ArcticKitty Tackles Alaska - Carnival Splendor 02-10 May 2022- Trip Planning, Trip Report, & Mehhhhbe Some LIVE

KmomChicago · October 16, 2022

Fighter cat has not given up yet!

arctickitty · February 15, 2023

On 3/12/2022 at 1:02 PM, arctickitty said:

ArcticKitty Tackles Alaska - Carnival Splendor 02-10 May 2022- Trip Planning, Trip Report, & Mehhhhbe Some LIVE From Since We Have This Thing Called Cellular Data Now

Hello new Carnival friends, ArcticKitty, a real Alaskan here. I love reading in-depth detailed to the nines trip reports, trip planning musings, live feeds, etc. The more the nitty gritty displayed the more I dig. I also enjoy the autobiographical background info that some folks slip in. I’m here to do my part contributing the kind of content I love to read! Since I'm Alaskan through and through, I'll be weaving every day Alaskan life into this narrative in order to provide context for my travel choices and to give all of you readers perspective on this amazing state. I am the queen of TLDR (too long, didn't read) but if you like to read and/or you are interested in anything of what I have to say, welcome aboard!

The Carnival HUB app tells me that I have 51 days until boarding, which means I’ve had the Carnival HUB app for 14 days, had this cruise booked for 14 days, and even considered cruising on Carnival for about 20 days, and only even considered cruising at all for about 25 days, and I’m absolutely stoked.

I am a planner by nature, but am also a loosey-goosey free spirit creative type (who is allergic to Type A personalities…they can smell me and cower, as do I) and love so many small joys, details, and pleasures in life. I’ve had some life experiences that have taught me how that appreciation is central to who I am and I unabashedly embrace it. Some of those same life experiences have also encouraged me to be spontaneous and say yes to ideas and opportunities that present themselves. I’m known for being a curious blend of tough, sensitive, and in my better moments, plain old bada— (am I allowed to use that word?). Let’s just say sometimes I’m Badabing Badaboom. My career path my whole life has been as a teacher, albeit of many different types and primarily in rural Alaska. I’ve lived and worked in remote corners of this amazing state that most visitors never get to understand, let alone visit. I consider these experiences to be among my biggest blessings, my four cats being the other four.

(Left to Right) Tiger (age 3), Dandelion (age 9), Wonder (age 3), and Isobel (age 11 or 12)

(Okay, last cat pic for now)

Recently, several ideas popped into my head and I wanted to proceed with all of them, before I realized I didn’t have enough leave hours banked up. The first idea was already booked so it’s happening—I signed up for a five day woodworking class in the forest. This means tent camping, group campfire meals, and a full cell phone/electronics ban (how will I survive without audio books?) amidst somewhat free form instruction on carving and whatever else it takes to make things from wood. I have zero experience with this and wouldn’t have even said it was a goal to learn, but I read the program website for a few days and it sparked that something-something in me so I signed up and paid for it. Bang. Boom. What have I done? It will be interesting, that’s for sure.

The next “thing” that presented itself was a trip to Guam. A good friend has been working there most of the pandemic and offered to buy most or all of my plane ticket. Seemed like a good thing to say yes to, right? A chance to visit a far flung island with someone with lots of local connections? Sounds like something I’d say sign me up for. Almost bang and boom.

Except for those darn leave hours don’t just multiply themselves as quickly as I’d like. And the special someone in my life has some wrinkles in his plans that shifted my perspective and pulled my finger off the trigger.

When we met a year and a half ago, (on Tinder! Thank you! You’re welcome!) we lived 90 minutes apart and both had significant pandemic restrictions due to our jobs. I wasn’t allowed to leave the state, he wasn’t allowed to go to a long list of establishments, etc, so we threw ourselves headfirst and head strong into the great outdoors of Alaska, and learned so many new things. Snow shoeing, skiing, snow machining, ice fishing…it’s been a blast. Special Someone was under the expectation that he’d be in Alaska for a good while, a few years, at least.

Gear for two humans and four cats for two nights at a walk-in dry cabin.

Four cats about to go for a sled ride. My cats are small (all 10lbs or less) and are accustomed to sharing their carriers when traveling.

One of four very happy cats enjoying a cabin visit. This was their first sled-in cabin but second cabin trip. They love the heat from an old-fashioned wood stove and the magic of how warm air rises up to the high spots they like best.

Special Someone and I now live only 20 minutes apart and almost all of the pandemic restrictions are gone. We’ve both worked in non-work-from-home positions the entire time and my current job just lifted the mask mandate for the first time and I cannot even begin to explain how strange it is to see peoples’ chins, cheeks, and noses for the first time ever. Meanwhile, Special Someone got unexpected news of needing to bounce around a bit, geographically. One of my first reactions to that news was that we needed to definitely go on the pricey-to-me snow machine trip we’d been thinking about. We also fine-tuned some of our activity and adventure goals. Although we’d been knocking these out early in the very long winter (I learned to cross country ski, we took all four of my cats on a snowshoe trip to a remote cabin!) the Snowmaggedon storm of Christmas 2021 put a damper on the outdoors for humans and animals alike. Massive dumps of snow alternated with massive pours of rain, creating layers of deep snow and sheets of ice. The moose are having a terrible time trying to walk anywhere on their spindly legs. We humans are finding unexpected conditions on trails we easily enjoyed last year. We’ve had two botched/failed snow machine trips that just didn’t work out because of the weather. We’ve tried and abandoned many other plans because of the ground conditions. We hiked in a state park not far from home and found out that we’d been far too close to a savage moose attack against a local dog team the very same day. Special Someone and I are very much Safety First and it was sobering to think about having chosen to walk where we’d walked, with fresh moose sign and no protection. We’ve had to pivot a lot and find things to do in more populated and trafficked areas. We’ve still accomplished great things! We rode fat tire bikes for the first time (it’s crazy hard!) and completed two different awesome fitness challenges, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Trail Challenge (snap a pic at 10 plus signs on area trails) and the Virtual Race Across Alaska (complete 225 miles by any means and raise money for the Alaska Long Trail), but we just haven’t done anything big or really special. With Special Someone’s upcoming uncertainty, doing something both big and special took precedence in my mind.

Sorry, Guam.

The flights sound brutal, anyway. In a former life I may have had gold status on Alaska Air, and I may have even worn their uniform, but I haven’t left Alaska since December 2019 and I haven’t flown more than 45 minutes since I moved to mainland Alaska in June 2020 (with all four cats as my carryons).

I was a person who thought cruising would never recover. How could it?

Special Someone and I were idly chatting about how cruising had been fun in the past and I stumbled across one of my favorite cruise blogs and discovered, wait, what? She’d been on several cruises. I took a few days of my elliptical riding and track walking time to read her every word, and got back here on Cruise Critic and poked around and realized, oh wait, cruising is a thing again.

I had other doubts, however. Special Someone and I have only known each other during this pandemic. We’ve never traveled anywhere together except for camping and hiking and short road trips. The entire Outside world is pretty foreign to me right now, and I’m not sure how I’ll handle it, so how will it go with someone I’ve never been Outside with?

I also had a long list of “this is how I cruise” and I laid them out and he said OK. Then he left on a trip, me still somewhat idly researching and reading. It wasn’t much of a topic of conversation between us. As I read and my mind wandered, all of my ideas about “this is how I cruise” untangled their rigidity and morphed and I realized I wanted to try something new and be completely open and flexible. I’d come across the idea that mid- or post-pandemic cruising, or whatever you want to call it, is easier to adjust to if you’re not familiar with the line’s product. If you sail with a company you know well, you might notice all the financial and pandemic cutbacks and changes. If you sail with someone new, it’s all new and you don’t know what you’re missing, right?

I also thought I wanted a southbound from Whittier, because I love Whittier and it affords a chance to either camp in the shadow of the Begich Building (the tower almost everyone lives in) or, for a splurge, to sleep atop it in June’s B&B.

I thought I wanted a drink package because I’ve never had one, and I liked the idea of being able to try whatever I wanted.

I thought I’d want Glacier Bay because “everyone” says it’s the best part, and my prior Alaskan cruise went to Tracy Arm instead.

I definitely thought I’d want Princess, because I’ve sailed with Princess 4 times and Norwegian once. I hated Norwegian and thought I loved Princess. I loved the dining room meals on Princess and liked being younger than most of their clientele. This meant for nice empty gyms, jogging tracks and sports courts. Princess has (or had) Zumba, DIY laundry, Italian-style pizza, specialty coffee punchcards with baristas trained in Italy. I knew which treats I liked at Afternoon Tea.

I thought if I tried a new line, it would be Holland America, to enjoy an even older passenger base and fancier dining room menus.

Special Someone had floated the idea of Carnival, but it wasn’t until I found all seven days of standard dinner menus on Profcruise.com that I started to consider it. How could it be that a line catering to Americans known for partying seemed to have more variety and fanciness on its menus? Then I found the breakfast and brunch menus and I started to really dream. And salivate. I’m what they call an elder Millennial, at the top end of that age range, and most of the Millennial trends go way over my head, but man, give me Millennial food trends everyday and I’m a happy clam. Kale grain bowls, avocado toast, salmon everything, I’m set. Plus frog legs and alligator on the menu, not just snails. Let’s go. And then, with beef prices being what they are, I haven’t been able to afford to buy steaks. Interior Alaska is blessed with local beef and pork, and it’s beyond amazing, but I get ground and sausage and mix it with lots and lots of vegetables etc to make it last for many, many meals. It seemed like the beef was just more plentiful on Carnival as compared to Princess so that helped tip the scales.

Special Someone had been gone a week and we were idly texting while I was watering his indoor garden when we saw a bargain deal on a round trip sailing from Seattle. It was the opposite of what I’d thought I wanted but I knew it actually was exactly what I wanted, so I checked flights to make sure they were also affordable and, on the spot, we bought it.

Whoa, so cruising is still a thing.

At that moment, it was 65 days out. I was glad I’d sent my passport renewal in as expedited everything.