rajkr74

I'm here to snip a few pictures of the Rotterdam to post on our 3-30-17 Roll Call page for our 30 day TA cruise.

Sorry, but I think you misunderstood my original post. I chose our cabin. We didn't go looking for an upgrade, it was offered to us. After researching what cabins are still available (and they are still available, guarantees not withstanding) I realized we are happier with our original booking.

 

But as I said earlier, if a better upsell offer for a balcony comes our way... then we'll consider it for sure.:)

That is great that the cabin you got is good. Hope HAL throws you an upgrade possibility.

I was commenting on your post #10 were you said it looked like there were still a lot of veranda cabins available. I didn't want you to get your hopes up that there would be a good chance for an upgrade. Hope you have a great cruise. :)

I did a "dummy" booking (as if I wasn't already booked) and hit the "choose my own cabin" button. The available cabins come up.

When you do a "dummy" booking and see all the available cabins in a category, that number is not taking into account the number of "guarantees" that have been booked. So if there are 15 cabins in a category showing available and if there are 13 guarantees booked then there are really only 2 cabins available. You will not know how many guarantees are out there since only HAL knows that number. So if you think the cruise is not selling very well, that assumption could be wrong.

We have done the 14 day Alaska cruise twice and it does in fact go all the way to Anchorage. The shuttle from the container dock is free.

Here is a link to our 2014 cruise photos on Microsoft OneDrive. There are 4 albums that you can click on for a slideshow of our cruise on the Amsterdam.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AsptL998yK8H2SKkoK_hdOn2eThQ

Dave,

As usual you are putting on a great "Live" cruise review. Love your photos also, (we have this thing about good photography) :D. Say Hi to your DW.

Rick

See you on board tomorrow.

Ted, boy you lucky person, you get to do this cruise also! Hope you have a great cruise.

Rick

Boy this looks like a fun cruise! :) Hope you have a great trip and am looking forward to your postings during the cruise. Oh.. also, welcome to the Pacific Northwest, we knew you were planning on moving here but we were not sure when. Hope the move was easy and simple. :p

Rick & Joyce

Sure glad to hear how fast some people's passport renewals are being processed. We have one that will need to be renewed in Nov. when we get back from a trip and before we go on another one in late Jan. 2017. I have been looking at the the US State Dept. website disclosing renewal times.

https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports/renew.html

This site shows Routine renewals at--4-6 weeks and expedited at--2-3 weeks.

Looks like you are getting the hang of posting pictures. It appears arriving into Denali that the clouds obscured the mountain for you?

Nice job Ron on posting pictures and a write up on your cruise. Looking forward to reading and seeing your pictures of the Land/Sea cruise which is the same as what we did in June but in the opposite direction. Hope you got to see the REAL animals in Denali as you saw in the airport. :)

We have been looking at this cruise for a few years, but looks like we waited too long. HAL has priced this out of our reach and the start of this cruise is too late in the summer for us.

It has been twelve years since I have sailed on Holland America. Can you bring a couple of twelve packs of soda on board? My husband doesn't drink coffee or tea. His caffeine is his Diet Dr. Pepper. We are sailing on the Veendam in December.

You can bring all the soda and bottled water that you like. Be careful if you pack cans in your luggage, I had one spring a leak inside my suitcase once. Luckily it was a clear soda and did not stain anything. Better if you bring it in your carry-on. I don't bring water on board because the water on ship is just as good or better than bottled water.

Would appreciate if any experienced HAL cruisers can steer me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance. [emoji846]

 

Finally found the Alaska Land+Sea tour tips document. Here is the link:

http://www.hollandamerica.com/assets//cruise-destinations/Tour_Tips.pdf

Hope this helps with answering questions. I did say in my review that one day in Denali is not really enough time to see the park. I would recommend looking at one of the cruises that stays there 2-3 days. There are pictures of our Tundra tour into the park in my review. If you have other questions please ask them and I will be happy to answer them.

Planning D8C 10 day (cruise first, 1 night Denali) for next year and we're a little confused about what's included.

I have to say that HAL's website makes Celebrity's look good [emoji6]

Are all transfers and hotels in Denali and Fairbanks included? And what am I doing wrong that I can't find this info on the website?

Would we be better off booking Denali on our own?

Would appreciate if any experienced HAL cruisers can steer me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance. [emoji846]

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

We just completed a 14 day HAL Sea-Land cruise Y2C. It maybe a little different than the cruise you are looking at. I did a review with pics on the main HAL CC thread a few weeks back. I discussed many aspects of our cruise which would apply towards your cruise also. Here is the link.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2380606

The hotels are all included. Hal handled all the luggage transfers. The only thing you had to do was put the luggage out in the hallway the morning of a transfer. While on land food is on your own or you can buy a Food voucher from HAL, not sure how much that would be on your cruise but ours was $1,300 for the 11 days while we were on land and included only breakfast and dinner. We did not buy it but did meals on our own.

The day before you get off the ship for the land portion you will get a package of info on where to meet and when to put your luggage out in the hall on the ship.

There is a PDF doc we got after booking that went into detail on the Land-Sea cruise. I have been looking for it on the HAL website but can't find it. I will keep looking and if I can find it will post a link later.

Hi Joyce and Rick , I just got through your excellent album and wonderful description of your cruise and land tour in Alaska . Nice to see you also enjoyed the Canadian portion !:)

I think there is little chance that Martha ever would like to do this (there are no palm trees in Alaska !:D ) so for me it was that much more of a treat to see all the great pictures that knowing you guys for a large part were shot by Joyce , she has a very good eye for that and I really liked all the very detailed descriptions that you have put together of this adventure .

This should be a real help for people who have booked a cruise like this or are thinking about it !

Thank you , great to see this, and BTW I have not given up yet on the Rotterdam , there should be a good drop beginning of September I think once the Explore 4 is over .

Thanks Tony, Glad you enjoyed the reviews and the pictures. I wanted to do this review so I hope others can see the things we saw and experienced. We did not see any other reviews that covered these type of HAL cruises. Yes, joyce is still the best photographer is this house but I get an occasional photo that comes out good.

Sure hope that things work out so that you and Martha can join us on this cruise, that would be great. Got our fingers crossed that it works out! Say hi to Martha for us and tell her Alaska was not that cold while we were on the land portion. :p

Rick I can't get over how beautiful your Pics are..Sent another hour looking at them all..You must have a wonderful camera..Especially enjoyed Mama Bear & Cubs..You spent a lot more days in Denali than we did..It must have been exciting..We saw only one Grizzly with a couple of cubs standing up but they were very far away..Had a Fox come up to our Bus..The driver stopped the bus & he came right up to the door to inspect it.. That too was exciting.. Now John my DH & I want to go back to Alaska again..

 

Thanks to you & Joyce for spending so much time on your wonderful review of Alaska..You might also want to pull out take all your posts & put it in the review section on Cruise Critic.. They stay there for a long time..

 

/SIZE]

Thanks, we shoot a lot of photos to get a few that are real good. If you like them here is a link to our Alaska Sea-Land album on Microsoft Onedrive with about 152 photos. Just click the first photo and it will start the slide show.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AsptL998yK8Hga1vAG3LkXsBVx164Q

Rick

Dear RAJKR...Please forgive the long post above..I'm reliving our HAL trip to Alaska through you.. Thanks so much! Your photo's a gorgeous.. Would love to go back to Alaska & see more of it..:D:D

No problems about your long post, I loved and enjoyed your story. :) We wanted to do a review on this Sea-Land cruise since we have not seen any reviews for these cruises. It was not a physically demanding cruise since Hal took care of all the luggage hauling for us. Glad you enjoyed the photos.

Rick

Wow thanks so much for this review. We have booked the reverse of this one for next June. Your pictures are great as is all your information.

Good to see another Oregonian taking this cruise. Hope our review helps you on your cruise next year. You should enjoy it like we did. :)

-63

Hi Karen!

 

I remember you and your DH from our 14 Alaska cruise in 2014 along with Rick, Joyce, my DH and myself! DH and I are thinking about doing the 14 day Alaska cruise again in 2017!

 

So sorry to hear about the health issues but good to hear you were back cruising!

 

We don't have a TA so I'll just contact our HAL personal cruise consultant and let her know our anniversary date. That's good to know about the 3 month window for future cruises. We will be on our upcoming cruise when we celebrate our 44th Anniversary this October. We are usually traveling around somewhere in Utah when we celebrate our anniversaries...so the scenery will be very different this year!

 

Utahtea

 

PS: Rick thanks for the use of your thread...now back to the regularly scheduled program. :D

Karen had the right answer. We let our TA know and they told HAL. We went to the Pinnacle the first night the 29th which was our actual anniversary day. But we did not want HAL to celebrate it that day based on the amount of good food at the Pinnacle and the Volcano Cake we had for dessert. So we celebrated the next night in the MDR where we got a nice cheesecake with Happy Anniversary on it along with a song from our waiters.

Thanks for your great review and the amazing pictures. As someone who has taken a number of HAL cruise tours (including the ever-changing Yukon tours) I really appreciate the professionalism of their tourist network.

 

I am looking forward to seeing the new gathering place at the Chalets. It had never occurred to me that it would become a convenient outdoor smoking area. Hopefully, if HAL gets enough feedback from nonsmokers, they can set aside a smoking area like they have established on their ships. This is definitely something that HAL needs to address so that the area can be enjoyed by all!

Yes, Denali Square is a nice meeting-gathering area with both wood fire pits and gas fire pits. We were forced to move a number of times when smokers sat right next to us, so like you I am hoping HAL designates some section of Denali Square as smoking and others as no smoking like they do on ship on the stern Lido area. We did add this suggestion to our survey after the cruise was over.

How many of HAL Land/Sea cruises have you done and over what time frame? This was our first and we truly enjoyed it.

Are those towel animals in the Canyon Lodge? I can't remember ever seeing that in a hotel.

 

Roy

Yes, they were on our bed in McKinley Chalet, Canyon Lodge because when we go on the Volendam at the start of our cruise, 6-29-16, we were celebrating our 42nd Anniversary. HAL must have notified McKinley Chalet so we got the towel animals and a card wishing us a happy Anniversary....pretty nice touch!

Hotels and rooms--continued

Fairbanks WestMark hotel and our room

Canyon Lodge of McKinley Chalet and our room

Anchorage WestMark, our room. Sorry did not get a photo of the outside of the building.

Hotels and rooms

All of our hotel stops were at Westmark Hotels owned by Holland America. All the rooms met our needs, were clean with reasonable signs of wear or tear on furnishings. Anchorage shows a little wear to its facility than the others and was the largest and busiest hotel of them all. Only Whitehorse, Fairbanks and Anchorage had small frigs in the room. Wish they all did. In Whitehorse we got lucky and got a kitchenette room and am not sure if other rooms had frigs like ours. We did not have air-conditioning in all of the units, not that it mattered. All hotels had free WIFI service, most of which you had to access the internet in the main lobby. Fairbanks and Anchorage had WIFI in the rooms. In Denali there was WIFI outside at Denali Square which is also the smoking area and it was hard to avoid the smoke. Every time we sat down we got chased away when smokers showed up. There was no wifi access in the lobby of Canyon Lodge (McKinley Chalet) were we stayed. I added this lack of Canyon Lodge WIFI as an item on the HAL survey that comes by email at the end of the cruise They should add it in the lobby there also. The only choice, rather than walk to Denali Square, was to catch a shuttle up hill to the Main McKinley lodge lobby.

There were on-site coin operated laundries at Whitehorse, Fairbanks, Dawson and McKinley Chalet (Canyon Lodge) in Denali. In addition, the Volendam also has a coin operated self-service laundromat on the Lower Promenade deck.

We thoroughly loved this cruise and all the sights we got to see. It amazes us that with 26 Land-Sea options HAL offers that they kept things organized with staff, shuttles, buses and hosts. It looks like a logistical nightmare keeping track of all the personnel and buses and making sure they are at their assigned spots on time. We did not have any glaring problems or glitches during the whole 14 days which shows HAL has its game all organized. It sure is nice to have our host Ben with us the whole time and he was most helpful and personable. Denali was marvelous and I still recommend taking one of HALs cruises that stops at Denali for at least minimum of 2 days but 3 days is better, any less and you miss out on many things that were fun and make that Nat’l Park special.

Skagway Westmark hotel and our room

Whitehorse Westmark hotel and our room

Dawson Westmark hotel and our room

Food and dining arrangements

HAL had a meal voucher one could purchase for $1,300 per couple for this 14 day cruise which gave you breakfast and dinner. If you purchased the vouchers you ate at the on-site restaurants at the WestMark hotels that we stayed at. We talked to one couple in our group that did buy the vouchers who said you were allowed to order one appetizer, soup or salad, one entrée and one desert. They said that there seemed to be no exclusions on what they could order and they did order crag legs at one restaurant. They said it was plenty of food and they thought they ate more on the land portion than they had on the ship. They then skipped most lunches since they had good breakfasts. They were happy with the arrangement and the food but missed the chance to eat at other establishments in the towns we visited but thought if they did it again they would not use the meal vouchers.

We brought some packages of trail mix and jerky to snack on for the long bus trips and other times. We also brought instant oatmeal, granola bars and peanut butter for breakfast if we did not want to go out or we slept in. We brought along Mini-Moo’s cream packets for the oatmeal. We found trying to locate a breakfast spot that opened early enough and not be rushed to get something before we needed to leave on the bus was very limited. Each room had a small coffee maker in the room that allowed you to also make hot water. At different towns that we visited we went to the stores and bought fruit for lunches and breakfasts.

We did eat out at restaurants also and here are some of the places we used.

Skagway

Dinners: Skagway Brewing company. Good food, typical “Bar & Grill”. Wild Alaska Catch, kind of a food cart with covered seating and good fish & chips.

Breakfasts: Bites on Broadway. Got breakfast sandwiches, very good. They also have other pastries & sandwiches. Breakfast & lunch facility.

Whitehorse

Dinner: Subway…….we were tired and not real hungry

Dawson

Dinner: Klondike Kate’s—The food was very good, service was not great when joyce’s dinner was not what she ordered. That took a long time to get her correct order. Sourdough Joe’s, food was OK.

Lunch: Cheechakos on front street near Sourdough Joe’s. Very good sandwiches and bakery items at decent prices. It’s a breakfast lunch facility.

Fairbanks

Dinner: All you Can Eat Salmon, prime rib and cod fish dinner in Pioneer Park. Very good and we got plenty of good food on a nice warm evening. Opens at 5:00pm.

Denali

Dinner: Music of Denali at The Golden Nugget Saloon at Denali Square. All you can eat Salmon-chicken dinner. Good dinner with a follies show afterwards. It was a HAL excursion.

Lynx Pizza on the Princess property. If you are staying in the Canyon Lodge take the Clinic Rd (service rd.), next to the lodge, up the hill to the restaurant, easy walk. Very good pizza, but should have ordered a small instead of a medium pizza, had pizza for breakfast the next morning.

Anchorage

Dinner: The Lucky Wishbone. MSN listed it as the best milkshakes in the state. About 15 blocks on same street as the hotel that can be walked or you take the bus there for $1.00 for seniors like we did. Great hamburgers, fried chicken and milk shakes like we had before shakes that come out of a machine from pre-packaged mixes, they were very good. It’s been there since 1955 and we would recommend eating there.

We did some research on eating establishments in each town on TripAdvisor prior to our cruise so we had some idea of where we might go in each town. Of course we did not use all of the 5-10 places on our list.

FANTASTIC pictures and review.

 

Love the dogs :)

 

Thanks so VERY much.

Thanks Jacqui, the dog sled demo was real fun and the dogs were great.