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LIVE! From Celebrity Solstice May 11th 2018 Alaska Cruise


islandtime87
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Thanks for your quick reply. Since you are on your way to Skagway, I have a question for you. We are going there in August with the Solstice. We are trying to book the train trip and I am so confused and have received conflicting information from Solstice.

 

Do you know which trip (short trip) goes by bus to White Pass and does a return on the train. If you can answer great, but please don't waste you precious cruise time.

 

 

 

It may be longer than you want to do, but last year we did the Yukon Adventure and White Pass Railway excursion. We went by bus up to White Pass and beyond to get to the Yukon (amazingly scenic and we saw a bear on the side of the road!) and then turned around, had lunch at a sort of gorge with a suspension bridge and then took the train down. I recommend it.

 

 

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Our Butler Stevo is amazing!! Now that I’ve had my coffee in the room...better views of Ketchikan from the Balcony.

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Yes, we had Stevo as our butler on our Alaska cruise on Solstice in August last year. He is wonderful!! Enjoy your cruise! We loved it!!

 

 

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Yesterday we had lunch and dinner in Luminae and both were great. In Juneau we ended up going to Glacier Garden Adventure, it was pretty cool and a last minute thing. We got an uber and it cost about $25 each way, it was nice since we controlled the timing. If you don’t have anything scheduled and have already seen Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau then I def recommend the Glacier Garden Adventure.

 

 

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It is Captain Tasos Kafetzis...he said during the muster drill this was his first cruise after having 3 months off so I’m assuming he will be on the ship for June 1st. He is hilarious btw...

 

 

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He was our captain on our New Zealand cruise and that was his last trip before he had time off. He is really funny....enjoy his humor.

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Just enjoyed an amazing hot glass show. They made three beautiful pieces and at the end of the show they had a free raffle where they gave away 5 pieces total. It was a very nice experience.

 

 

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Enjoy them because they are going to go away for a more "interactive" hot glass experience. We loved these shows during our New Zealand cruise.

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It may be longer than you want to do, but last year we did the Yukon Adventure and White Pass Railway excursion. We went by bus up to White Pass and beyond to get to the Yukon (amazingly scenic and we saw a bear on the side of the road!) and then turned around, had lunch at a sort of gorge with a suspension bridge and then took the train down. I recommend it.

 

 

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Can you tell me what the code is for your excursion. Thank you in advance.

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Long update coming soon but in the 15+ cruises we have taken, this was the first cruise where me and my husband were the last two people back on the ship. We saw them pull back the gangway as we stepped on, not a good feeling but also an amazing one knowing that we made it back on board. All aboard was 5:30pm and we got back on right at 6:05PM. We are so grateful and will never book an excursion through an outside company.

 

 

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Long update coming soon but in the 15+ cruises we have taken, this was the first cruise where me and my husband were the last two people back on the ship. We saw them pull back the gangway as we stepped on, not a good feeling but also an amazing one knowing that we made it back on board. All aboard was 5:30pm and we got back on right at 6:05PM. We are so grateful and will never book an excursion through an outside company.

 

 

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OMG I've been that person, was anyone cheering or yelling at you from their balcony-bc they did at us lol.

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We were on Solstice in February/March. I noticed from the daily you posted under the Culinary Delights, it shows the Mast Grill hours for burgers & dogs, then the Crab Shack from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. What is the Crab Shack? I've not heard of it before.

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So long update from our crazy day yesterday in Skagway.

 

I’ll start from the beginning, we had done this exact same cruise in May 2015 and in Skagway we had done an excursion through Celebrity called Laughton Glacier Snowshoe Hike, it was an awesome experience, the white pass railway takes you to around mile marker 16, if you are on the excursion you get off and then do a 5-6 mile round trip hike with amazing views of a glacier. We had an awesome time with that excursion in 2015 and wanted to do it again this time.

 

So this time initially Celebrity offered the exact same excursion and we signed up through them, 4 weeks before the cruise, we got an email from Celebrity stating the excursion had been cancelled. They never said why but it was because not enough people signed up for it. We really had our mind set on doing this particular excursion so we found out who celebrity contracted out the excursion to and it was a company called “Packer Expeditions” so we called them and directly booked the excursion through them. The day started off just like our experience 3 years ago and hike and the views were amazing. We did a 5.5 mile round trip hike with amazing views just like last time. The place where the train had dropped us off we made it there at 3pm and our pickup time was supposed to be around 3:20 PM, and with that timeframe we would have been back in Skagway at 4:20 PM with the all aboard time being 5:30 PM. Well that did not happen and this is where everything that could go wrong started to...

 

The White Pass Railroad company that operates the train is the major culprit at fault here, they had a train that had engine troubles and it delayed everything. We were told it was only a 30-45 minute delay and not to worry, then it turned into oh it might be another 30 minutes and that another 30 minutes turned into a total of 2 hour delay in getting back on the train. While we were waiting to hop back on a train two trains passed us. This is where I blame both packer expeditions and the railroad company, they knew we were cruise ship passengers and needed to co-ordinate our pickup to make sure we made it back on the ship on time. This was a delay because of them and packer expeditions works closely with the train to do multiple other hikes and excursions and could have made things happen. Our guide had a radio that they use to communicate with the train personnel. Three trains passed us on the way down with plenty of empty spots and did not stop to pick us up. The fourth one did stop to pick us up around 4:55 PM and only had passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship which was scheduled to leave Skagway Port an hour after our ships departure time.

 

Our saving grace was the third train that had passed our train 10 minutes before had Celebrity passengers on it and they had excursions through celebrity so the ship wasn’t leaving them behind. We got to the Ruby Princess dock which is far away from where our ship was docked, as soon as we got there we were the first passengers off and the train company had an SUV waiting to quickly take us to our ship, about 5 minute drive away. It was 6PM, the ships departure time and we were freaking out...

 

We made it to the gangway and there was a bus that was loading passengers to the ship, these were the people from train 3 that had excursions booked trough Celebrity and of course Celebrity waited for them. The car we were in pulled in right behind the bus and we ran onto the gangway, all the people on the port side of the ship are clapping at this point, we made it on at 6:05 PM, as soon as my husband got on, within a minute the gangway was pulled back and we started our departure from the port, we had a whirlwind of emotions going through our minds at that time but the biggest was a sigh of relief and happiness about having made it back on board. The ship would have left us had it not been for that third train that had Celebrity passengers, we made it back with not even a minute to spare.

 

Moral of the story - In Skagway never book any excursion that involves the train unless you go through Celebrity directly. Never book an excursion directly through Packer Expeditions as they did not go above and beyond to make sure you get back onboard in a timely way.

 

Now to end on a positive note...pictures from the excursion itself...it truly was an awesome experience up until 3pm and all the delays that started happening.

 

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Put a review into Trip Advisor with your concerns on how Packer Expeditions handled this problem. I’m sure their office in Skagway could have got in touch with the ship regarding the situation with the train and how it might affect your return. Packer Expeditions has excellent reviews on Trip Advisor so I’m sure they would take your concerns onboard. Also companies don’t want bad reviews, bad for business.

Awesome photos. How hard was the hike?

Sandra

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Put a review into Trip Advisor with your concerns on how Packer Expeditions handled this problem. I’m sure their office in Skagway could have got in touch with the ship regarding the situation with the train and how it might affect your return. Packer Expeditions has excellent reviews on Trip Advisor so I’m sure they would take your concerns onboard. Also companies don’t want bad reviews, bad for business.

 

Awesome photos. How hard was the hike?

 

Sandra

 

 

 

The hike was moderate intensity. They can tailor it to be slightly easier than what we did.

 

 

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