Just Returned From The Island Princess

[gunnywife]

We had a wonderful trip. It started out a little shaky because we live in the Tampa Bay area and left right before the hurricane was supposed to hit. So for the first few days of our land trip I was making lots of calls home to see how everything was going. We were very fortunate and our area just had some wind damage with trees falling, electricity out.
This was our first cruise with Princess and we loved it. The ship is beautiful, the crew is outstanding and I even thought the coffee was ok. What more could I ask?
I would be glad to answer questions about the ship, but as far as the cruise is concerned the Alaska cruise on the Island is over for the year. They are now heading for Hawaii. I think the crew as pretty happy to be heading to a new location and Hawaii isn't hard to take.
We didn't do a lot of the tours while aboard ship because my husband broke his leg 2 weeks before we were scheduled to leave so that slowed him up a bit, but we had a marvelous time on the train trip from Mt. McKinley, to Denali and on to Fairbanks.
The Capt Cook hotel in Anchorage is very nice and we liked the Mt McKinley Lodge. The Lodge at Denali was fine but the Mt McKinley Lodge was much nicer. We spent 2 nites in Fairbanks, but to tell you the truth we were on the go so much while there I don't remember much about the hotel.
Since we flew from Fairbanks back to Anchorage and then took the bus to Whittier we boarded the ship late. The lady at embarkation told me that no jeans were allowed in the dining room even on the first nite. So I made my husband quickly change clothes before dashing off to dinner. The cast on his leg slowed him down and he was pretty edgy by the time we got to the dining room only to see people walking in with jeans. He wasn't too happy with me at that point and we both learned a lesson - to not necessarily listen to and believe everything you hear.
Our next trip is on the Diamond at the end of October. We look forward to it and only hope that the hurricane season will have slowed up by then.

[roohound]

glad to hear you had a great trip!

When we did Alaska I was really surprised to see all the jeans in the dining room. I don't have an issue with jeans at all (even pack them on Caribbean cruises..hey, I live in FL, I know what it's like to wear jeans in the heat LOL) but was kinda surprised to see just how casual Alaska cruise dining attire was. But I don't wear jeans or shorts to dinner.

Having said that, did it affect how my food tasted? Nope LOL