Cruise Review: Radiance Alaska Northbound July 31-Aug7

[DisneyDestroyer]

Radiance of the Seas
Alaska Northbound (Vancouver -> Seward)
July 31 through August 7

Embarkation:
Upon arrival at the Vancouver airport, we checked the price for the RCI transfer to the ship: $35pp. Well, we know from past experience that a taxi is less than $50, so that's cheaper (there were two of us, so $50 < $75). Sure enough, the taxi was $45 including a quick stop for snacks.

I've never been on a cruise where embarkation was this easy.

We got to the pier around 1:00, where a porter immediately came out to get our bags from the taxi. They gave us the blank luggage tags, then whisked them off to our room - the bags all arrived within 1 hour. We went inside, security took less than 10 minutes. We waited about 15 seconds for a check-in, where we get our seapass cards. The upstairs area is normally full of people waiting for US customs, so we were expecting to sit for a while. There was nobody there. We walked straight up to a customs agent, gave them our paperwork, and went through to board the ship. The entire process, from arrival to physical boarding, took less than 1/2 hour!

Stateroom:
We had an aft balcony cabin, room 9660. This is our third aft balcony, and well worth it for an Alaska cruise. We had great views of the harbor at all stops, and a nice large balcony.

One note: it appears that RCI is officially removing chaise lounges from the aft balconies. We only had the two small chairs, and a large area of empty space. We asked our room steward, who told us that they're not supposed to be back there any more. However, there are always a couple people who ask, so they keep some chaise lounges in the "back room" and was able to bring them out to us.

The interior of the "D" balcony cabin is more spacious than the "E" balcony cabin, with extra storage and a longer couch. Very comfortable.

There were some drainage issues with the sink, and the shower had a curtain instead of a sliding curved door (like on Serenade) which led to some water splashing into the rest of the bathroom. Nothing major.

Food:
Overall, the quality seems improved from our past few RCI cruises. Steaks came in larger portions, soups were well-seasoned, etc.

A couple issues to mention:
* I had prime rib multiple times. It was cooked properly the first time (medium rare). The second time was bleu, and when I sent it back I got a response from the kitchen that it was cooked medium rare, but they can cook it medium well if I would like. Rude response, and the steak was nowhere near medium rare. The new "medium well" steak was only cooked medium well on one side, still nearly uncooked on the other.
* I normally enjoy the chilled fruit soups, but they took a couple out of rotation and replaced them with repeats. For example, we didn't get the green apple soup, but got three versions of wild berry (once adding cranbeerry, once adding pineapple).
* The two "tarts" (vidalia onion & brie-and-asparagus) are really quiches, but are not correctly named. I don't mind a quiche, but they should call it what it is.

I would like to especially mention the high quality of MDR food for breakfast and lunch. The breakfast was delivered to the table promptly (good for catching early excursions), and always delicious - eggs benedict with properly poached eggs, oatmeal that wasn't too mushy, bacon that wasn't underdone. The two MDR lunches had a wide variety of tastes. Both meals had made-to-order stations in the middle, such as hand-mixed custom salads.

Other eating establishments:
Seaview cafe is a hidden gem on the Radiance-class ships. Food is made promptly upon ordering, the menu is small but consistently good. My wife loves the onion rings, I love just about everything: fruit plate, chili, clam chowder, Nathan's hot dogs, Reuben, vegetarian burger, etc.

We visited Windjammer at different times of the day, except dinner (always MDR). The food was always decent and varied, although not as fresh as the other eateries. They always have an omlette/egg station for breakfast, and an Indian Vegetarian section for lunch. Some people don't like the Indian food, but I don't see a problem with it. There were quite a few Indians cruising with us, so it's nice to give them food that's familiar. It also provides a decent variety for the Vegetarian cruisers. I think my favorite Windjammer entree the entire cruise was the honey-stung fried chicken, although the steak-and-mushroom pie was also good.

Entertainment:
Definitely the best entertainment we've ever seen on a cruise ship.

The "Royal Caribbean Singers and Dancers" were all good. Normally only some of the singers are good, but this time they all had strong voices and stage presence. Normally some of the dancers are off or appear unenthusiastic, but they were all together and did a great job. Both performance shows were new, and they were great. "Piano Man" was alot of fun, with music from Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and a couple others. "City of Dreams" had a variety of songs based around a general idea of love songs. The sets and costumes were a bit weird, and there wasn't really a storyline, but the singing was great and the dancing was FANTASTIC. Vibeology was always my favorite RCI show, and I was initially disappointed that we wouldn't see it. I liked both of these more.

We saw most of the headliners:
* Los Diablos Gauchos is always a good show, this is the 3rd or 4th time we've seen them. They do a variety of Argentinian entertainment - singing, knife dancing, bolaros, and the Tango. They also teach a couple of Tango classes on the ship, and Eileen works in the C&A future booking lounge.
* Paul Boland is also a great showman, we have also seen him 3 or 4 times. He does alot of voices, and does them really well.
* Billy Garan performed two nights. Both were paired with a brief set from one of the Radiance of the Seas Singers, who did well but were on the short side. Mr. Garan was hit-and-miss. It was worth going, but not as entertaining as Paul Boland or the production shows.
* Jody Kolba was the only one we didn't see, but our traveling companions saw her and loved it. She sang a few songs but was mostly a comedianne.

Service:
The service was amazing. Every person we met greeted us with a smile. They were all friendly and helpful. We would walk down the hallway and other room stewards would say hi and ask if our room was OK. We were in the Windjammer and we'd have offers to help carry our plates or get us drinks.

Ship (general):
This ship looks great. No signs of wear at all. The flooring and carpeting all looks good, the walls are clean, etc.

Excursions:
We don't go on cruise-ship excursions for two reasons.

First, they charge more than booking directly, and give the tour provider a cut rate.

For example, a given tour operator's price might be $100. The cruise ship will charge $130, and only give the operator $70. Same bus and tour guide, but you pay more and the tour operator gets stiffed. We know this to be true for at least one of our excursions, but I don't want to say which and get them into trouble. I'll just say that they were very nice, we clearly got better service as a result.

Second, the ship tours are forced to sacrifice quality in the name of throughput.

For example, we had a really informative tour in Skagway, going up the Yukon trail way past where the regular tours end. We went to a few gold-mining towns, and visited Emerald lake. We were gone 7 hours, way longer than the regular ship tours. We also had flexibility to stop where the ship tours can't, because our tour only had 14 people instead of 50.

For another example, our whale watching trip in Hoonah spent over 2 hours in the pod area; the cruise ship excursion's boat only spent 40 minutes. We watched them leave long before most of the whales were even up. We got to see a full breach, and some tail dancing (when the whale keeps its body under water and flips the tail around in the air). Also, after the excursion was over, we wanted to walk around Hoonah for a while before heading back to the dock; the owner gave us her cell phone, and said to call when we were done and she would take us back to the ship. You can't get service like that from a cruise excursion.

The complete list:
Ketchikan: we simply walked around and went to the lumberjack show. We got the tickets at 8:30 for the 10:45 show, there were no problems.

Juneau: We did the four-glacier-and-dog-sledding with Era helicopters. It was a bit hazy because of fires in Canada, but the helicopter rides were beautiful, and the dogsledding was a blast. Be careful if you book through the ship, as there are multiple different helicopter tour operators. Era is the only one that travels over the four glaciers, giving info on different types and ages. That was really cool.
http://www.erahelicopters.com/content/

Skagway: Our tour up the Yukon trail was with Dyea Dave. We had Becky, who was really knowledgeable and informative. We called her "nature Becky" because she's a total nature freak. She hikes up the mountain to the lakes during the winter so she can cross-country ski. She and her daughter like to hike to the glacier-fed lakes to go swimming. This was a great tour. Becky took her time and stopped very often. She was terrific.
http://www.******************/

Icy Strait Point / Hoonah: We went on a tour with a Glacier Wind Charters. It's run by a really nice husband and wife. She made fresh blueberry muffins for the ride out, and drove us to & from the ship. He's the captain. He knows right where he's going, and has an underwater microphone so we could hear the whales talking to each other as they woke up. We stayed out in the bay for a couple hours, slowly trailing the whales as they swam around. As I mentioned above, she was kind enough to drive us back to town after we grabbed some crab legs at the Office Bar. This saved us some money, as the cruise ship charges $8 for the shuttle (round-trip).
http://www.g-wind.com/

Seward / Anchorage: Instead of the simple bus or train over the mountain, we got a private custom tour with Salmonberry tours. This was a huge tour, lasting nearly 10 hours. Nicole, our tour guide, met us at the dock in Seward. She was really nice & friendly, very patient through the entire trip. She took us to Exit glacier, and let us decide the level of hiking we wanted to do. Then she took us through downtown Seward to look around and purchase some souveniers. We took a beautiful drive up to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, where we could take pictures of Elk, Moose, Reindeer, Caribou, Musk Ox, Brown Bear, Black Bear, Lynx, Eagle, and Owl. It was really cool, you can get really close through the fences. After that, she took us up to Alyeaska, the Alaska Ski Resort. We took the tram up to the top and had a really good lunch, and took some pictures. We also watched a hangglider or two take off, then slowly wind around to the valley floor. After that, we headed up to Anchorage. Nicole took us to a cool lookout over the city, then to the airport. There was some confusion with the billing, but the owner straightened it out with no fuss.
http://www.salmonberrytours.com/

Disembarkation:
They have a new way of coordinating disembarkation, which we really liked. There are three main waiting areas, and these are the only areas that will announce when a group is ready to leave - if you're not there, you won't know if you're cleared. However, they give each group a time estimate. Our disembarkation time was 8:45, so we showed up at our area at about 8:35. They let us go at 8:50. This seems to have a few advantages: It gets more people out of their staterooms sooner so the room stewards can start flipping the rooms, you don't have a series of mad rushes all over the ship, and they can send people out in smaller batches which makes it easier to find your bags once you're out.

[DisneyDestroyer]

I'm not sure why it doesn't give the URL for Dyea Dave tours.

It's "Dyea Dave Tours" (all one word) dot com.

[Look2Sea]

Thank you for your review

My son and wife were on their honeymoon on 7/31 northbound, and had a great time.

It was great that you had such good weather during the cruise.

[Diamond Cruisers in Arizona]

We are going in just 10 more days, 9 actually as we always do day prior travel....a must these days!

Nice to hear the food, service and entertainment were all good!

We also have a D balcony cabin, center hump deck 9. In the past we always had an E, so I am anxious for a bit larger cabin and a sofa instead of a love seat.

Thanks for a great review.

***

[DisneyDestroyer]

Heya Diamond, your children's inheritence will have a great time with you. I hope the weather is as beautiful for you as it was for us.

[moakes]

We used Dyea Dave and Glacier Wind as well (earlier in the summer). Both were great. In Skagway we actually had Dave and he was really nice and customized our tour for us (it was just us). Couldn't agree more with you on the description of Glacier Wind Charters. They are really nice. BTW The Office Bar was one of our highlights with the freshest crab we have ever had - we watched the boat come in, the crabs offloaded, the crabs boiled and then served up to us. It was the best!

[Beach4me]

Excellent review...thanks!

Question - does Seaview have clam chowder every day? I may have just found my favorite lunch option.

[DisneyDestroyer]

I was actually a bit disappointed with the crab at the Office. It was a bit watery, and not that sweet. Of course, I'm comparing with the king crab legs from the Ketchikan Shellfish Restaurant right in front of the lumberjack show. Much sweeter, and being steamed instead of boiled limits the amount of water it absorbs.

I think Seaview does have Clam Chowder every day, at least while I was there. It was very good - creamy sauce, big chunks of meat & veggies. I'm not sure if they would have it for a Mexican Riviera / Caribbean itinerary.