Alaska pre or post land tours

[lillyb]

 Thinking of taking a precruise land tour in Alaska booked thru RCI.   Any comments would be welcome.  Is it worth the money?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cruiselvr04]

We have one booked for next year but haven’t done it yet.

 

Many will say no, you can see and do more on your own.  Ours has 3 train rides on which we will see different things then if we were on the road.  The DH is not a patient driver ( driving behind a slow RV would drive him nuts and make me a nervous wreak that he’d try to pass) and neither of us want to miss out on the view while driving. Could we have done it on our own?  Yes.  We are usually DIY.  It would have saved us about $1000 by my calculations but regardless motels/hotels, car rentals and gas are expensive for what you get so we decided to let someone else do that planning.  We also don’t have to worry about getting a rental back and then getting to Seward to catch the ship.  

 

All we have to do is get to Fairbanks and pick some optional excursions to round out the trip.  

[A&L_Ont]

We have been to Alaska 3 times.  We sailed southbound 2 times and round trip from Vancouver 1 time. 
 

This is a link to my live review to our last cruise which was a southbound sailing.  We did a RC pre-cruise tour.  Page 3 is where the trip starts and the first 2 pages were preamble. 
 

The RC tour was great and easy. If we were to go back, I would be more likely to rent a car and go about it on our own.  The bus and train were great, but waiting for the 25 plus others loading off and on the bus took up a lot of time.
 

The first time there on the tour was perfect, but after one time we feel more than comfortable arranging it on our own. On a side note we did get RC points for the pre-cruise journey, which was a surprise benefit. 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2563682-alaska-live-july-17th-27th-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by A&L_Ont

[moposh]

I did a pre cruise land tour when we went to Alaska.  It was through RCI.  We got to see things we wouldn't have seen if we had just done the cruise.  I do believe it's worth it.  We got to go to Denali Park and we saw Denali.  We went to Anchorage.  We did some things I could have passed on (train trip that never ended).  We decided to do to land tour before the cruise so we could rest a little on the cruise.

 

Land tour ended in Seward where we boarded the ship.  

 

I think it's worth it.  You're flying a long way.  Make the most of it.

 

 

[lovesthebeach2]

Following because I had the same questions. Alaska has always been on our bucket list and after cruising to Greenland, Alaska has moved up on our list.

[zebra]

For your first time I would definitely say YES!!!!  One thing to note is - the tour (like most tours) can be quite tiring, so I would say it's a MUST to do the tour BEFORE the cruise, not after. As the previous poster says you can then rest on the cruise.

 

We have also done 3 Alaskan cruises and the one Cruise tour.  The cruise tour gave us such a yearning to go back and explore Alaska that we took our RV, from Florida to Alaska and spent 5 months there ... it was off the charts unbelievable!!

 

Now I would absolutely only rent a vehicle in Alaska and do it ourselves.  It is so easy, not congested like the lower 48.  To the person who said they would be afraid to overtake a slow RV - firstly the RV's travel at the same speed as the cars, don't forget you're not doing interstate speeds.  Also it's no problem to overtake a RV because most of the time you have the road to yourselves and there isn't oncoming traffic for miles. The only busy places are Anchorage and Fairbanks. 

 

 

 

[OCSC Mike]

Very long trip report in my signature of my 2018 Alaska trip which included a 10-day DIY pre-tour. It may or may not help if you're dead set on a RC pre-tour but figured I'd mention it.

 

If nothing else, and it's a shame that the road is impassable due to a rock slide, SEE DENALI!

 

FWIW, I had no interest in renting a car so we flew into Fairbanks and took the train the entire way down to Seward before cruising Southbound (with many stops over the 10 days of course). The Alaska Railroad is amazing. Hotels get your luggage to the train for you; you don't have to be on a cruise-sponsored land tour.

[cruisequeen4ever]

If you were sailing Princess, I’d 100% say yes because they have the most experience and the greatest presence here in AK. They own their own lodges, and they’re lodges are definitely the best. Royal contracts out their land tours to a company called Premier Alaska Tours. They are a good tour company here, but they don’t own lodges, so they contract independent lodges. It’s still good, just not as seamless as Princess. As some have said, if you’re so inclined, you can simply rent a car, explore on your own, book your own hotels, and book your own activities. Denali is definitely worth seeing. If you decide to explore independently, just make sure you book early as places sell out far in advance. 

[zebra]

4 minutes ago, cruisequeen4ever said:

If you were sailing Princess, I’d 100% say yes because they have the most experience and the greatest presence here in AK. They own their own lodges, and they’re lodges are definitely the best. Royal contracts out their land tours to a company called Premier Alaska Tours. They are a good tour company here, but they don’t own lodges, so they contract independent lodges. It’s still good, just not as seamless as Princess. As some have said, if you’re so inclined, you can simply rent a car, explore on your own, book your own hotels, and book your own activities. Denali is definitely worth seeing. If you decide to explore independently, just make sure you book early as places sell out far in advance. 

I agree!  Even though we are loyal to Royal now, we did all our Alaska cruises and the cruise tour with Princess ...... remarkable, the absolute best.  We stayed at the Denali Princess Lodge, the Kenai Princess Lodge and also the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, all amazing..... and their glass domed train with excellent & hilarious tour guides made it a cruise tour to remember forever.

[OCSC Mike]

12 minutes ago, cruisequeen4ever said:

If you were sailing Princess, I’d 100% say yes because they have the most experience and the greatest presence here in AK. They own their own lodges, and they’re lodges are definitely the best. Royal contracts out their land tours to a company called Premier Alaska Tours. They are a good tour company here, but they don’t own lodges, so they contract independent lodges. It’s still good, just not as seamless as Princess. As some have said, if you’re so inclined, you can simply rent a car, explore on your own, book your own hotels, and book your own activities. Denali is definitely worth seeing. If you decide to explore independently, just make sure you book early as places sell out far in advance. 

 

There is at least one 3rd party company that owns their own lodges in certain areas and has relationships with hotels/lodges in others. This company planned and booked our 10 days on land after revising the itinerary 57 times with my wife. It included every hotel/lodge, train ride, and most of the excursions we did. I'd love to mention them but not sure it is permitted.

 

We actually "borrowed" the lobby of a Princess-owned lodge while we had some time to kill in the downtown area of Denali while waiting to take a bus back to our lodge. It looked very nice.

Edited October 13, 2022 by OCSC Mike

[Northern Aurora]

A perspective from some who lives in Fairbanks, AK where a number of cruise tours end or start:

 

The cruise sponsored land tours look so herded.  It is a "one size fits all" which means that the tour is a compromise of interests.  

 

With the single road into Denali National Park closed at a mile 42 due to the melting of ice rich land and the resulting rock slide I am not sure that DNP is worth visiting.  I've always thought that visitors who do not go into the park as far as Eielson Visitor's Center (mile 66) have cheated themselves.  Until the road is opened (and who knows when the bridge over the ice rich land area will be completed and the condition of the road past mile 42 will be given that there has been no road maintenance since August 2021) I would suggest considering trips on the Kenai Peninsula or Wrangell -- St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

[Gardyloo]

Take Northern Aurora's comments (post no 11) seriously.  Most of the land tours focus on the Denali area, and with the park road impassable past MP 43, the interior of the park - wildlife, great views of the mountain (if the weather allows) etc. - is pretty much inaccessible.  However, it looks like the cruise lines haven't particularly modified their itineraries to take this into account; my guess is that the Denali hotel operators (many controlled by the cruise companies) don't want to lose the business.  So the cruise tours end up putting people near Denali without very much to do (apart from purchasing expensive "activities.")  

 

As a little "thought experiment," maybe you could do some research on what it would cost for you to arrange your own land tour - rent a car, visit the Kenai Peninsula, Kenai Fjords National Park, etc.  It might save a little money but also might make for a much more enjoyable time.

[GTJ]

On 10/13/2022 at 2:45 PM, cruisequeen4ever said:

If you were sailing Princess, I’d 100% say yes because they have the most experience and the greatest presence here in AK. They own their own lodges, and they’re lodges are definitely the best. Royal contracts out their land tours to a company called Premier Alaska Tours. They are a good tour company here, but they don’t own lodges, so they contract independent lodges. It’s still good, just not as seamless as Princess.

Factually, this is accurate on point. Princess Cruises (along with Holland America Line, which, like Princess Cruises, is also owned by Carnival) is omnipresent in the Alaska tourist market. But whether that leads to the conclusion that one should use their services is a distinct matter. With Princess, there will be a sense of being a small one in a large crowd, being shuffled around as part of an anonymous tourism assembly line. As the well there is the matter of whether one wants to continuing handing over such large sums of money to a single corporate entity that exercises near monopolistic control. That's not to say that Royal Caribbean does not share several of these attributes as well. (Consider, for example, that both Royal Caribbean and Princess Cruises contract out their motorcoach operations to separate motor carrier entities. Royal Caribbean uses Premier Alaska Tours, Inc., while Princess Cruises uses Royal Hyway Tours Inc. And although Premier Alaska is not a corporate affiliate of Royal Caribbean, while Royal Hyway is a corporate affiliate of Princess--a subsidiary of Carnival--does it really make much difference? Whether corporate affiliate or large corporate contract, usually not much difference in service quality.) I suggest that the real distinction is between using a prepackaged tour arranged by any of the cruise lines and a packaged or independent tour arranged by a smaller Alaska-owned company . . . or just no package tour and instead touring by either regularly-scheduled bus/train or by private vehicle.

[GTJ]

20 hours ago, Northern Aurora said:

The cruise sponsored land tours look so herded.

 

On 10/13/2022 at 1:13 PM, A&L_Ont said:

The bus and train were great, but waiting for the 25 plus others loading off and on the bus took up a lot of time.

As an initial qualifier, let me note that neither I nor my spouse possess driving licenses, and we rely extensively on bus and train services to get around generally. There is a distinct difference between scheduled bus service and tour bus services. Scheduled bus services offer great freedom to do what you want, and when you want to do it, whereas a tour bus service usually offers no choices. Importantly, the passengers on most scheduled bus services know how to travel. When a Greyhound Lines bus stops for a rest stop, there is usually no delay for passengers alighting and then reboarding. On the other hand, tour buses tend to be filled with people less adept at travel, and many of whom are old and slow when moving. I find many bus tours--especially ones aimed at a general tourist market--to be exceptionally frustrating, not because of the bus company's drivers and operations but because so many of the passengers are just not "with it," are slow, and the bus companies of necessity have to herd them all around so they don't lost or confused. There are exceptions to this tour bus characterization, usually related to there being a specialize interest of the participants, or if the group travel targets people who are adept at travel. (For example, I regularly ride tour buses operated for railfan or bus enthusiast groups, where all the passengers know well how to travel by bus.) In Alaska, I would be hesitant to travel by tour bus. Indeed, I have not done so for the reasons enumerated above. Instead, I have traveled by scheduled bus, scheduled train, and scheduled ferry . . . with nary a bus tour.

[Sigyn]

I did a three-week land vacation in Alaska in 1999 with a boyfriend who was soon an ex-boyfriend after the vacation. Due in part to arguments on the road trip! He did most of the driving and was annoyed that I didn't want to drive with my window down in 50-degree temps for all 900 miles in order to get the best pictures. Actually said that "I seemed to value my comfort over good photos." Well, yes, yes, I did. 🙂 

 

That said, with age comes wisdom. Having someone else do the driving so you can both see the sights makes a lot of sense to me now, in my 50s. I would like to do the land tour after the cruise, myself, so that I'd still have something to look forward to. There's always that post-cruise letdown. This way, you'd still have the magnificence of the interior of Alaska to do post-cruise!

[Sigyn]

On 10/13/2022 at 7:19 PM, Northern Aurora said:

A perspective from some who lives in Fairbanks, AK where a number of cruise tours end or start:

 

The cruise sponsored land tours look so herded.  It is a "one size fits all" which means that the tour is a compromise of interests.  

 

With the single road into Denali National Park closed at a mile 42 due to the melting of ice rich land and the resulting rock slide I am not sure that DNP is worth visiting.  I've always thought that visitors who do not go into the park as far as Eielson Visitor's Center (mile 66) have cheated themselves.  Until the road is opened (and who knows when the bridge over the ice rich land area will be completed and the condition of the road past mile 42 will be given that there has been no road maintenance since August 2021) I would suggest considering trips on the Kenai Peninsula or Wrangell -- St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Very good point. On my trip many years ago we took the bus to Wonder Lake and back in a day. It was amazing. It was a clear day in September, the last day the park was open to traffic for the season, and we were able to see three peaks, which the bus driver said was something that happens only a few times a summer. 

[GTJ]

2 hours ago, njsmom said:

I did a three-week land vacation in Alaska in 1999 with a boyfriend who was soon an ex-boyfriend after the vacation. Due in part to arguments on the road trip! He did most of the driving and was annoyed that I didn't want to drive with my window down in 50-degree temps for all 900 miles in order to get the best pictures. Actually said that "I seemed to value my comfort over good photos." Well, yes, yes, I did. 🙂

Interesting divergent perspectives. As I would view the circumstances, having the windows down continuously in 50-degree temperatures is appealing to me for two reasons: (1) the temperature is comfortable to me and having the windows closed in a small automobile would both be too hot and make me sick; (2) good photography in such a distant locale is important, and with the resulting photographs being enduring, some discomfort at the time should not cause abandonment of the good photography trek. So clearly I am sympathetic to the boyfriend's substantive position. (Moreover, I have my own idiosyncrasies that others might not share.) Yet, he was not traveling alone. What to do when the better half sees differently? It might just be that what one person deems essential while traveling is intolerable for the other. Should each person share and just put up with displeasure for half the vacation? The easy answer is separate vacations, but that does not do much to strengthen relationships . . . and when cruise staterooms are sold on double occupancy bases (and 100 percent single supplements) it is not always economically practicable. Or is it best to go separate ways when there are disagreements as to the "essential" elements of vacations? It is hard to think of a good answer satisfying to both.

[Sigyn]

1 hour ago, GTJ said:

Interesting divergent perspectives. As I would view the circumstances, having the windows down continuously in 50-degree temperatures is appealing to me for two reasons: (1) the temperature is comfortable to me and having the windows closed in a small automobile would both be too hot and make me sick; (2) good photography in such a distant locale is important, and with the resulting photographs being enduring, some discomfort at the time should not cause abandonment of the good photography trek. So clearly I am sympathetic to the boyfriend's substantive position. (Moreover, I have my own idiosyncrasies that others might not share.) Yet, he was not traveling alone. What to do when the better half sees differently? It might just be that what one person deems essential while traveling is intolerable for the other. Should each person share and just put up with displeasure for half the vacation? The easy answer is separate vacations, but that does not do much to strengthen relationships . . . and when cruise staterooms are sold on double occupancy bases (and 100 percent single supplements) it is not always economically practicable. Or is it best to go separate ways when there are disagreements as to the "essential" elements of vacations? It is hard to think of a good answer satisfying to both.

I see both sides. At the time, I lived in Southern California, and was very used to warm temperatures, so 50 degrees was quite chilly. I rolled the window up and down to take hundreds of photos, but he wanted it constantly down in order to ensure no photos were missed. However, he never said that at the time, so I didn't know. Five weeks after the vacation, he broke up with me, after a year and a half of dating, saying that I clearly liked being comfortable more than I liked getting good photos and he needed someone more adventurous. It's been 23 years and other than those first few months of missing him, I pretty much forgot about the whole thing, so it was clearly the right call. Hopefully he found someone else who was into crisper weather than me. 🙂

 

The best relationships are those that can withstand such simple disagreements and differences of opinion. When you can't get past something that minor, you are not meant to be together for the long haul. 

[Cali Viajera]

First time visitor to Alaska and opted to do the Princess land tour from Fairbanks, Denali, Mt.McKinley to Kenai. Everything was taken care of and no worries about transportation, gas, traffic, etc. That was our choice. We didn't feel 'herded' at all, just went with the flow. Did the Tundra wilderness tour to the stopping point and saw the Big five of animals on that trip. Denali ATV tour also. Hiking in Denali too. Yes, long distances, especially Mt.McKinley to Kenai, but wow, Kenai is so breathtaking. 

Land tour first then cruise so you can relax after all the bouncing around!