First Time Cruiser - Alaska Recommendations?

I'm looking for a great cruise to Alaska, that hits Vancouver as well. Any recommendations? I've never been on a cruise before.

Thoughts....

• most of us on the forum recommend looking at a ship that includes Glacier Bay to get the best glacier experience.
  
• pay attention to which month you are sailing. July cost more for statistical dry weather before the August and September wet weather. http://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=2667
  
• hope you have extra days in your Vancouver bonus port. Lots to do.
  

You can do both one-way cruises and returns out of Vancouver. How much time do you have? If a cruise and a tour of Alaskan mainland be of interest, you're looking at 7 day one-way. If it's just a cruise, then RT trips tend to be most common early and late in the season in Vancouver.

Best advice is to read trip reports here, port guides online and from books, figure out how many days & $ you can spend and which dates work for your family. Once you have the logistics of duration, dates & budget in place it will restrict your options - depending how flexible your time & money is you might have very few or many choices, which is where the trip reports, books etc. come in. Having never cruised, you don't start with any line loyalty issues - and Alaska is in general more about the ports than the ships.

There are some ships based in Vancouver for RTs throughout the season - Disney, HAL - but most lines only have one or two as they bring ships into and out of the area, May/September-ish. I like the May ones especially because you get some oddities, like 8/9/10 day trips that go from Vancouver to Seattle and visit more ports than usual.

Princess and HAL favour a one-day cruise to move the ship that will be doing 7day RTs from Seattle, but NCL seem to prefer a longer cruise instead - hitting Glacier Bay, ISP, Sitka as well as the trio of super-common ports in Juneau/Ketchikan/Skagway. This NCL season-starting cruise is definitely our fave of all the formats, and would let you do both Vancouver and Seattle as pre-/post-cities if you have the time!