Alaska

[sweet teacher]

Princess or Carnival, Seattle roundtrip?

[mapleleaves]

Which one has the best port times ?

You want to be in port long enough and at the right time of day for planned activities.

[Coral]

What ports and glaciers do they go to?

[Northern Aurora]

Reading the trip reports, organized by year, at the top of the Alaska forum page may help you make some decisions.

[puppycanducruise]

What about Vancouver?

Round trip or one way.

[kennicott]

I looked at both line's Southeast Alaska itineraries. To say the least, I'm not very enamored with Carnival's cruise info, very sparse, they hardly define their routing at all. My suggestion is to use Princess but roundtrip out of Vancouver not Seattle. Reason, neither line does the Canadian Inside Passage from Seattle, but Princess does from Vancouver. Forget Carnival since they are open ocean, very poor scenic viewing.

My personal preference for these round robins is to get on a cruise that cruises through the "Canadian Inside Passage" as well as the "Alaska Inside Passage". Meaning, they travel to the east of Vancouver Island as opposed to the west of the island, west of the island places the vessel out into the North Pacific where scenic voyaging is limited to non-existent, rougher water there too, particularly in the Fall. Vancouver is the most likely port for Canadian Inside Passage voyaging.

 

Beware when the line or your agent simply says you are going to be in the "Inside Passage". We are life long Alaskans so have taken only one cruise to Alaska, which was on Regent, a two weeker, originating in San Francisco and ending in Vancouver, around the end of May and first of June. Hot weather even, 72 F, for Alaska that is. We sailed as far north as Valdez in Prince William Sound and hit every obligatory port in Southeast. Excellent cruise; the only downer was, both north and south, we skipped the Canadian Inside Passage and traveled to the west of Vancouver Island. Some Canadians on board weren't very happy in that they had been led to believe they would be cruising on the east side of Vancouver island.