Live from the Sapphire Princess, Aug. 4, 2012

Well not exactly live yet since we're on the land portion of our cruise tour now, having spent a fun day in Fairbanks. We leave in the morning for two nights in Denali and then one in Anchorage before getting to the beautiful Sapphire Princess.

It was a long day yesterday. I worked from 7 until 4, we left for the airport at 5, flew out at 7:20, changed planes in Minneapolis, then finally arrived in Fairbanks after midnight. It was after 1 a.m. local time (5 a.m. our home time) before we got to our room.

Princess does have everything organized. Our cruise packets were ready for us at the airport and had our room keys and all the info we needed, including our luggage tags for getting our bags to the next destination after we set them outside our room. They'll appear in our next hotel room tomorrow. We still don't have a cabin assignment for our guarantee cabin, so I'm not going to send one of the bags directly to the ship as we originally planned to do.

Our cruise tour included excursions today--a sternwheeler cruise and a trip to the gold dredge. I really enjoyed the paddlewheeler. It was a lot bigger than I expected. They said full capacity was 800 passengers. We had about three-quarters of that on our trip. The boat stopped at a place where we disembarked and listened to young folks talking about their traditional native ways. The tour also included a float plane demonstration and sled dog demo.

Lunch was served family style at the sternwheeler landing. It was beef stew (or a potato leek soup for vegetarians), pasta salad, biscuits, and blueberry muffins. The stew was really tasty. And the waiters kept the serving kettles full.

The gold dredge was interesting as well. I wasn't crazy about the little train ride that took us to the dredging operation. We got the chance to pan for gold. I ended up with $15 worth of flakes. My partner had $14. A lot of folks turned their gold flakes into keepsake jewelry--little lockets that show off the flakes. We just kept ours in little film-cannister-like containers.

The gold dredge is beside part of the Alaskan pipeline. That was interesting too.

We'll look forward to following you - almost literally. We're taking a similar trip in a couple of weeks. We'll also arrive at the airport about midnight, but Anchorage rather than Fairbanks. We have a guarantee but no room assignment so it will be interesting to see how that works out for both of us. :-). Enjoy your trip!

In between the time I started this thread (15 minutes ago) and now, I checked our Cruise Personalizer again and we do have a cabin assignment. It's one of the Category CC ocean view cabins. Apparently, according to some old posts here on Cruise Critic, these cabins do have balconies, but the cabin stewards only unlock them while the ship is in port. We will have a balcony that we can't use most of the time. But since we booked an obstructed view cabin, I'm excited about having a balcony part of the time.

I've always been curious about those cabins. It will be interesting to hear how much you can see looking forward.

I've always been curious about those cabins. It will be interesting to hear how much you can see looking forward.

I never heard of this type of balcony. Why is it unlocked only in port?

I never heard of this type of balcony. Why is it unlocked only in port?

It was designed as a regular balcony cabin, but once the sghip first sailed, Princess found the balcony was unusuable when at sea due to the winds which constantly rearranged the furniture (which now does not exist) and could be a safty hazard to humans.

So it is now marked as a oceanview cabin even though you have an unfurnished balcony when in port.

In addition, there can be no light showing from the cabin at night due to navigational viewing needs, something difficult to enforce if people are using the balcony at sea at night.

We had a great time on the train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park. The mountain cooperated by being visible. We upgraded our included excursion (Natural History Tour) to the Tundra Wilderness Tour. I'm glad we did because we got to see so much more. The highlight (other than seeing Mt. McKinley) was when a mother bear and her cubs were right beside the road. The hiker who had stopper was glad to see our bus come along. He was frozen in place about 20 yards away from the bears. We also saw caribou, moose, Dall sheep and a lot of smaller animals. Overall, we saw a dozen grizly bears.

if you see Ian from the Cruise Director's staff, please tell him that the Zach Smith family sends a warm HELLO with Jammy Doughnuts!!

Hi, could you tell me what tour you were on as we are on an 8 day pre cruise tour in June next year,never been to AK, before we have booked the connoisseur tour and would like to know if we need to book anything else on the landtour besides what Princess is including, Many thanks.:)

Well not exactly live yet since we're on the land portion of our cruise tour now, having spent a fun day in Fairbanks. We leave in the morning for two nights in Denali and then one in Anchorage before getting to the beautiful Sapphire Princess.

 

It was a long day yesterday. I worked from 7 until 4, we left for the airport at 5, flew out at 7:20, changed planes in Minneapolis, then finally arrived in Fairbanks after midnight. It was after 1 a.m. local time (5 a.m. our home time) before we got to our room.

 

Princess does have everything organized. Our cruise packets were ready for us at the airport and had our room keys and all the info we needed, including our luggage tags for getting our bags to the next destination after we set them outside our room. They'll appear in our next hotel room tomorrow. We still don't have a cabin assignment for our guarantee cabin, so I'm not going to send one of the bags directly to the ship as we originally planned to do.

 

Our cruise tour included excursions today--a sternwheeler cruise and a trip to the gold dredge. I really enjoyed the paddlewheeler. It was a lot bigger than I expected. They said full capacity was 800 passengers. We had about three-quarters of that on our trip. The boat stopped at a place where we disembarked and listened to young folks talking about their traditional native ways. The tour also included a float plane demonstration and sled dog demo.

 

Lunch was served family style at the sternwheeler landing. It was beef stew (or a potato leek soup for vegetarians), pasta salad, biscuits, and blueberry muffins. The stew was really tasty. And the waiters kept the serving kettles full.

 

The gold dredge was interesting as well. I wasn't crazy about the little train ride that took us to the dredging operation. We got the chance to pan for gold. I ended up with $15 worth of flakes. My partner had $14. A lot of folks turned their gold flakes into keepsake jewelry--little lockets that show off the flakes. We just kept ours in little film-cannister-like containers.

 

The gold dredge is beside part of the Alaskan pipeline. That was interesting too.

It was designed as a regular balcony cabin, but once the sghip first sailed, Princess found the balcony was unusuable when at sea due to the winds which constantly rearranged the furniture (which now does not exist) and could be a safty hazard to humans.

 

So it is now marked as a oceanview cabin even though you have an unfurnished balcony when in port.

 

In addition, there can be no light showing from the cabin at night due to navigational viewing needs, something difficult to enforce if people are using the balcony at sea at night.

Aha! Thanks. Larry :)

Congrats on seeing Mt. McKinley - and the bears!

We had a great time on the train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park. The mountain cooperated by being visible. We upgraded our included excursion (Natural History Tour) to the Tundra Wilderness Tour. I'm glad we did because we got to see so much more. The highlight (other than seeing Mt. McKinley) was when a mother bear and her cubs were right beside the road. The hiker who had stopper was glad to see our bus come along. He was frozen in place about 20 yards away from the bears. We also saw caribou, moose, Dall sheep and a lot of smaller animals. Overall, we saw a dozen grizly bears.

We're booked for this excursion tomorrow. Hope we're as fortunate as you. Today all we had was rain and clouds at McKinley Princess Lodge.

We enjoyed the sled dog demo at the national park headquarters. The puppies are cute, but I preferred the adults who were accessible to pets. We hiked a brief bit before heading back to the lodge in time for our bus. We ate lunch at the Thai-Chinese food truck across the street from the lodge. The red curry chicken was delicious and more than I could eat.

Princess seems to have everything timed so well. As we got on the bus, the driver had our packets with our room assignments and keys for the next lodge. We did leave five minutes late because the bus driver had a packet for someone who did not show up on time. I’m hoping that they somehow got on the wrong bus. I’d hate to have to pay to get from one lodge to the next. The bus driver told us that the week before one of the employees missed the bus from anchorage to the lodge and paid $250 for a taxi to get back.

Everything was going smoothly for us until we got to the Mount McKinley Lodge. Someone else’s luggage was in our room and ours was not. I called the front desk and was told to put the other person’s bag outside our room and they would start to look for our missing bag. It showed up after dinner.

We ate in the bar and grill. If you want to eat in the fancier restaurant, make a reservation or be prepared to wait. My travel agent had recommended the asiago-crusted halibut. We missed it. Apparently we should have eaten in the restaurant at the other lodge. The food in the bar and grill was good. I just had an appetizer—the crab cakes—plus a side salad (and a delicious IPA).

Today is another down day for us. We’ll hike around the lodge property, eat lunch, then catch the bus for Anchorage and our next hotel. In the meantime, I’m hoping that the weather clears enough for the mountain to be visible. We have a wakeup call placed with the front desk for if the mountain becomes visible but they have not called us yet. (It’s 5 a.m. as I’m typing this. My body hasn’t adjusted fully to Alaskan time.) It's a light drizzle this morning. The weather forecast looks promising. It's supposed to clear up. But I'm not sure if it will be soon enough for the mountain to come out.

I'll look for Ian to say jammy doughnuts to him, whatever that means. I'm sure we'll run into him since we like to take part in the trivias on cruises. Unless he ends up being the guy who always does the sporting events instead of the brainy ones.

The thing to look for at Denali Princess Lodge is to see if your tour includes the Natural History Tour. If it does, you'll want to either upgrade it to the Tundra Wilderness Tour like we did or else cancel it and take one of the shuttle buses into the park. The Natural History Tour doesn't go very far into the park. Budget Queen (the Alaska expert on Cruise Critic) said that taking the Natural History Tour is like going to Disney World and staying the parking lot. You don't really get to see the park. Almost all of our wildlife sightings were past the point where the Natural History Tour turns around.

There are lots of optional excursions to take if you have time and money and interest. A couple who flew up with us from North Carolina did the flight seeing plane ride yesterday and said it was great even though Mount McKinley did not cooperate. Another couple (from our roll call) went white water rafting and loved it. The couple who shared our table on the train said that the ATV ride was also a lot of fun.

Hi Neal and Sam,

Hope you remember me from the Crown Princess a few years ago. Enjoying your blog...we are on the Sapphire in early Oct. For a California Coastal cruise...everyone seems to really like this ship, so I will be interested in your impressions.

You are missing alot of HOT weather in NC...enjoy your cooler break in Alaska!! You are lucky...we never saw Mt mCkinley..only from the airplane window on the flight from Fairbanks back to Anchorage (our land tour was in a different order).

Carole

Great, you've got me hooked, waiting for more and you haven't boarded the ship yet! LOL.

Looking forward to the additional posts. Enjoy.

http://luv2cruise.blogspot.com

Sure we remember you, Carole. That was one of our best cruises in terms of meeting people. We are having a great time. We did a short nature hike this morning with a ranger and then a longer hike on our own. Soon we'll board the bus for Anchorage--one night there and then another bus to Whittier in the morning to board the beautiful Sapphire Princess. We sailed on the same ship two years ago to Alaska, but that one was round-trip from Seattle.

Today's lunch at the 20320 Grill was good. I recommend the salmon chowder. We each ordered a cup of it, but I wished I had ordered a whole bowl (which the waitress said is double the amount).

Enjoying reading your land tour posts! Brings back great memories! Love the Sapphire and looking forward to reading your cruise posts!:)

Have a great cruise ...

Hope you have a great time.

Someone else is posting live from the Sapphire now and reports that they have new mattresses in their cabin. I'd love to hear if you have a new pillowtop in your cabin once your board. I'll be on the Sapphire in November and have been hoping they'll have the newer mattresses by the time I get there. Thanks.

Enjoying your live review! Thanks!:)

Yay! I love a great live from... Thanks for taking us on your vacation!

More please!:)

Thanks for your "live from" thread.

The weather never cleared. It stayed cloudy with a little bit of drizzle part of the time. According to our bus driver, only 20 percent of people who come to see the mountain are successful, so we’re lucky to have had a sight of it from the train and on the Tundra Wilderness Tour.

The ranger-led nature walk was informative but brief. The trail is less than a half mile long. She pointed out several interesting plants and talked about the wildlife. She said it had been about a month since they had seen a bear on the property. The bears go closer to the river once the salmon start. The lodge will close a trail when a bear is spotted on it.

We also enjoyed hiking a couple of the other trails on our own. The Hill Trail is aptly named. We made it up the hill and would have had a great view of the mountain if it had been visible. After hiking it, we ate lunch at the 20320 Grill. Both of us had the salmon chowder and a calzone. The chowder was delicious. The calzone was pretty good. Service was spotty. Our waitress was friendly, but it took a while for the server to seat us.

After lunch, we attended the nature talk on moose in the theater. The ranger was informative and had some good photos for her talk. The most fascinating to me were the photos of the antlers when the moose are shedding their velvet.

The bus ride from the lodge to Anchorage was long. I’m tired of buses and am ready to get on the ship. We stopped near Talkeetna to pick up a couple of passengers who had gone on a salmon fishing excursion. No one was allowed off the bus then. The bus stopped a little more than halfway to Anchorage to let people take a rest. It stopped at a place that served ice cream and had snacks available for purchase. I exercised willpower and did not get any ice cream. We had split a delicious brownie sundae the day before at the ice cream shop across the street from the Denali Princess Lodge.

Anchorage is a nice city, but I wouldn’t want to stay here much longer. We had a great supper at Orso. We split a crab cake appetizer. I had a parmesan and walnut crusted sole and DH had a crab-stuffed rock fish. Both came with Israeli couscous and broccolini. I had another IPA. We had tried to eat at the Glacier Brewing, but the host said the wait for a table was going to be 90 minutes. The wait at Orso was only 15 minutes.

We got lucky to be in Anchorage for first Friday. A lot of the galleries were open late. We enjoyed dessert (carrot cake) at the Cake Factory on 4th Street. There’s a huge souvenir store on 4th as well that has really cheap prices on jackets, T-shirts, and other souvenirs.

The Hotel Captain Cook is large. There’s a wine and liquor store across the street on 5th that we bought a few bottles of wine to take with us. The prices are not bad—just a dollar or two more than Total Wine for the wines we bought. Our room is beautiful and spacious. The bathroom is a little small. We have a third floor room in the second tower, so our view isn’t great, overlooking the roof. The beds are very comfortable, better than the beds at the Princess lodges.

Somewhere along the way, Princess changed our itinerary. We leave for Whittier at 10:30 this morning instead of the originally scheduled 9 a.m. We may not get to the ship in time for lunch in the dining room. If not, we’ll eat at the International Café instead of the buffet upstairs. The bus stops at a wildlife center between Anchorage and the ship.

Do you recall how much it cost to upgrade from the included Natural History Tour to the Tundra Wilderness Tour? Did you upgrade after you got to Denali? or did you do it before? We will be there soon and would like to upgrade. Thanks for any information you can give us.

Nancy

It was $55 per person to upgrade to the Tundra Wilderness Tour. If we had longer than just one night in the park, I would have canceled instead of upgraded and taken one of the park shuttle buses instead: http://www.reservedenali.com/shuttles.aspx. I had to go through our travel agent to do the upgrade. After talking to the people on our cruise tour who had taken the Natural History Tour, I was very happy that we had upgraded. They only saw a couple of moose and a caribou. A couple we talked with yesterday at the McKinley Lodge had spent two nights at Denali. They had taken the shuttle to Kantishna. I think the next time we come to Alaska, we'll be going on our own instead of with a cruise tour. That way, we'll be able to set our own schedule and stay longer at Denali plus see some of the places that the cruise tours don't go.