Questions about upcoming Alaska Cruise

Hi everyone. We are currently booked on Radiance southbound cruise for next June, and have booked a three-day land tour beforehand. A few questions for people who have done this cruise before:

1. When should we start thinking about booking flights?
   
2. Is it better to book two one-way legs on our own, or book through Air2Sea?
   
3. What is a reasonable time to book return flights in Vancouver? From what I can see, most of the flights to east coast are either very early or very late.
   

Thanks,

Rob

1. Start tracking the price now on Google Flights

2. Do it on your own

3. 11 AM or later.

... Is it better to book two one-way legs on our own, or book through Air2Sea? ...

I would check both through Air2Sea and on your own.

This is the Air2Sea link: http://www.royalcaribbean.com/contentWithGallery.do?pagename=air_travel_programs

Just returned from the same itinerary on Sunday. We booked a round trip fare with Southwest from RI to Seattle because we wanted to spend a few days there prior to starting the land tour. We then booked a one way flight from Seattle to Fairbanks and another from Vancouver to Seattle through Alaskan Air. We paid approximately $750.00 per person doing it this way. We also spent the night in Vancouver, flying out at 9:15 to Seattle. Our return flight back East left Seattle at 3:25pm.

Karen

Hi everyone. We are currently booked on Radiance southbound cruise for next June, and have booked a three-day land tour beforehand. A few questions for people who have done this cruise before:

1. When should we start thinking about booking flights?
   
2. Is it better to book two one-way legs on our own, or book through Air2Sea?
   
3. What is a reasonable time to book return flights in Vancouver? From what I can see, most of the flights to east coast are either very early or very late.
   

Thanks,

 

 

Rob

We are sailing Radiance next May and have already booked our flights. We are also doing a southbound sailing and a cruisetour before our sailing. Our tour starts in Fairbanks but we are flying into Anchorage for a few days prior to the cruisetour as we found better flights into Anchorage. We are taking a quick one hour flight on Alaska Air to Fairbanks the morning of our cruisetour. We did not use airtosea since all but the short leg of our flights will be on miles.

For flights home from Vancouver, we did not find anything convenient to get us back to Boston at a reasonable hour, unless we fly out the day after the cruise. You go through customs in Vancouver prior to your flight, so do not book anything too early after the cruise.

We are doing a Northbound on Radiance next June :) I've been monitoring flight prices for a while, and decided to book right away with Delta. I feel that we got a pretty good price (direct flights from Mpls, comfort plus on Delta, approx $1200 for two people).

We will not do Air2Sea ever again... we did it for our last cruise and were NOT happy with the seats. I wish we would have booked on our own.

You should make sure to check out the Alaska cruise forum here... Lots of good info is being shared there!

We are also doing northbound on the Radiance next June. We booked with Delta about 3 weeks ago. ($505 per person) Looks like fares have gone up a wee bit since then.

You do not have to do one-way flights. You can book a multi-city or multi-destination flight. That is where you fly into one city, but fly back from another. For instance, we are doing Columbus --> Vancouver, and returning Anchorage --> Columbus. Explore both options, but I found that multi-destination flights were consistently cheaper.

I have also had bad experiences with Air2Sea. Once, they put me on a flight connecting through LaGuardia and my wife and kids on another connecting through Atlanta. LOL I can laugh now, but it was a mess getting that straightened out. I would recommend booking yourself.

We are also doing northbound on the Radiance next June. We booked with Delta about 3 weeks ago. ($505 per person) Looks like fares have gone up a wee bit since then.

 

You do not have to do one-way flights. You can book a multi-city or multi-destination flight. That is where you fly into one city, but fly back from another. For instance, we are doing Columbus --> Vancouver, and returning Anchorage --> Columbus. Explore both options, but I found that multi-destination flights were consistently cheaper.

 

I have also had bad experiences with Air2Sea. Once, they put me on a flight connecting through LaGuardia and my wife and kids on another connecting through Atlanta. LOL I can laugh now, but it was a mess getting that straightened out. I would recommend booking yourself.

Thanks. I discovered the multi-city option and have been pricing out flights. They are considerably more as we are flying from West Palm Beach area. But when I compared, it looked like booking direct was cheaper than Air2Sea.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

We are doing a Northbound on Radiance next June :) I've been monitoring flight prices for a while, and decided to book right away with Delta. I feel that we got a pretty good price (direct flights from Mpls, comfort plus on Delta, approx $1200 for two people).

 

We will not do Air2Sea ever again... we did it for our last cruise and were NOT happy with the seats. I wish we would have booked on our own.

 

You should make sure to check out the Alaska cruise forum here... Lots of good info is being shared there!

Thanks. We just did comfort plus to Denver, and I think we will be booking soon. At the moment, it's about $4,000 for three people - which seems insane. I still need to check flights from FLL to see price difference.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Love the Southbound itinerary. Did it twice when we lived in Anchorage.

My personal recommendation is to stay a day in Vancouver and fly out the next morning if possible. Also, if you want to save money look at both flights from Vancouver and from Seattle. It's a quick Amtrak ride to Seattle and there's public transportation to SeaTac. Not always cheaper but when we had friends from Chicago join us on a Southbound cruise it saved them about $150 per person going that route.

Hi! I'll share what we did for our SB Alaska cruise this summer.... if you are able to fly Delta from your area, consider this: we opened Delta AmEx credit cards around this time last year. The deal at the time was 50,000 Skymiles when you made $1,000 in purchases in 3 months. My husband and I opened separate accounts and used those cards to pay off a chunk of our cruise, book excursions and buy Christmas gifts (all things we had to do anyway). Easy! The bonus miles deposited into our account as soon as we paid the bill. In January, we used those combined 100,000 miles to book 6 one-way flights (3 travelers -hubby, myself, & our son) into Anchorage and out of Vancouver. All flights were covered by the miles - in total, about a $2700 savings for us. Extra perk? The card waives your checked bag fees at the airport! When we got home from the trip in July, we canceled the cards :) It was a huge cost savings for us!

As for flight times, we too were flying from the East coast, so we spent the night in Vancouver and flew home the next morning. So glad we did! We really enjoyed our day in Vancouver visiting Grouse Mountain and Stanley Park.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

We are in Vancouver and know all too well how tricky it is to fly to FL! When we cruise out of FL we look at flights to both FLL and MIA. I suggest going to site like flight network or sky scanner and sign up for updates to get an idea of the pricing and options. Follow it for a while to see what sort of flights there are and where your connections are. We are flying from YVR to FLL via Toronto one way for approx $175 each on Delta. Then I got flights back via Alaska air and used my points plus $6 to get back. Good luck. You will LOVE alasak cruise

We are in Vancouver and know all too well how tricky it is to fly to FL! When we cruise out of FL we look at flights to both FLL and MIA. I suggest going to site like flight network or sky scanner and sign up for updates to get an idea of the pricing and options. Follow it for a while to see what sort of flights there are and where your connections are. We are flying from YVR to FLL via Toronto one way for approx $175 each on Delta. Then I got flights back via Alaska air and used my points plus $6 to get back. Good luck. You will LOVE alasak cruise

Thanks! We ended up booking flights into and out of Orlando as it offered the best flight times and connections for us. One more thing taken care of, and now to start to planning excursions!

Sent from my iPhone using Forums