Royksuk

Thank you so much for your replies. That's good to know.

We have been planning a Hurtigruten voyage for a few years and are really thrilled that it's finally going to happen.

We have booked a 12 day voyage on Nordkapp sailing on 17 October through Titan Holidays & our cabin is described as a "double cabin, USPD grade - this is a higher deck cabin"

I have been trying to look for more information but there seem to be some deck plans which mention "Arctic Superior" cabins with double beds & some which just show cabins with twin beds of which one is a converted sofa? I'm assuming one is from before & one after the recent refit but which is which & is the cabin we have paid extra for likely to be a double with unimpeded views?

We are really looking forward to this trip.

We found the views from the train to be much better especially when you go through Hurricane Gulch. The commentary is brilliant and you can get up & move around to see things better). We wanted to take photos which we found fairly easy on the train but next to impossible on the bus ( we travelled to Denali on the train & back to Seward on the bus so experienced both options).

We also found that you could get snacks at any time on the train & meals at sensible times whereas on the bus you just got three stops - the one for 'lunch' at 10:30 in the morning then one for ice cream & one just for the rest rooms.

I had my plan all set for Denali. I had even booked a cabin at McKinley Creekside.

 

A couple of things got me to the point of changing plans.

 

Our cruise ends in Seward.

 

Our plans were to take a narrated bus tour at 8 am to Anchorage Airport. It arrives at 10:30 am. At that point, we would rent a minivan and spend the day driving to Denali, with stops in Talkeetna for lunch and a food shopping stop as well. We would arrive at our lodge around 6:30 pm. That is really a full day driving. The second day would be the 8-hour round trip Eielson Shuttle bus. The third day would be a 2.5 hour rafting with another long drive back to Anchorage airport.

 

All of that driving and even the buses got us thinking if we wouldn't be better off in Seward for 2-3 days. The first day would be the National Park Kenai Fjords glacier tour with dinner at Fox Island. The next day we would do a kayak adventure at Bear Glacier and then take the domed Gold Star train from Seward to Anchorage. We would either fly out Saturday night or stay in Anchorage and fly out Sunday.

 

I would hate to think I'm missing out on Denali, but that day is really unknown and what we would see would be subject to weather and even luck on a mid-June day.

 

Any thoughts from those who have spent considerable time in both Seward and Denali?

First question - when are you going to be there? If mid September or early in the season then make sure you can get the full tour in Denali. We have just come back having done Denali before our cruise and although we enjoyed our time there we felt cheated as our 7 hour tour was substituted for a much shorter one which only went a small way into the park & missed the best areas for wildlife.

Apparently this is common at these times although our itinerary showed the full tour with no clear mention anywhere that it may be changed. We only missed the full tour by one day - people we spoke to who had done the full tour on the previous day had seen several bears, a wolf & moose - we got low grade sightings of 3 moose (including one in very poor light as they started the tour 1 hour before daybreak).

We only briefly passed through Seward but there really didn't seem to be much there.

We have booked a table in the Pinnacle restaurant on Noordam at sailing time (8PM) for a celebration meal. Does anyone know when they do lifeboat drill etc & how that works around meal bookings?

Can anyone confirm from experience if we need a visa or ESTA for an Alaskan cruise which finishes in Vancouver if we fly out the same day? We are UK nationals.

We had assumed we will but my brother is having problems having applied then received a request for additional documents with no mention of which ones or where to send them?

He has sent emails & tried phoning but got nowhere - when we tried to search we saw a comment on one of the official Canadian sites which implied no visa or ESTA was required if arriving by boat?

We are continuing efforts to confirm what is going on but just wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience or can confirm the requirements.

We are a party of four who are doing the Southbound cruise on HA's Nordam arriving in Vancouver on 24 September. From what I can tell we have to disembark at 8AM but our flight isn't until after 9PM so we need some way of killing time & are looking at this excursion.

Reviews on the HA site are a little mixed so have any of you done it? I read somewhere that the last bus is at 17:00 so would assume we need to aim to be at the station for the Canada Line transfer before then but are there any other gotchas we need to be aware of?

Is this recommended or is there anything better we could use our time for (bearing in mind we don't really want to cart luggage around all day).

I was recommended to look at a company called 'Cruising Excursions' (may be just UK?) They seemed to have a lot less choice & despite their comments on the front page of the website (Great value shore excursions, prices lower than the cruise lines" their prices for comparable cruises were notably higher than those for our cruise line (Holland America)