New Cruiser questions

We are all set to sail on our First cruise to Alaska on June 24th. We are staying in Vancouver 4 days prior to our voyage and I am looking for any advice, feedback, ideas, past experiences, best practices, and anything else you may have. We are doing a Suspension Bridge/Grouse Mountain tour and Vancouver Whale wtching tour in Vancouver. Our shore excursions in Alaska are Glacier Helicopter walk about, Raptors & totems excursion, and Yukon Expidition with the train tour. Thank you for your time to reply.

We did Alaska last year--amazing.

Totem Bight State Park is free admission and you can get the local "Blue" bus one block from the terminal for $1 each way. So if this is where you are going, there needs to be something worth paying for included. There are volunteer guides giving free tours. The only thing we could tell that the ship group got that we didn't was a cup of hot chocolate! And there is a Wal-mart in Ketchikan with free shuttle to/from the town (lots of crew use it)...should your teen have forgotten an essential! We got off the town bus at the Wal-mart stop and caught the free shuttle back into town. Worked great.

A big plus--most US cell phone plans work in Alaska ports. Not a huge necessity, but a way to check in if desired! Just remember to turn it off/airplane mode when you reboard the ship.

You have chosen an incredible itinerary. Alaska is such a beautiful locations for cruising, enjoy. If you are interested in seeing what some of your excursions may include, you may want to google "cruise videos" and then maybe excursions. The we is full of cruise information.

We are all set to sail on our First cruise to Alaska on June 24th. We are staying in Vancouver 4 days prior to our voyage and I am looking for any advice, feedback, ideas, past experiences, best practices, and anything else you may have. We are doing a Suspension Bridge/Grouse Mountain tour and Vancouver Whale wtching tour in Vancouver. Our shore excursions in Alaska are Glacier Helicopter walk about, Raptors & totems excursion, and Yukon Expidition with the train tour. Thank you for your time to reply.

We did Alaska last year on NCL and the entire family LOVED the Dogsled training camp. We called it the "dirt dog" excursion where they pick you up and carry you up the mountain in a Mercedes 4x4 All Terrain vehicle to where the dogs are already hooked up to the 4-wheel golf-cart-style "sleds". You get to meet the 15 dogs that will be pulling your group and then they take you on a dog-powered run for two laps around that circuit. We had a BLAST and for (only) around $80 per person it seemed like a bargain seeing as how all the glacier excursions were more in the $400 pp range.

The train was actually quiet boring even though we DID see a momma bear and her cubs and there is some OK scenery.

Recommendations: Get yourself a VERY good pair of LARGE binoculars. The larger they are, the more light they let in and the better you can see. We did Glacier Bay and they came in VERY handy as I could see EVERY inch of the ice cracking and falling into the sea as well as the Whales running along side the ship and even 5 bears that were on the beach. Most other passenger's were "Where is it" as they were trying to look through their teeny-tiny "purse-sized" binoculars.

Although it is expensive ($45-$85), you should stop at Tracy's Crab Shack and eat some DELICIOUS Alaskan King crab. One of the legs we have was a long as my arm. No joke!