Linsuesue

I liked the Funderstruck Nacho Burger, but not sure if you can get it any more. The borracho beans, crispy corn tortilla strips, fried jalapenos, and pico de gallo were great! 🍔 🍟

Spirit Class-Vista View-Deck 4! Can’t beat the space, 2 rooms, magnificent view, and ample overhang for shade! 🛳️

The Spirit class ships-Miracle, Spirit, Pride, and Legend-have them.We have used the deck 4 aft ones, but I think they have them on decks 1, 5, 6, and 7 as well.

We have only sailed on NCL and Carnival. Hands down Carnival wins for pleasant, engaging, customer service friendly employees. I never even met the room steward on our last NCL cruise. We had to flag somebody down to get ice in our room. Our room stewards-and other employees-on Carnival have always been visible, friendly, helpful, and doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. I love the Groove for St. Jude on each cruise! I think it is such an honorable charity and it is fun to support it. The comedy clubs on Carnival are our favorite. We prefer the adult shows and have met many great friendly people while waiting for the shows to begin. I find the passengers on Carnival are more approachable. We were on the NCL Encore this year. There wasn’t anything fun about having to reserve a seat in advance for the shows. They way they handled large crowds waiting to debark for excursions was the very opposite of fun.

So happy for you! Hawaii is definitely one of those places were certain excursions are a must do! 🌋

Thanks for posting this! I checked twice this morning and there were still only 24 excursions for the week-now there are 79! I am so glad it was just a glitch!😀

I have read that is the best place for photo ops too! Thanks for the tips. I am originally from Colorado so can handle small amounts of cooler weather! 😀

Seasonal help can definitely be lined by now. I had a friend that used to work summers in Juneau. Since there were 60+ excursions available a few weeks ago that could be booked, operators had help lined up. I am concerned with the number of ships in port each day that are all accessing excursion operators. Skagway will have the Ruby Princess, NCL Jewel, NCL Sun, and Carnival Spirit at the same time. Juneau will have the Silver Muse, Safari Endeavor, SS Wilderness Legacy, NCL Sun, Carnival Spirit, Grand Princess, and Carnival Luminosa that day. Ketchikan will have the Celebrity Summit, Celebrity Edge, Carnival Spirit, Oceania Regatta, Ruby Princess, and the Crystal Celebrity that day. There is an extent to how many atv’s can be rented, or seats in jeep tours available, seats on a train, duck tours, canoe adventures, whale watching, bike tours… I am wondering( worried) if the sudden drop in number of tours available is that many tours have sold out already, because of having so many large ships at once in the port. I hope that is not the case, and that it will be a boom year for all excursion operators with many offerings for all. This will be our 7th cruise to Alaska and we have booked all sorts of excursions in advance, last minute, and private tours too. Think of Skagway with 3,782 from the Ruby Princess, 2,376 passengers on the Jewel, NCL Sun can have 1,976+, and Carnival Spirit with 2,124 passengers. I am wondering if people going now or booked for next year are seeing a big drop in availability. Maybe the 60% drop in offerings was a computer glitch and we will have more availability soon. I am thinking that anyone seeing an excursion they like better book as soon as possible.

Did the train excursion still run?

With 5 cruises booked, you are a good judge of glitches! I had a payment problem on the website a couple of weeks ago. I was putting $300 on the cruise, the webpage showed I was paying $300 on the $2800 balance. When I clicked on apply the payment, it had paid the whole thing off! I got it straightened out, but was wondering what else wasnt working on the website. Thanks for the quick reply and am hoping many more excursions will be added soon.

There is a cocktail called a Pink Flamingo🍷

I am booked on the Carnival Spirit to go to Alaska in July 2024. On July 14th of 2023 there were 59 excursions available. Shortly after that there were 64 excursions. I know there will be more added-like the Tracy Arm Fjord excursion…, but today when I checked there were only 24 excursions available. I have checked the port schedules for our cruise and there will be many big ships in each port each day. I dont know if this is a website glitch, or an indication of the extreme competition there will be for tour operators. Is anybody else going to Alaska next year noticing the same decrease in excursion availability?

If you cant get to your room mailbox to get your sign and sail card, I believe they can scan your boarding pass as well.

We used this service pre covid on Carnival and it worked flawlessly. When we sailed to Alaska in August of 2022, the Carnival people said they didnt have Port Valet anymore. If this is a port service, wouldnt it be offered to any and every cruise ship at that port?

That is good to know. I don’t know a thing about Royal Caribbean but want to check them out.

I guess traveling from one side of Florida to the other makes it a supersized side2side!😃 Thanks for the tip. Traveling across a state from port to port is real thinking outside of the box!

Thanks for the examples! This year is too soon, as we have 2 trips planned this fall. Next year is chunked up with 3 cruises booked. I am going to shoot for fall of 2025, because I found a B2B that would add up to 29 days. Your European trip sounds great! My first thought is that all of that time in Europe between the cruises sounds expensive. Having never been there though, but I figure hotels, gas, and transportation is high. What a unique way to avoid flying across all because of a whale tail!😃

Thank you! I really enjoy the planning phase of a trip. Today is the first time I have ever heard of a side by side. It sounds quite fun-as long as the itineraries weren't carbon copies of each other. I am so grateful for the Cruise Critic boards. I have found out so many great tips and tricks on here. This was the first place I found out about Spirit Class aft wraps-that later became Vista Views, the 4K Inside obstructed view cabins on deck 4 of the Spirit ships, the Grand Scenic Ocean view cabins on the Splendor-and other ships, what Port Valet was in Seattle…

Great information—Thank you so much! I have been checking out some websites that have repositioning cruise information on them. I would enjoy sailing on other cruise lines and need to be more diligent to check out their prices and itineraries.

Messaging in this board is disabled, and I have one question about the B2B you did. You said that you paid less for the B2B than some people paid for just one of the cruises. How does that happen? From info I am getting on here you have to book each leg of the B2B separately and then Carnival will link the 2 cruises together and each leg has its own reservation #. If that is the case, how do you get a better deal booking 2 separate legs? I have seen killer deals on Australian cruises but a $2,000 cheap seat on a 15 hour flight?! 😮

Haljo-thanks for the insights! You explained some things I had not considered. I am a big Carnival fan but have sailed on NCL too. It gets to be a bit apples to oranges when you start to compare and contrast multiple cruise lines. Keeping plane time to a minimum of discomfort and money, it seems to be worth the research to find every ship coming into every port on every day around the time you want to travel somewhere. I guess I thought it would be easier to figure out the back-to-backs/repositioning cruises, because many people on cruise critic sound so casual about all of the ones they have done. 500 people on one ship doing back-to-backs. Wow. Japan would be a 1 time bucket list item for me. I want to see as many places as I can in one trip not knowing if I will ever be able to come back again. You are correct-my B2B is a when-definitely not an if-definitely not a one time only.😀 I will DM you as I think of more things!

I live inland, so I have to fly to get to most ports, and I am OK with that. I know it is a dream to just travel by ship, but if I could take a transatlantic one way, that would make me much happier. That 8 + hour flight to Rome which would be $3,000+ roundtrip for 2 is why we havent ever been to Europe. We recently did a Panama Canal cruise from Miami to Los Angeles. If we had more time, I would have booked a 7 day Miami Caribbean cruise and then done the Panama Canal cruise. That kind of back to back shouldnt be that hard to set up.

If the first part of your cruise is Seattle to Alaska-it has a stop in Victoria, Canada, and then back to Seattle-that is fine. The second part would be Seattle to Hawaii-that would be problematic with no foreign port stop. I am thinking maybe one of the ships could go from Seattle to Australia, or Seattle-Hawaii-Ensenada-California.

Did you have to spend some days in Lisbon, or did the cruises mesh so well that they arrived and departed on the same day. I love the Pride and the Spirit class ships. How long was the flight to Rome?

I realize now the title should be, “Where to find repositioning cruises”, but I am learning the lingo as I go.☺️