Land Itinerary Help Please

[henny]

We are booked on Island Princess SB Whittier to Vancouver Aug 16 - 23rd. We would like to take 5 days or so before the cruise to see some of Alaska. I know we want to see Denali, ride on the Alaska Railroad, see the pipeline. We will be traveling with my parents and our kids so 60+ years to 9 yrs. My husband and I have been to Alaska once before and did Denali, Fairbanks, and Seward. We want my parents to see things but we would also like to visit places we didn't see when we were there before. Any suggestions on itinerary for approx 5 days (could do a little longer if we needed to)?

[Budget Queen]

You need more time. Just doing Denali Park and Seward takes up your current time. With you adding the "pipeline" it adds another two days- at least in my opinion. It is NOT worth the time of getting up to Fairbanks, unless you have plenty of other interests?? I suggest you rethink, and find out your options with what time you can come up with?? This is about it for "areas", if you want to add Valdez, Homer, then more time. You probably didn't see everything in your "already" areas, I asuming? Where else were you looking at?

 

Otherwise, going into Whittier, has you either going direct to Seward- which I recommend or back tracking Anchorage. Consider a direct shuttle that will have you in Seward by late morning, unless you wish to take a Prince William Sound boat tour?? May also be able to get a transfer to Seward after, otherwise take the train to Anchorage, then back via train to Seward round trip spending at least 1 night. That would be the end of my train recommendations, since, again, taking the train to Denali Park, in my opinion, takes an extra day, which you don't seem to have? 2 car rentals would allow you a lot more freedom, to stop along the way, seeing plenty which you haven't already seen perhaps? If you list what you did last time, other suggestions could be made.

 

So you need to look at what you want for this trip, before you get into an itinerary. There is no point in sections, and area planning, if you can add days down the road?? Figure out all this first. Then, plan an itinerary, not doing it piece by piece.

[henny]

These are some of the options we've been thinking about. Trying to find a happy medium between seeing some of the great things Alaska has to offer while keeping the budget down as much as possible.

 

- Fly into Fairbanks, rent a car, spend the night in the morning drive to the pipeline viewing area then head to Denali.

- 2 nights in Denali doing the shuttle bus tour

- Drive to Anchorage spend the night there and shuttle to Whittier for cruise the next day.

 

A longer version of the above would be to add another couple of days and go from Denali to Homer or Seward before the cruise.

Instead of renting the car we can do the train from Fairbanks to Denali to Anchorage which gets us our train ride but then we don't have the freedom to stop along the way.

 

Another option would be to fly to Anchorage, rent a car and loop the other way - driving to Valdez spend 1 or 2 nights there, then up to Fairbanks (with a one night stop along the way?) Drop the car in Fairbanks and do the train to Denali and then on to the cruise ship from there via Anchorage or possibly the direct to Whittier from Denali (can you book that with Princess independently?) Also not sure how much extra it is going to cost to drop the car in Fairbanks? This option seems to be a minimum of 6 nights? Does that seem reasonable?

 

On our first trip we had 2 weeks land only. We had a couple of days in Seward - Halibut fishing - Kenai Fjords tour, Sea Life Center, a couple of days at Denali, some time spent in Anchorage but didn't see many attractions there - mostly just to fly in and out. A week or so in Fairbanks (a friend lived there) - drove to Artic Circle, Riverboat tour, Mine/gold panning with a dinner or the dinner might have been another event, North Pole Santa store, tour of the Air Force Base.

 

As far as time for this trip, we could fly to Alaska anytime Aug 7th or later (with the cruise departure on Aug 16th) - it's just the additional days add up at $200+ a night, plus food, etc. But we are flexible at this point. We need to decide on our itinerary time frame so we can book our flights. Once the flights are booked we are locked in to that number of days.

 

I really appreciate your help through this as it is a lot to plan and even harder when trying to accomodate more than just my own family and our needs.

 

I appreciate all comments and suggestions. Thanks.