wsp2205

Okay one more post here and then I am out of this forum for good. 1. Thank you everyone for your time and interest 2. For those who gave kind and respectful suggestions, thank you! Appreciate your help. 3. For those who are opinionated and judgmental enough to pass on so many unnecessary and hostile comments, I tried my best to understand: I was told a lot of people who love cruising are seniors and in general the older we become, the less we are open minded to other people and to different way of thinking. It doesn't necessarily mean we mean to be rude, at least not for most of the senior population, I hope. 4. What has happened here has convinced me cursing is indeed not the kind of vacation we would enjoy. To satisfy my mother's desire to see glacier, we would let her do this cruise with her younger sister, and all rest of us have decided to go meet them up in Whittier instead. Luckily we are still in the window of full refund. I guarantee everyone neither my mother nor my aunt will ever come to this forum to get frustrated the way I did in the last few days, so those who plan to continue on preaching about what they enjoy most in a cruise ship could save their time. but it's a free world and if they do want to do that to each other, go for it. at least we are out of here. 5. And my mother and aunt WILL decline house keeping service as long as it comply with the cruise line's rules. So save your opinion. This doesn't change whatever you think.

Pls explain how and why declining room service would interfere with other passengers enjoyment of their cruise!?! Exactly like you said, this is my vacation. I don't know who gave the right to so many people in this thread to be so judgmental about what kind of vacation is 'right'. I never understood why a lot of people stay away from the cruising way of vacation before reading through this thread and now I am getting it.

Respect means never imposing anything one believes upon others. For those enjoy housing keeping service, pls enjoy it to the utter most. there is absolute no intention in this original post to CORRECT for that. The OP deserves every right to stick to whatever he and his family believe they would enjoy. Respect is mutual.

thank you! so if I can't easily get an uber or taxi from the cruise terminal, how easy/difficult is it to take the bus over the Juneau airport? I assume from the airport it may be easier to get a taxi/uber out. Looks like it's ~10miles on google map. Do you by any chance know roughly how much it's going to cost? Appreciate the help in planning!

Yes, sorry, I meant Juneau. Sorry for the typo.

Our group will split up at the Skagway stop. Half will go on a small boat excursion, and the rest will like to explore Menddall glacier, but we don't want to spend $69/person on the transfer and be limited by how much time to spend there. So our current plan is to rent a car from airport. That will avoid having to walk 3 miles round trip by taking city bus. The cost of car rental is probably about the same as purchasing transfer, but we will have the car for the rest of day for whatever we might want to do. Just want to check if this is going to be a good idea? a few questions related to this setup: 1) what's the best way to get to & from airport? I saw there is a public bus or we can catch a taxi. Anyone knows how much a taxi might cost for a ride from cruise terminal to airport and vice versa. also is it easy to catch a taxi with so many people arriving at the same time from one or a few big cruise ships? 2). I read about permit running out in 2023. Will we be able to get permit to the glacier if we self drive? I don't know how this permit thing works to be able to tell if this self driving idea makes sense at all. thank you!

I don't expect this post to receive so many comments -- seriously I thought it was a naive new cruiser entry level dumb question. But reading through the comments is fun. No we don't bring our own silverware or napkins. Covid is the only thing we really are paranoid about because of my mother's age and health condition, but she really wants to see Alaska so we decided to take the risk, but we plan to take as many precautions as possible, including wearing masks indoor, choosing a less busy time to eat or order room service, sanitizing our rooms as much as possible on 1st day (that's why we don't like it to be cleaned by the staff), and bring our own compact towels and compact linens. Honestly the towels/linens thing isn't really about covid, but more a habit we get into after watching a documentary about the secrets of hotel industry. we do plan to wash linens mid-way through the cruise trip and self serve laundry is actually one of the reasons we chose Princess over other options. We don't plan to go anywhere crowded. The purpose of this cruise trip is to see glaciers, not to enjoy the ship itself. It's likely we will get off the ship for 3 full days and stay outside on the deck for most of the last 2 days when there is glacier view.

Thank you everyone for chiming in so quickly! I am surprised that it's a policy to have stewards and/or supervisors to come into the room to inspect the cabin, but from the security perspective, it kinda makes sense. The point that it's a rule that they would change bed linens every four days is a bit hard to understand -- we actually don't even use those linens and always bring our own compact travel linens after covid. Yes, many of these things are due to covid precautions since I m traveling is a 78 year old who is more susceptible to things than the rest of us with stronger immune system. I will see if we can ask for an exception for this linen change policy. For the rest, we don't really care if any staff need to come in just to check and make sure everything is fine and secure.

I am new to cruise way of traveling so this question might be very elementary to many. But we usually decline house keeping service with any hotels we stay with (ie. we always hang the 'do not disturb' sign out of our door knot, and just go to reception desks asking for additional supplies if we run out, such as new towels, shower shampoo, hand soap, etc. And in most cases that's not even necessary as we don't change towels every night) -- It's just a personal preference that we don't like any strangers to touch our personal items including sheets and towels while we are still using them. It works fine with hotel stays, but on cruise ships, can we do the same for our entire trip? Would it be considered rule to the staff? We would happily pay the required staff appreciation regardless. Since there is not going to be reception desk to go to, if we decline house keeping, where to go if we run out of something? Thank you!

Thank you everyone, Tracy Arm it is! though the steep price point makes it a bit high on the invest side hope return matches up! I have also booked Matanuska tour and plan to include exit glacier in our itinerary.

Glacier scenery is the primary drive for our group and hence I am tailoring our itinerary towards this interest, but as some folks in the group are against the idea of getting onto any aircrafts, any helicopter/seaplane based glacier viewing is out of the question. So getting onto small boats or catamarans is the only option. We will be on Princess 7-day north bound with a few days of land extension at the end. So we will cover glacier bay and college fjord (I know it's going to be from a distance as compared to what 26 glacier is going to offer) from cruise ship, and we have already decided to book Kenai Fjord tour (still debating btw half and full day). But I am considering one more and are hesitating between Tracy Arm Fjord excursion offered from the Juneau port stop vs 26 Glacier cruise from Whittier. I know every glacier is different and much of it depends on personal preference, but to help those who haven't seen any real glaciers in life, are Tracy Arm and 26 Glacier somewhat replaceable to the other? If we want to be cost/ time effective and choose one out of the two, which one would be recommended pls? Thanks a ton!!!

Thank you both, wolfie11 and Coral! I gave up the crazy train+self drive plan and went ahead with the booking of 9:30 Bennett round trip before too late. Having a more leisurely scheduled morning outweighs the desire to see some downtown attractions during their business hours.

My crazy idea of train+self drive aside, anyone can help with the main question of this thread, which is is booking 7:30 tour too risky for a 7:00 port arrival (Princess) pls? thanks!

The reason of a train + self drive combo is because I read through the detailed description of the longer 7-8 hour tour that goes to Bennett Lake, they all stop at each scenery stops for 10m and have 1.5 hour lunch break in a less interesting spot and there are a lot negative reviews for this schedule. So I start to go to the wildly and premature thought of a DYI setup that still allows train ride experience. Just did a random google search for car rental, it's available in June but very pricy for 1 day at $230 price point with no add-ons. but here is the math: train ride round trip (~$150*2)+ self drive ($230+$30gas?)=~$560. VS Bennett Lake excursion ($265*2=$530). Quite close for 2 people and if we can find more people to share car rental (this is probably what I will try for if we go for the DYI option), it's going to be cheaper. Maybe I am thinking the whole thing wrong?

I am trying to book some excursions (not via Princess to save a few bucks), but wonder if I should leave some time to be safe than sorry in case of delays? Say if cruise schedules to arrive at Skagway at 7:00am, is it better to book the train/bus tour leaving at 9:30am instead of 7:30am? I read through threads in this forum on which white pass tour is better. It looks like many like train only round trip, but other like to see more with bus going all the way to carcross. we surely want to see more, but don't really like to have an assigned time limit at each stop (and some review says the stops are not so nicely designed that they had way too much time in boring stops and too little time in good stops). So I start to think if it is going to be crazy to book the round trip train ride to white pass. then book a car to drive all the way to see Bennett Lake, Emerald lake, etc. 3 questions here: 1. is this going to be an overkill and unnecessary? 2. will we even have enough time for this crazy itinerary? we will be in Skagway 7am - 8:30pm as was shown on cruise schedule. 3. is that drive scary with cliffs and drop-offs on the side? Thank you!

I am comparing the price difference between those from cruise line vs those from operators: for the whitepass train/bus combo round trip, chilkoot's 7.5 hour tour asks for $230 and princess's Yukon expedition and white pass railway 8.25 tour asks for $310. Still a sharp difference of $80/person. Am I missing something on they being pretty close? I guess I might be looking at different tours, but they look similar.

that's just crazy. at this price point, is it still worth it? I do get that people splurge on these expensive Alaska tours, but spending ~$700 on a 2-person tour is something I am trying to make sense of. Also, is this tour , or other glacier related tours (such as glacier viewing or landing tours) weather dependent? If one has to splurge on one of these and get unlucky with nasty weather, which is not uncommon in Alaska destinations, that would be very unfortunate. This also makes me think: would it be too late to book this tour after we get to the port -- it would help mitigate risks such as cruise delays and/or bad weather. but not sure if these things sell out?

We are planning the June 2024 cruise with 3 port stops: Kietchenkan, Juneau, and Skagway. We are planning to include white pass train ride, Mendenhall Glacier, possibly one glacier helicopter tour or Tracy Arm Fjord & Glacier, and the well known Lumberjack Show. But we have limited budget and would want to save some $$ by not booking from the cruise line. The best will be walking up the port booths and find what we want. One big advantage would be it would be weather flexible. However, I am not sure if some (or all) of the popular ones will sell out that I will have to pre book. If so, by how far ahead please? thank you!

I am checking the price from Truealaskan for this summer and they are asking for $314.24 instead of $275. where did you guys see $275 price tag pls?

And the main reason I am asking this before booking the cruise is because I am checking one way flight options. they are quite pricey and hence I am trying to optimize time and $$. Thank you all!

thank you everyone for chiming in! Yes I am asking for an Alaska cruise on Princess, onboarding/disembarking from Vancouver and Whittier. I haven't decided on if to take north or south bound of this cruise though.

1st time on cruise this summer and hence very elementary question for those who wouldn't mind: if the cruise start time on 1st day is 4:00pm, when will be the latest time to get to the cruise port? And for cruise arriving at 1:00am, when off-board will start the following day, or rather the question is: what time can I plan to leave port area to be safe to catch a flight leaving on the same day? thank you!

thank you both so much!

Hesitating between the option of mid June north bound itinerary with Princess vs a late July similar itinerary with HollandAmerica. Itinerary-wise Princess and HA are similar at similar price point (for interior staterooms), but the later has an option of choosing larger interior which has more space. I would think mid June is slightly better as it's less busy and less likely to run into bad weather than late July, but so sure. Is this right? In other words, it is worth giving up a bit more space for better chance of dry weather, just by a little bit I assume? Thanks much!

I am considering 6075 or 7049 on Noordram. Anyone knows if these have corner love seats or sofa?