Sun Princess 8/29-9/5 quick review

Lovely ship. We had a standard balcony cabin and while I was worried that it would be extremely small, it was functional and the balcony was good enough.

Embarkation from Vancouver was a breeze. We arrived at the terminal about 10:30 am and were in our cabin by 11:45 am. Our bed had the extra feather pillows and eggcrate on it when we arrived (requested by fax a month earlier). It was quite comfortable.

We went to most of the evening comedian shows and they were good to hilarious. Had PC dining which was fine. We usually ate around 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. and waited at most 10 minutes for a table, usually about a minute or two.

Our excursions:

Ketchikan - Salmon River Falls jetboat trip (ship-sponsored). Good.

Juneau - Adventure Bound (11 hr boat trip to Tracy Arm and both Sawyer Glaciers for $119/pp). Absolutely excellent! Best excursion ever! We saw a gazillion humpbacks even though whale watching was not actually part of the excursion --- watched one juvenile breach 4 times in a row, within a space of about 5 minutes. Got up close and personal with the ice floes and harbor seals bebopping all around us. The boat was actually moving the ice away from us as we crept closer and closer to the glacier. I just can't say enough about this excursion. THANKS CORAL.

Skagway - rented a car through Avis (nice Grand Prix). It was cloudy in the morning but still a beautiful drive. We made it to Emerald Lake (finally).

After the cruise was over, we rented a car in Anchorage and drove to Denali where we had reservations at 6:45 am the next morning for the NPS Wonder Lake shuttle (another 11 hrs, this time in a converted school bus). Let me count the animals we saw: 13 grizzlies, 4 golden eagles, 1 absolutely gigantic bull moose that the driver said had a 6' rack, largest she had ever seen in her 9 years of driving the shuttles), 3 other moose (a mother and her baby ran beside our bus while were stopped--that was cool), couple of dozen sheep (Dall? Bighorn? the males did have big horns that wound around), lots of caribou, a cute little marmot, 4 ptarmigan and a couple of magpies. Now the highlight! We were watching a grizzly about 50 yards away from the bus eating blueberries. After about 5 minutes, he slowly started sauntering toward us (people of the bus said he was about 400 pounds, just a little kid), walked around the back of the bus to sniff at a couple of tripods some very scared photographers had left when they jumped into their camper when they saw the bear approach, and then the bear rolled over on his back and started scratching himself on the gravel road, all 4 feet up in the air, RIGHT BESIDE OUR BUS WINDOW! He was also covered in blueberry stains. :D

After another night in Denali, we left for Talkeetna where we had reserved a room at the Talkeetna Roadhouse and had an early morning McKinley summit flight. I can't even describe the flight with my mere vocabulary. It was just too awesome.

Great cruise, great trip. Any questions, just ask.

Glad you loved the trip. I was with Coral on this cruise and we both agreed that the Adventure Bound trip to Tracy Arm was fantastic even though we didn't get anywhere near the glaciers. Would repeat it again if possible.

Doug

Cindy - I am so glad you enjoyed your Tracy Arm excursion! That boat trip probably ranks as my favorite excursion of all time. And it sounds like you saw a lot more then we did!

Thanks for the review - sounds like a wonderful trip!

Are you going to be able to post pictures of your trip - I would love to see those bear pics :)

What kind of shape is the Sun in? How was the food? How was the service?

She's in excellent shape, just beautiful, and the perfect size for us. We ate all of our meals in the dining room, and the food was very good most of the time with a few bland exceptions. Service was also very good in most areas of the ship. I don't think our steward was very experienced and we did have a few issues with him but he was very nice and tried hard. The only time I became somewhat impatient was when I stepped out of the shower one morning and realized he did not replenish our towels the evening before. He was extremely apologetic when my husband called him, and was a nice fella.

Coral, I'll post some pics soon.