masterdrago

After looking at where you  might want to see, it can sometimes be helpful to look at what port and when different ships are where... http://m.cruisett.com/

Wanted to pick the brains of experienced timelapsers on the forum. I'll most likely have a GoPro and want to set it up for timelapse when our ship spends 3 hours in view of Hubbard Glacier. Anyone wish to share their interval times that worked for them? I'm thinking two seconds between images about equates to ~4300 frames and several gigs at 1440 rez. Any input would be appreciated.

While doing some pre-planning for A DIY land tour, you might consider spending some time looking at The Ultimate Alaska Road Map Book. http://www.alaska.org/assets/content/related_items_pdfs/The-Ultimate-Alaska-Road-Map-Book.pdf

We are booked for a similar trip next May. I like the layout of AKStafford but if I'm correct the train departs Anchorage at 6:45am. That's the detail that has forced us to do the 3:00pm motor coach. It just kills a day taking the rent car back to Anchorage.

Looking at some of the bright beach scenes when there is an overcast sky, something that looks all too common in Alaska, the pix running on auto, aperture priority and spot metering look slightly under exposed. The beached there are "white" not grey. That might be a learning point. How well do the circular polarizing filters work on super wide?

Thanks for the advice. Gardyloo, those are some pretty stunning shots of the glacier close up. The two bodies I'll be taking are both DX. I'm big on wide also so the D5100 will have the 18-200 and the D7500 will mostly carry the 10-24. I've got a backpack that houses all the gear. If I remember right, about 18# total including the 28-300 and 150-600 (not completely sure why I'm taking it but better that it is in Alaska than Texas). When we take some of the driving tours, it might come in handy. I'll take some advice given here. To bad I'm not still in Navarre Florida with those "white" beaches. I'll take a look at the shots on the beach to see what I used for settings. I've got lots of time to work this out (May '19). Folks here are very helpful.

In the past when I know I might be wanting to do a lot of post processing or trying to take "artsy" images, I just take jpg and Raw at the same time. I may consider that but I'm expecting to take hundreds of shots over the 16 days we will be there. The new bodies I have fill cards pretty fast and I may be taking video as well. They both have settings for Beach/Snow but I've never used them so am not sure what to expect. Under/over expose?? I live in SE Texas so may not have much of a chance to practice. I also just got my first GoPro 7 black, so that will need a good deal of "playing with" prior to the cruise. Any advise and suggestions will be welcome. I had not thought of bracketing. That's a good suggestion. I did a lot of that during the last solar eclipse.

We're doing a pre cruise land tour and 7 day cruise next year. Since I'll be using a DSLR, I was wondering if I could get some advice on settings when taking pix that will mostly will be of ice, snow and glaciers. We will be doing a couple of flight tours over glaciers. I do not remember what I did in 1995 using Velvia film.

When we booked with them back in early October, they were fast to respond and were clear on how everything was going to work. I had read many reviews both here on CC and on Trip Adviser this last summer.

We had originally booked a 6 day land tour through our cruise line (pre-cruise) next year. It seemed to be an overwhelming and daunting task to DIY. But after setting aside the time to look things over, it became a no brainer to DIY. For only slightly more $$$, we have far more and interesting excursions available, better places to stay and much more freedom to explore on our own. A rent car was a must and although it will take up the better part of one day to get it back to the Anchorage airport and get back to Seward, the other hours will be all ours.

9 hours ago, ARRTrain said:

The news today says Alyeska can not open the slopes due to no snow.  Another rain storm coming & too warm to start their snow making machines.

Here is their snow report.

https://www.alyeskaresort.com/snow-report

12 hours ago, Jimbo said:

 

 

There is no where to tender at Icy Straight Point, it's impossible no other place to dock besides the big dock for the cruise ships........................one of the ship port times will be 6:30am until 3:00pm...other ship docks 3:30pm until 10pm. It will be light longer so don't let the port times get you down on the second ship port times.

 

Radiance docks first ....

Thanks Jimbo. That is useful info for us and yes, we (Radiance) are there 6:30-3. I had sent RCI a note asking about that but had not heard back yet.

It is good to hear that there were so few injuries. Also that the roads are getting passable and repair. I was wondering if the asphalt plants were cooking up their product this time of year. You mentioned little to no snow. I've been following wed cams at Alyeska since we have a stay booked there and they show a lot of snow on the adjacent mountains around Turnagain Arm as well as their slopes (which I figured was man made).

2 hours ago, Budget Queen said:

There is only one dock.  In the past they had different port times.  Otherwise one has to tender.     Not ideal.  

I agree, very not ideal. And yes, the Celebrity Eclipse is sailing Alaska. And correct, the Ovation is not stopping at Hoonah, except for May 16th. The Ovation is such a huge ship. Looks like they do mostly Skagway and Juneau where they unfortunately dock with us. They also do Sitka (May 17th) and Hubbard Glacier (May 18th).

23 hours ago, We Be Floatin ! said:

If you had to choose one port, which would it be Skagway or Icy Strait Point?

We're on Radiance and will do both. You might consider looking at the Port Passenger Load at http://m.cruisett.com/.

When we are in Icy Straight, we share space with Celebrity Eclipse so the load is 5,353. In Skagway we share with Ovation (big ship), port load is 6,681. The next day in Skagway, the load is 10,636. Big crowd! I have no idea how these small towns can accommodate such high numbers, but they seem to do it well. We wanted to do the Lake Bennett train but they do not run it that far the day we are there so rented a jeep for the day in Skagway.

On 11/20/2018 at 8:40 PM, clskinsfan said:

I am booked on a May cruise with Celebrity. I just received notice that Tracy Arm is being replaced with Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier. This is our first Alaskan cruise and we are wondering what the differences are between the two?

I had no idea that they did that switch. We're booked also in late may for two glacier cruises. one with a small boat in Prince William Sound and the other in Tracy Arm. It will be interesting if they change the one in Tracy Arm.

Geez. Talk about being piled on! We are taking one tour out of Whittier because we could not work Seward into out timeline and get the rent car back to Anchorage. Renting from Anchorage and returning it to Seward was nearly 10x the $$$. The average speed was of concern because I thought I would miss something going that fast. And yes, different cruise. And I'm sure the OP now completely understands that they will get back in time to nail the 18:00 train back to Anchorage. Thanks to Budget Queen for the detailed help and assessment. With nearly 20 years hanging out on this forum, I appreciate that experience. Now back to the Dallas Cowboys........

1 hour ago, Budget Queen said:

 

So you are just speculating.    For those of us who do these tours frequently,   your "racing around",  claim is pure hogwash.  🙂  Never has this been the case,   stops are made for wildlife,  with plenty of time for all to enjoy.    Extended times for glacier views-   which you do NOT get anywhere near the experience with your route of Bear Glacier.    BIG difference  that is not preferable,  again for most repeaters.   

I totally agree on your Bear Glacier comment :=] It is nothing like the tide water glaciers that MM visits on the longer tours. From the reading I've done, one of the best reason to do a glacier tour is to see a tide water glacier. And hopefully to see calving in action. That's why we have budgeted time in our 16 day visit for two full day glacier tours, two half day whale watching tours, as long a train ride as we could find, and several jeep and ATV tours into parts of the Yukon away from towns. My math on speed and distance still stands. That can be figured out from several thousand miles away. You cannot cover 140 miles on the water in 6 hours without averaging over 23MPH.

You might want to look at your date there and check if you can witness a Bore Tide and have a better chance of seeing beluga. Basic info is here but you will need to research next years tide times. One works out perfectly for our arrival after picking up our rent car in Anchorage next May.

Ditto here. Very excited. They seems well liked by others that have taken their small boat experience.

After reading your post, it is a shame that we will not be able to make it as far as Polychrome Pass. I'm all in favor of wide expansive views. We had other criteria that sort of scheduled our trip. We are spending 2 days exploring the Talkeetna area, and 2 days at Grand Denali Lodge. Both of those rooms (for 4 days) claim to have views of Denali. We have scheduled an ATV tour very close to Denali Park, a jeep tour out east of the park on the road that goes to Paxson, a grand Denali air tour, and an extra day of no tours. May try the transit bus to Taklat for sure. Just seeing Mt. McKinley will be nice if the weather allows. I hiked near Anchorage in the mid 90s and several times we were treated to a view of the mountain and range. It was spectacular then and I'm hoping to share with my wife a closer view.

I got the speed estimate from their quoted miles covered on the Prince William Sound tour (when they had it). It was a long tour, they said 146 miles. I used simple math to come up with the average speed. Understand, it is an AVERAGE! The boat we were looking at booking was one of the fastest tour boats in Alaska (there words) and when looking on Wiki, I think it was max speed of 33ish MPH. It just seemed that to cover 146 miles in the length of time of that tour meant that a lot of the time we would be racing about. Other than that, I have no issues with boat speed - we cruise Lake Conroe in a pontoon boat from 4-40mph for the last ten years. And no motion sickness here except on that bad A## carnival ride a few years back after stuffing myself with crayfish!! And Budget Queen, it will be our first time on a cruise in Alaska. I spent the mid 90s hiking their but never any whale or glacier watching. I am keenly aware of the difference between 300 minutes and 360 minutes.

8 hours ago, mapleleaves said:

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As noted by PP, there is a HUGE difference between the 5 hr and 6 hr tours. The 5 tour doesn't leave Resurrection Bay.   It's the route marked in red on their map.  https://majormarine.com/route-map/

 

That was one of the things that got my radar up concerning the cruise we had booked with Major Marine - you cover a lot of water really fast. In fact, when I looked at the distance traveled against the minutes on the water, it worked out to an average speed of ~26MPH. I remember when I figured that out, we came to the conclusion we wanted a slow and easy tour. We asked ourselves do we want to add 1 hour but quadruple the distance covered. I will have to add that all the reviews of Major Marine are very good.

One of the things on our bucket list for our trip next May is to see a tidewater glacier up close. That's why we have included two glacier watch tours on our cruise and land tour. If this is the same desire for you, I would most definitely take the longer cruise with Major Marine. We had their Prince William Sound cruise scheduled but then they moved all their cruises to Seward and it became impossible to work the longer cruise out of Seward into our schedule. We managed to get an 8 hr tour out of Whittier with Lazy Otter and another out of Juneau several days later. Again, talk with Major Marine for best advice.

Although the train station may be close to where Major Marine disembarks, I would say that is cutting it pretty close. If you look at reviews of the 5 hour Resurrection Bay Cruise, they see pretty much the same stuff but an hour shorted. And you get back to port 60 minutes b4 your train leaves. I'm pretty sure I talked with someone about leaving our luggage prior and I only think there was a $6/bag fee. Call Major Marine and talk with either Charlytte, Tayja, or Alyson. I'm sure they can make you feel more confident about the return time.