Island Princess July 20 - 27 plus indep. land tour - REVIEW

[Twomalamutes]

I also posted this on the Princess section -
A little background - we had 7 people in our party - ages 34 to 59. It was the third cruise for 2 of us, 2nd for two more and then the first for the other 3. We were booked in 3 mini-suites on the dolphin deck all in a row and then one balcony on the end. (D411, D415, D417 and D419). We have previously been in obstructed oceanview and then 2 years ago were in D409. Loved the location, so we thought we would book near there again.
We flew out of Chicago on July 18th - landing in Vancouver at 1pm. Customs was quick and we had our luggage in no time. Called the other members in our party who had arrived earlier and gotten our mini-van rental for pickup. We had booked the Hampton Inn - Airport for 2 nights. Wonderful hotel - clean, quiet and a decent breakfast. We all gathered once we were all there and decided to get into the rental car and go for a drive. Somehow we ended up at Grandville Island Market. Our original intent was to head there Sunday morning, but oh well. We were there. It was wonderful! lots to look at. Bought some local raspberries and some pastries to snack on back at the Hotel. Sat and watched the boats go by. The temperature was about 85 - so we enjoyed the nice breeze coming off the water. After a couple hours at GRandville Island we headed back to the hotel - we were all beat from a day of flying and trying to adjust to the time change ( 2 hours).
Sunday - Vancouver -
Most of us woke up early:-( but we decided to make the beat of it and headed to Stanley Park bright and early. It was a gorgous day! Sunny and high 80's low 90's. Not a cloud in the sky. Spent most of the day there and then headed over to Gastown and Canada Place.
Monday - Boarding the Island Princess. As I said 4 of us had cruised the Island Princess before - so we know some of the tricks and secrets. We had a stretch SUV limo from Star Limos pick us up at the hotel at 10am. It was 180 including tip which divided between 7 made it both affordable, comfortable and fun. Arrived at the dock about 10:30 - there were only a dozen or so of people ahead of us in line. Waited about 15 to 20 minutes and security opened and we were on the ship by 11:15.
When we boarded, we used a visa gift card loaded with $500 - no problems at all using it. Once on board we had to do some rearranging of rooms, as we had booked a past passenger in each cabin to get better pricing. Just a side note we were some of the people that took advantage of the 2 for 1 deal. We actually booked this cruise a year and a half in advance, so our travel agent was able to change all cabins to the 2 for 1 (well except for our single passenger). Had a beautiful sail away out on the front on deck 11. Had dinner in the main dining room - things were ok - Our steaks were over cooked, so we sent them back and when they arrived the second time there were still overdone, (you will start to see a trend here), but we ate them anyway. They never filled our water glasses unless we asked them to.
AT SEA DAY -
Woke to beautiful weather again! Did a couple of the planned activities - fruit carving demo, martini demo etc. Had dinner in the main dining room again. This time we were seated at table 31 - had wonderful waitstaff! The water glasses were kept full and the waitress had a great personality. She was very charming. I'll toss a note in here about our room steward. When we met him the first day we gave him a fat tip up front and asked that he put 2 wine glasses in each room and also asked if he could make our rooms up EARLY, we are early risers. He assured me that there was not a problem. Let's just say that rarely did we get our room made up before 2pm! Our room had 1 wine glass the others none. Our ice bucket was filled maybe once and once he left us ONE towel. Needless to say his tip at the end reflected his service. We also found out that when rooms were switched that the charges from the night before were also messed up. They also did not have 2 of our Onboard credits that we had gotten as gifts reflected on our statement. Thankfully we had copies of these and showed them to the pursers desk.
Ketchikan -
Woke up to cloudy, overcast skies. There were 2 other ships in port. Four of us had planned to wander around town and shop while the other 3 hikes Deer Mountain Trail. All had a good time. Hopefully I can weed through out photos and find some good shots that they took. We left Ketchikan at 2pm on the dot! The weather seemed to clear a bit as we left. We enjoyed our waitress at table 31 the night before so much that we called and tried to make reservations with her. The earliest she had available was 8pm - so we had a late dinner with her again. Dinner wasn't anything great again.
Juneau - Woke to cloudy, rainy, overcast skies again. We had booked Harv and Marv so we walked to the dock and found their van. Made our way to the boats. The 4 "kids" were on Jay's boat - the 3 "adults" were on the other. Jay had said that the day before they had a ton of whale activity to the north, so we were going to head there first. Much to our dissappointment - no whales! We spend 2 hours "looking" for them. Finally we went the opposite way where other boats had seen them - we encountered several calfs and cows playing. Nothing specicular, but well worth the small boat price. We enjoyed Jay and his daughter - even though we didn't see any breaching or bubble netting as we had hoped. After the whale watch we had the option of going back to the boat, getting dropped off in town or at Mendenhall Glacier. A couple of us got dropped in town and the rest went back to the ship to grab lunch. Overall, it was a great time, despite the rainy weather. We had dinner reservations in the Bayou cafe this evening. At first they wanted to squeeze us into a table that was set for 5 and we declined. They quickly set up a large roomier table for us. At 7pm there were only a few other tables occupied. We had a nice dinner. Food was overall good. The waiter seemed a bit pushy, but relaxed as the dinner went on. After relaxing from dinner we decided to hit the pool and hot tubs. Since it was raining we decided to use the lotus pool which is located inside. There were a BILLION kids running and screaming in the pool area. Parents didn't really notice or care. Several we engaged in a splashing contest, which was quite annoying. It seemed to empty out a bit, so my husband tried to use the swim jet. Kids were jumping on top of him and didn't really seem to care. At one point my husband got annoyed and said to the kids that he would appreciate it if they could stay back a bit so he could swim. It is probably about 10pm at this point. The kids said sure, but within a few minutes started jumping on him again. At that point we gave up. Princess really needs to look into having one of the pools "adults only".
Skagway -
3 members of our group went on the Skagway gardens and tea time tour. They said they were a bit concerned when they pulled up to this fenced area, but once inside they were pleasantly surprised! The gardens were well kept and lovely. They also said they had a wonderful snack of cucumber sandwiches and several other kinds of pastries.
The rest of us went Fishing with Fat Salmon Charters. We booked it based on their website, which looked great as did the reviews and they were very prompt with communication. We walked to the dock and found our vessel. Our Caption was our age and glad to have “younger” folks for a change. The boat itself wasn’t in that great of shape, but did the job. We had a 6 hour charter. We caught several pink salmon, a dolly varden and a smaller king salmon. We were just about done, when 3 of the 4 lines hit. We ended up pulling in a 36 inch king salmon and threw back another pink (the third line lost the fish). We pulled into the dock and when he gutted the fish we found out that we had caught an ivory king salmon. Completed all of the paperwork to get it sent home and walked back to the ship for lunch. We did have a good experience with Fat Salmon, but next time we would probably go with one of the other charters. After lunch 5 of the 7 had booked a helicopter to a glacier tour through Princess. They all thoroughly enjoyed it and had wished they had more time on the glacier. 6 of us had dinner in the main dinning room while the 7th hit the Horizon Court. We all called it an early evening as several of us wanted to get up for the sunrise going into Glacier Bay.
Set the alarm for 4:30am! Managed to stumble out of bed to see a gorgeous sunrise. We sat on our balcony and watched the sunrise. What a beautiful site. About 6am we decided to head up to the horizon court and grabbed breakfast. After breakfast we watched the pilots board our boat. We didn't see as much wildlife entering Glacier Bay as we had seen previous times - but oh well. The scenery was beautiful. Spent most of the day on our balcony. It was windy, but warm. Not a cloud in the sky! We were able to see Mount Fairweather as well as a bunch of others. We pulled up to the Glaciers without a problem. Saw a bit of calving, not large chunks as we had hoped for, but still had a decent amount of action. The naturalist also spotted several bears on the shore on the way into the glaciers looking for food. When we were pulling out of the bay I fell asleep in the sun on the balcony and actually got a bit of sunburn on my face! We dropped the pilots off and cruised up along the coast. The mountains still clear and the sky blue. We still hadn't seen many whales - but then we spotted 3 fishing boats off our starboard side - and the naturalist announced that there were several whales around them. As we came up on them - they were still quite far, but we could see the whales tail smacking and several breeched. Of course even with my 100 - 400 lens on my camera they appeared as small dots. Then a bit later we had a whale surface very close to the boat, but he quickly dove. We then came across a pod of orcas in the distance. Again little specks on my photos. We rounded the bend to head into the open water across the Gulf of Alaska. The weather was still nice and sunny - Dinner reservations were made earlier that day for the main dining room - table 31 again. 6 of us had diner - just ok again - nothing to write home about. The Crab legs we had were dry and tasteless Hopefully the lobster tomorrow night will be better. My husband chose to eat at the buffet as he was tired. That night the boat started rocking and rolling. Most of us were not affected, but the next morning at breakfast it was apparent that some had problems. We did have seas of 10 to 14 feet and a hefty wind. Also a note about a problem we encountered with our disembarkation paperwork. 4 of us were headed out on our own - we all received the correct tags. The other 3 had booked the Blackstone Bay Glacier Cruise through Princess. I had enquired at the Pursers desk and was told that the transfer was included - but when their luggage tags arrived they were not correct. They had them picking their luggage up as if they were doing an independent tour. My sister-in-law went down to the desk to try and figure out what was going on. She was told by the tour desk that a transfer was needed – walked over to the pursers desk to purchase the transfer and was told it wasn’t needed – OK make up your mind! In the end we had to purchase the transfers. However they still tried giving them the wrong luggage tags. After several attempts they finally got the right tags. What a long day!
College Fjord – Slept in a bit as the forecast was for rain and clouds. Spent the morning packing up our suitcases. Hit the casino in the afternoon – put $5 in the slot machine and walked away with $55 – not too bad We were suppose to be cruising the fjords from 5:30 to 8:30 – so my hubby and I opted for the Horizon Buffet for dinner. The rest of the group went to the main dining room. They said the service seemed slow tonight, but that could have been due to the Baked Alaska parade that the servers participated in. The weather was foggy and rainy up until we got to the Harvard Glacier. It seemed as if the cloudy gave way to blue sky when we got in there. We pulled right up – when I say right up I mean – a couple hundred yards away. They told us that usually they cannot get this close, but since it was high tide and there was no wind we could get rather close. To give you an example of how close – while standing in our mini suite looking out the door, you could not see to the top of the Glacier! It was huge! And also very, very blue. What a wonderful way to end the cruise part of our trip!
Disembarkation and Whittier
Rain, Rain, and more Rain – very foggy.
Since we had indepent plans, we were able to get off the ship when ever we pleased. Since the rental car place in Whittier didn’t open till 8:30am – we opted for getting off the ship about 8am, gathered our luggage and sent 2 members of our party to get the rental. We had reserved a mini-van and confirmed it the week before with Avis. However upon arrival at Avis Whittier – they didn’t have our reservation and treated us very poorly. They stated that it wasn’t their fault – and that they were sold out! Hold on – I gave the gentlemen my copies of my reservation that I had printed out before we left that clearly showed our reservation and the type of vehicle – minivan. They became a bit more accommodating at this point. They didn’t have a minivan, but gave us a mid-size SUV – which in the end worked out just fine. We went back to the dock and picked up the rest of our party and luggage. We had booked the 6 hour Blackstone Bay Cruise that left at 11am, so we wasted some time by going into town, nothing was open except for a coffee shop L We wandered in the rain – came across a little coffee shop that advertised FRESH donuts! All I can say is Yummmmmm……… they sure hit the spot. We went back and got on the boat for our day cruise. I’m sure it’s a wonderful scenic cruise, but we didn’t see much due to the fog; A couple of otters and eagles. After our disappointing afternoon we drove into Seward – it rained the whole way, but the fog lifted. Spotted a moose on the way. Arrived in Seward and checked into our hotel.
Seward – We stayed at the Breeze Inn. Great location and very nice rooms. (As they should be for the price we paid.) Had dinner at Chinooks, which overlooked the harbor – but again the fog rolled in and visibility, was .5 of a mile. Dinner was pretty good. Headed back to our rooms as we were all pretty tired. We had decided that we would play tomorrow by ear, as it was suppose to be rainy and foggy again. We had booked an 8 hour Kenai Fjords – Captains choice tour, but in the end we decided to eat the $ instead of sitting on a boat of 8 hours and seeing fog again. The next morning we went over to the office to let them know that we would not be going out – before we could let the girl know that we were not going she stated that the seas were rough 12 to 14 feet and that if anyone in our party had problems they should take some type of medication before the boat left the harbor. My sister-in-law explained that we were going to cancel our cruise – the girl at the counter rudely interrupted and told us that there were no refunds given inside of 15 day. We said we understood – and that we were just letting her know. We drove into Anchorage – stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks along the way, yes, it was rainingL. We got to downtown Anchorage in about 1.5 hours. We spent the day wandering in downtown. Had a great lunch at the Glacier Brew house – Got to our hotel (Fairfield Inn Airport) about 4pm. We had an early shuttle to the airport so we were in bed early.
The fight was wonderful (we were in first class)! It was clear and blue skies. As we crossed over mountain ranges the captain would tell us what or where we were. We went over Glacier Bay and Skagway – it was even more beautiful from the air.
Up next – final thought and comments!