we were on the tour. I did not notice wheenchair lifts on the busses or trains, but with assistance I expect wheelchair bound people could be able to board these.

Extra excursions that we booked such as the river raft trip and the nature hike would not be wheelchair accessible.

Sorry I do not have more information about this for you.

We did encounter wheelchair bound passenger during one of our shore excursion bus trip.

The driver cum guide was pretty professional and render assistance in geting him on and off the bus. :)

Thank you for a great informative review. I do have a question though. We will be spending 2 nights at McKinley Princess Lodge arriving the first day at 6PM. Second day we so far absolutely no plans. We are really not that interested in rafting or kayaking or anything of that sort. So what would you recommend for that day? I would not mind spending a few hours in Talkeetna.

Should that be done on day 2? I was thinking of going into Talkeetna on day 3 before the train ride to Whittier BUT from your post it looks like the $10 shuttle to town goes, just that - to town, but the shuttle from the lodge to the train depot is miles away. Coach to train depot is suppose to arrive at 12:45.

What is involved in getting from Talkeetna to "rail depot" Thanks!!!