donaldsc

+1. We did a cruise that went to just the Falklands for 3 days and S Georgia for 8 days. Not sure of the current impact of avian flu but imagine being on a beach in S Georgia with 300,000 nesting pairs of penguins on just one of the many beaches we stopped at, many many fur seals and a ton (literally and figuratively) of elephant seals. It was far and above the most wonderful trip I have ever taken. DON

Just make sure that you know the difference between black bears and brown bears and what to do if you are attacked by one of them. The responses are different. As others have told you make lots of noise while you are hiking. If you accidentally get between a mother and her cubs all bets are off. If you need more info check out this site - https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=livingwithbears.bearcountry DON

Try Google Maps or contact them using the address on their WEB site. DON

Of course it is. You just will have to go outside on a deck to sit outside and watch the world go by instead of doing it in your own room.

If I remember correctly we did that tour w the grandkids off one of the Princess ships. We and they enjoyed it. You get to go into the mine which was different from most of the gold tours where they never actually did any mining. DON

We are doing a B2B 18 day cruise with 7 days on the 1st cruise and 11 on the 2nd. I did a search here and people talked about a good deal for a large bag of laundry either every 7 days or or every 9 days. How have they handled this for you on a B2B. If all the days count I should get either 1 or 2 bags of laundry. If each of the B2B counts as a separate cruise I will not get any laundry done at all on the 1st cruise and will have to wait until almost the end of the 2nd cruise to get my laundry done. DON

There is one possible advantage for an on-your-own tour to a location that is not close to the ship. That is that as long as you are back to the bus pickup on time you do not have to worry about missing the ship. DON

Do I interpret your post seriously or was it a joke. You actually showed the steward a print-out of all the suite benefits that you expected to get and because you did not get 100% of them you did not tip him. Please tell me that you were joking. DON

I see it as a way of NCLof trying to extort money from passengers after they madea horrible decision of parking their ship out of town in Ward Cove. Instead of just walking off your ship into town as you can do with most of the lines you get to pay $100 to get there. Paying $100 for "free" donuts, coffee and beer seems a bit much to me. DON

InsureMYTrip and Trip Insurance Store are both good brokers. DON

Not unusual at this time of the year. The next time you do AK book a cruise pick one that goes to Glacier Bay. You can be fairly certain of making it into GB as opposed to the other glaciers visited on AK cruises. DON

Try the Rome2Rio site. DON

One example on the AK cruise tours that say that you have 2 days in Denali. This is what actually happens. Your train arrives in about noon on day 1. By the time you get into your room it is probably about 2 in the afternoon. On day 2 your train leaves shortly after 1 PM in the afternoon. That means that you have maybe 25 hours in Denali including your sleep time. I can come up with other examples of cruise company misrepresentations if you wish, DON

Do they offer free cabins to officiants of every religion that request them. Again - I have absolutely no problem with providing space in the theater or in a meeting room to a member of the crew or to a passenger to do a service but I have a very big problem to providing a free cabin to an officiant. I do wonder if an officiant from a small religion or an unpopular one would be accorded the same privileges accorded to a large religion such as catholics or a large protestant sect. I really think that cruise lines should just stay out of the religion business and stick to the cruising business. It would make it much easier for them. DON

Is the priest being given free passage or paid by the cruise line so that they can perform masses on board. If so I would find this totally unacceptable since this would mean that my cruise fare is being used to provide a religious service that I do not believe in. This ignores the many people on board who do not believe in catholicism and whose faiths have been treated very badly in the past by the catholic church. Except for allowing space on board for layperson passengers the cruise lines have no business supporting any religion including mine. DON

I would totally disagree w this. If you try to find accurate information on the cruise company's WEB site you will often get inaccurate information and almost always promises that the cruise company wants you to believe will happen on the cruise. DON

My first AK cruise was in the ship that is named the Alaska Dream which was neat because it is a catamaran. However it was a bunch of years ago and it is now owned by a different company (Alan Marine) that has a long history of running AK cruises so my information on the current condition of the vessel is out of date. You might check out the internet for reviews. DON

As of May 23 there are 86 posts on the topic of butter. Hard to believe. DON

If you like sailing vessels check out Star Clipper cruises. https://www.starclippers.com/us-dom/. They are much more pure sailboat cruises than Windstar. DON

The people who gave you that info are not 100% wrong although I would say that looking at an AK trip they are mostly wrong. For many trips to other places there may be something to what they say but not to AK.. There are WEB sites out there that talk about small ship AK cruises. One more thing that I can not emphasize enough. Large AK cruise lines are very good at writing up the tour description to make it seem as if you are getting something that is not quite what it will end up being. Read the cruise descriptions very very carefully and come back to CC if you have any questions before booking. DON

You need to define exactly what you mean by "big ships" and "small ships". You can do AK on anything from a ship that holds 50 people to a ship that holds 5000 people which I call the Monstrosities of the Seas ships. We also do not know your cruising history. One thing that you should remember that AK cruising is different from cruising to places like the Caribbean. If you take a Caribbean cruise the on-ship amenities can be important. When you take an AK what is important is what is outside of the ship and the cruise itinerary. AK itineraries can be tricky and you meed to read them very carefully. The biggest ship of our many AK cruises held about 2500 people and I felt that was bigger than I wished. Our 1st AK cruise was on a ship that held 50 people and it was wonderful. Since then we have done 2 more AK cruises on ships that less than 200 people. They were also wonderful. There are 2 especially wonderful things about the small ships. First of all their trips are sort of flexible. If the ship is here and there is something really interesting over there the ship may be able to head over to the more interesting spot. For example on one of our cruises there was a large pod of whales doing bubble feeding so we headed over to watch them for over an hour. This would never happen on a large ship. Second you will have short off ship expeditions on Zodiacs which will get you really close to to stuff that even the small ship would not get to. My ideal ship size is less than 1000 people. For example we have just booked a cruise to Spain, the Canaries and to northern Africa on a ship that holds 200 people. I will admit that they are more expensive than the larger ships but I live to travel and I also can afford it. Hope that this helps a bit. DON

I would be willing to go on a cruise where EVERYTHING is unbundled. That way I would only pay for what I want. As an example on a cruise where drinks alcoholic and otherwise are included I might have 5 or 10 drinks per day including cokes, tonic water, specialty teas and a couple of glasses of wine. On my recent 8 day cruise where I had to pay for my drinks the bar bill for my wife and I totaled about $20. We should have the opportunity to pay for only what we use. DON

I have been to AK maybe 12 times so I have some preconceived notions about AK trips. If this was my 1st trip I would say that GB is a necessity. In fact Hubbard Glacier would also be a necessity as Hubbard in some ways more spectacular than GB because it is very large and you can get fairly close to it. The problem with Hubbard and also Endicott/Dawes is that while you can be almost certain to get into GB often the ships do not get into the others because of ice. For those who have said that the ship you take to AK is almost as important as the itinerary - I would totally disagree. The ship might be important for a Caribbean but to me the only thing that counts is what is outside of the ship. Just my opinion. DON

Yes. But sometimes No. DON

We have a difference of opinion on sea days. Some people love them. I dislike them intensely. However note that the OP has not answered the questions on asked on my response - # of sea days and cruise length. DON