Princess Alaska Connoisseur versus On Your Own Cruisetour

We have booked our third Alaska cruise (prior ones on HAL and Princess) but this time our first Cruisetour. We did a full suite cruise several years back and loved it so we now cruise less often so we can afford the suite experience.

So we've booked a Princess Connoisseur Cruisetour since we've read the quality of the experience is quite good. But we do prefer private experiences versus escorted, scripted, everyone-on-the-bus ones.

So should we change to an On Your Own Cruisetour and use the price difference to pay for the activities we'd like to do or stick with the Connoisseur one and let the planning be all done?

P.S. I normally love doing lots of research and planning but with other things we have going on I'm not sure I'll have the time this cruise.

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Why do any sort of CruiseTour? With help from here and the Trip Advisor forum for Alaska you can easily put together your own trip. Travel in Alaska is pretty straight forward. And there's nothing you can book through the cruise line that you can't book on your own. Having a rental car is the most efficient way to do it, or maybe rent an RV.

Good thought. For our first land-based Alaska experience and our problem with having research/planning time forbthis trip we thought having it packaged all as one trip would be a nice convenience.

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A "package" in Alaska, offers the least opportunities. You have months to put an ideal trip for you together. It isn't that difficult. As a suggestion- I'd book a rental car NOW. Then just cancel, if need be later.

If you don't want group point to point touring then don't consider any cruise tour- this is the basis of those.

Essential, in my opinion is to find out about the areas, and go to the places YOU want to include. Princess, especially parks people at their McKinley lodge at a great expense in "time" that sometimes could be better spent elsewhere. Every time, I stop there- there are hordes of people- just doing "nothing" in the lounges. And Denali - is more miss than hit.

I agree with most everything Budget Queen says.

And Denali - is more miss than hit.

Perhaps... but ohhhhhhhh, when Denali "hits"... (clear weather) it clobbers you and leaves you speechless.

We have done both an on-our-own tour with a rental car and a connoisseur escorted tour. At this point in our lives we prefer the connoisseur tour as it takes all the hassle out of the vacation.

When we did the rental car vacation in the late1990's, there were restrictions on where we could take the car. We were told not to take the car on gravel roads. That sure eliminated a lot of places we would otherwise have driven to. I don't know if such restrictions exist today. We also had to make lodging reservations well in advance in order to find a vacancy. Then there was the issue of finding the best places to eat meals.

There are pros and cons to both options. Only you can decide which one best fits you at this stage of your life.

When we did the rental car vacation in the late1990's, there were restrictions on where we could take the car. We were told not to take the car on gravel roads. That sure eliminated a lot of places we would otherwise have driven to. I don't know if such restrictions exist today.

The only roads that are gravel would be the Denali Highway and some of the Willow side of Hatcher Pass. And the road past Chitina.