Japan & Bering Sea TPAC - experiences with it?

[kochleffel]

Many thanks for all the new replies!

 

I've booked a forward-facing OV room on deck 7. In 2022 this itinerary will be operated by the Solstice, not Millenium, and the theater occupies decks 5 and 6. I'm not worried about the theater, because I'm a night owl by nature and usually go to the later show. It will be hard to get to lectures, etc., in the mornings, but I'm used to that.

 

It was a consideration that other OV cabins available were on deck 3, below the shops and the casino. For cruises in warm climates or with many port days, I am fine with an inside cabin, but with many sea days and most of them where there will likely be cold and wet weather, that wasn't appealing. Aqua, Concierge, etc., are well beyond my budget.

 

I live in a fairly cold region. For travel that includes both warm and cold weather (a winter cruise in the Caribbean, for example, or a summer trip to Switzerland with some time at high altitude) I take a packable down-alternative vest and whatever light rain gear is suited to the warmer portion, plus a hat and gloves, and this works pretty well.

 

I have to postpone planning travel before the cruise, because I don't know how much time I'll have available. It's possible that I'll retire in 2021 and have unlimited time, or I might not. I have looked a little into flights to Japan, based on the current schedule; the best seems to be a regional flight into DTW and then a Delta A350 nonstop to Haneda. The latter is a 13-hour flight but connecting via a west-coast gateway makes the trip that much longer.

[ExArkie]

On 6/24/2020 at 2:24 PM, kochleffel said:

Many thanks for all the new replies!

 

I've booked a forward-facing OV room on deck 7. In 2022 this itinerary will be operated by the Solstice, not Millenium....

 

...I have looked a little into flights to Japan, based on the current schedule; the best seems to be a regional flight into DTW and then a Delta A350 nonstop to Haneda. The latter is a 13-hour flight but connecting via a west-coast gateway makes the trip that much longer.

We just booked this transpacific (April 2022 on Solstice), too. Splurged on a Sky Suite (Guarantee was all that was on offer for suites.)

 

A word of warning about the flights: almost always when booking one-way international flights from the US, you will pay the round trip fare. Usually, this is not true from Canada, so you might want to look at taking your regional flight into Toronto, where I believe that Air Canada operates a nonstop to HND. Typically, if you can get the one-way flight from Canada for about half the price of a one-way from the US (unless you connect in Canada).

 

 

[kochleffel]

On 6/28/2020 at 12:42 PM, ExArkie said:

A word of warning about the flights: almost always when booking one-way international flights from the US, you will pay the round trip fare. Usually, this is not true from Canada, so you might want to look at taking your regional flight into Toronto, where I believe that Air Canada operates a nonstop to HND. Typically, if you can get the one-way flight from Canada for about half the price of a one-way from the US (unless you connect in Canada).

 

The flight I was looking at (one-way from the nearest airport to HND via DTW) is priced at less than the round-trip fare, but more than half of that. It has the advantages of leaving from the nearest airport and having only one connection, so the total travel time is somewhat less and there are fewer opportunities to misconnect.

 

No airport within 125 miles has a flight into YYZ - only convoluted routings with connections at airports where delays are frequent.  Probably the best TPAC flight would be from YVR (Vancouver) on ANA, but that entails the most connections and thus the longest total travel time. It would allow a round-trip booking to and from Vancouver.

 

It's a good thing that the cruise isn't until 2022. Right now I am having enough trouble figuring out travel for 2021.

[Bruin Steve]

On 6/28/2020 at 9:42 AM, ExArkie said:

A word of warning about the flights: almost always when booking one-way international flights from the US, you will pay the round trip fare. Usually, this is not true from Canada, so you might want to look at taking your regional flight into Toronto, where I believe that Air Canada operates a nonstop to HND. Typically, if you can get the one-way flight from Canada for about half the price of a one-way from the US (unless you connect in Canada).

 

I found this to be VERY different...

For our Transpacific for April 2021, we booked a one way nonstop flight from LAX to Tokyo (Narita) on JAL--only $368 pp...Slightly more than half of a round trip, but not bad...Others on our Roll Call booked flights from Vancouver--nearly twice the cost.