Cruisetour advice?

[USCG Teacher]

Okay all, here I am yet again throwing myself at the feet at my far more experienced travelers!  We're starting to plan for a bucket-list cruise to Alaska, and I could really use some feedback from those who have done an Alaskan Cruisetour.  As East Coast residing public employees, this could well be the only time we ever make it out to Alaska, and it will almost certainly be the only time we get out there with the kids.  As a result, I want to do it right.  For background, we'll have a 12 year old (who loves rains!) and a 9 year old boy in tow, and we're definitely doing either a Jr. Suite or connecting balcony rooms.  Other than that, I'm all ears.  We were looking at the Family Tundra Express tour based solely on the fact that it has family in the title and may be a bit more suited for the kids, but I have no idea how accurate that assessment is.  So with that said, does anyone have any feedback/suggestions/etc.?  Are there absolute can't misses or don't waste your times? I understand these results will be completely subjective, but you all have never steered me wrong, and I'd value your expertise.  Thanks in advance!  

[steverk]

Thank you for your service to our country and I hope you enjoy Alaska as much as I did!

As you almost certainly know, a cruise tour is a one way Alaska cruise combined with a land vacation. 

I've never actually been on this combination, but back in 2006, my in-laws treated us to a 1 way northbound on Radiance of the Seas followed by a few days sightseeing on our own in Anchorage.  My 4 kids were between 9 and 15. Everyone enjoyed it tremendously!

Some of the things they enjoyed the most:

• Whale watching during dinner in the Windjammer (Dessert first of course!)
• Swimming during the family hours in the solarium. They especially enjoyed the waves that were generated by the rocking of the boat.
• Touching a piece of glacier that the crew fished out of Tracy Arm Fjord
• Riding the Whit Pass Railway
• Climbing Flat Top mountain in Anchorage.

It was an incredible trip that I hope to do again with the family in 2023.

As far as excursions and comments about some of the ports:

• Ketchikan: Very walkable place with tons to see just off the ship.  If you've got the dough, then I'd suggest a float plane trip to Misty Fjords. Absolutely incredible
• Juneau: Another very walkable town.  There's a tram to the top of the mountain, or you can walk the trail for free.  Mendenhall Glacier is there as well.  If I ever go back, I'll make it a point to visit at least one of these attractions.
• Skagway: This is another fun town.  It's got a national historic park there, and it took me a while to figure out that the park and town are one in the same.  As you walk down the street, some of the buildings will have businesses. Some will have national park displays.  Sounds weird, but it's actually kinda cool. This is also the jumping off point for the White Pass Railroad.
• Icy Straight Point: When I was there, things were just getting started and you pretty much had to make your own fun.  Perhaps someone will have a recent experience
• Sitka: Like everywhere else, it is very walkable. When I was there, it was a very long tender boat ride to port. Therefore, plan to eat lunch on shore so you get as much as possible out of it.  You'll find plenty to do within a 15 walk of the pier.
• Seward: I wish I had spent more time here.  There's a national park in town that is worth checking out.

I have more recently done a 7 day round trip Seattle trip with my wife. One way is better!

I hope you found this helpful. Please let me know if you need more of my ramblings,

 

[AshleyDillo]

Sorry for the late response to this!

I did the cruisetour in 2014 and I highly suggest that you do this if you don't think you may make it back to Alaska!  We ended up doing the 8B pre-cruisetour southbound cruise (Seward to Vancouver).  This one has the most train travel segments, I believe, and honestly that was one of my favorite parts of the land portion of the tour.  I also think choosing the land portion before the cruise helped a lot because you are shuffling between different hotels every night and is a bit more taxing than the cruise portion where you don' t have to pack up every night.  It was helpful to be able to relax on the cruise before going home.  I don't think it would have been as enjoyable the other way.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/sgp/en/cruises/itinerary/13-night-alaska-wilderness-spectacular-tour-8b-pre-tour-from-vancouver-on-radiance/RD13B108

The description here is exactly how I remembered the cruise down to the names of the places we stayed, so if you have any specific questions feel free to ask!  I know finding detailed information about these landtour is difficult as they aren't as popular as the cruises.  We probably had 25-30 people total on our tour.

The landtour is like the cruise where you will have optional excursions you can take in your free time.  You don't really know what is available for those until you are on the land tour.  They give you an excursions sheet where you chose what you want to do and then you will pay for it by card.  The tour has some included stuff that everyone will participate in, but you get to individualize your experience by what you do in your free time in each land city.

For things to keep an eye out for on the land portion for this particular one that I think kids would appreciate:

• Seward has the Alaska Sealife Center.  With the land tour before the cruise, we got to the ship in the morning of the cruise and had plenty of time to explore Seward.  There is free shuttle bus that goes around the city.  You can check in for the cruise and drop off your carryon luggage and go explore.  We ended up checking out the Sealife center to kill some time before departure.   Now I will preface that we deviated from the landtour the morning of the cruise and we self-purchased the Alaskan Railway train trip to Seward.  The landtour did a motorcoach segment here with a visit to the Anchorage Heritage Museum.  We really wanted to do the extra train segment but you are responsible for booking it on your own and getting yourself to the train station, but I felt it was worth it.  For the train ride you actually drop your luggage off at the train station and it gets delivered to the cruise port.
• Denali - Husky Homestead - this is an optional excursion that we did.  It takes you to a dogsled training center where you get to hold puppies and they show you a bit on how they train the dogs.
• Denali - We also did a rafting tour in the evening where we went down the river.  We had to wear puffy air tight suits and it was quite an adventure.  If your kids are into thrill seeking they would enjoy this but it was super cold.  We were able to do this after the Husky Homestead excursion because the rafting trip wasn't until 8:30 at night.  It was still light out since it's summer in Alaska and doesn't get fully dark at all really.
• Denali - This 8B landtour includes a bus ride into the park where you get to see wildlife.  It's an all-day trip 4 hours into the park and another 4 hours back.  It was a bit long even for my adult attention span, but we ended up seeing a lot of wildlife.  Note that they only provide a boxed lunch for this trip and there really isn't a chance to purchase any additional food, so pack some snacks/drinks.
• Talkeetna - We did the jetboat adventure optional excursion here that took us right up to some serious whitewhite rapids before going back.  There was also a stop where we took a walk into the woods with the tour guide to protect you from bears with a rifle.

[melmar02]

24 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

• Denali - This 8B landtour includes a bus ride into the park where you get to see wildlife.  It's an all-day trip 4 hours into the park and another 4 hours back.  It was a bit long even for my adult attention span, but we ended up seeing a lot of wildlife.  Note that they only provide a boxed lunch for this trip and there really isn't a chance to purchase any additional food, so pack some snacks/drinks.

We're on a different land tour with the shorter Denali tour, but we are planning on upgrading to the longer one. This is a great tip! Thanks!

[USCG Teacher]

59 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

Sorry for the late response to this!

I did the cruisetour in 2014 and I highly suggest that you do this if you don't think you may make it back to Alaska!  We ended up doing the 8B pre-cruisetour southbound cruise (Seward to Vancouver).  This one has the most train travel segments, I believe, and honestly that was one of my favorite parts of the land portion of the tour.  I also think choosing the land portion before the cruise helped a lot because you are shuffling between different hotels every night and is a bit more taxing than the cruise portion where you don' t have to pack up every night.  It was helpful to be able to relax on the cruise before going home.  I don't think it would have been as enjoyable the other way.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/sgp/en/cruises/itinerary/13-night-alaska-wilderness-spectacular-tour-8b-pre-tour-from-vancouver-on-radiance/RD13B108

The description here is exactly how I remembered the cruise down to the names of the places we stayed, so if you have any specific questions feel free to ask!  I know finding detailed information about these landtour is difficult as they aren't as popular as the cruises.  We probably had 25-30 people total on our tour.

The landtour is like the cruise where you will have optional excursions you can take in your free time.  You don't really know what is available for those until you are on the land tour.  They give you an excursions sheet where you chose what you want to do and then you will pay for it by card.  The tour has some included stuff that everyone will participate in, but you get to individualize your experience by what you do in your free time in each land city.

For things to keep an eye out for on the land portion for this particular one that I think kids would appreciate:

• Seward has the Alaska Sealife Center.  With the land tour before the cruise, we got to the ship in the morning of the cruise and had plenty of time to explore Seward.  There is free shuttle bus that goes around the city.  You can check in for the cruise and drop off your carryon luggage and go explore.  We ended up checking out the Sealife center to kill some time before departure.   Now I will preface that we deviated from the landtour the morning of the cruise and we self-purchased the Alaskan Railway train trip to Seward.  The landtour did a motorcoach segment here with a visit to the Anchorage Heritage Museum.  We really wanted to do the extra train segment but you are responsible for booking it on your own and getting yourself to the train station, but I felt it was worth it.  For the train ride you actually drop your luggage off at the train station and it gets delivered to the cruise port.
• Denali - Husky Homestead - this is an optional excursion that we did.  It takes you to a dogsled training center where you get to hold puppies and they show you a bit on how they train the dogs.
• Denali - We also did a rafting tour in the evening where we went down the river.  We had to wear puffy air tight suits and it was quite an adventure.  If your kids are into thrill seeking they would enjoy this but it was super cold.  We were able to do this after the Husky Homestead excursion because the rafting trip wasn't until 8:30 at night.  It was still light out since it's summer in Alaska and doesn't get fully dark at all really.
• Denali - This 8B landtour includes a bus ride into the park where you get to see wildlife.  It's an all-day trip 4 hours into the park and another 4 hours back.  It was a bit long even for my adult attention span, but we ended up seeing a lot of wildlife.  Note that they only provide a boxed lunch for this trip and there really isn't a chance to purchase any additional food, so pack some snacks/drinks.
• Talkeetna - We did the jetboat adventure optional excursion here that took us right up to some serious whitewhite rapids before going back.  There was also a stop where we took a walk into the woods with the tour guide to protect you from bears with a rifle.

This was all fantastic information and exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for!  Thank you so much!

[AshleyDillo]

19 minutes ago, USCG Teacher said:

This was all fantastic information and exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for!  Thank you so much!

No problem..again as I offered before feel free to drop any questions you have about any particulars.  I know I was surprised before the trip going how little information I could find on what to expect.  Royal doesn't even provide you much of anything before the trip about it -- you basically have a meeting with your landtour guides on the first night and they go over everything to expect.  The landtour is a bit different experience than you are used to on the cruise because you do have to pay for your meals on your own.  But you were never left stranded at a hotel without any options to get somewhere.  There was always a shuttle available from the hotel that took you into the "town" at all of the overnights on the land tour and the hotel in Anchorage is downtown, so everything there is walkable.  To make it easy, you can pack cruise luggage separate from the landtour luggage and they will store that in the bus for the entire trip and you can have a separate suitcase for the land portion even.  They do collect the luggage on the land portion outside of your hotel room in the mornings and get it on the bus for you too.   The bus follows you for the whole trip, even on the portions where you take the train.  The train also has meal service on it and a beverage cart, both of which are additional costs at ala carte prices.  We did tip the bus driver and the tour guide at the end of the land portion.  

[AshleyDillo]

1 hour ago, melmar02 said:

We're on a different land tour with the shorter Denali tour, but we are planning on upgrading to the longer one. This is a great tip! Thanks!

No problem!  The box lunch that we got was pretty meager too and there aren't options that I was aware of.  Fortunately there is a restaurant and little shop at the Denali lodge where we stayed that had snacks available for purchase.  There's also a little town/shopping area near the lodge that has other places to grab food but it requires taking the shuttle which may not be an option immediately before the tour.  So planning ahead the night before is a good idea.  If I recall correctly the Denali lodge did have a mini-fridge too.  The Denali buses are school buses with no bathrooms, so they do stop at rest areas for potty breaks.  They have TV screens in the buses and the tour guide will have a microphone and they will stop and point out animal sightings and aim a camera at them to show on the TV screens too.  The park is massive.  I think they said it's a full 8 hour drive to get into the park as far as you can go.  The roads are one lane in each direction at a very low speed limit, so that also adds to the time.

[melmar02]

@AshleyDillo did you fly in the day before? How does that work with meeting up with the land tour group?

[AshleyDillo]

3 hours ago, melmar02 said:

@AshleyDillo did you fly in the day before? How does that work with meeting up with the land tour group?

For my particular tour "day one" was our fly-in day.  We got picked up at the airport and taken to the hotel (airport transfer included in the tour cost).  We didn't really have a reason to come in a day early as there wasn't much in Fairbanks we wanted to see and the tour started off with a day in Fairbanks anyways. We just took the earliest flight to Fairbanks that we could.  The "day one" itinerary is basically a free day in Fairbanks.  We didn't have the official first group meeting until the morning of "day two".  They picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel where we checked in and were free to explore.  They had a bus that ran from the hotel to a Fred-Meyer (similar to a Walmart) that was up the street from the hotel and it also went to downtown Fairbanks.

[melmar02]

Thanks again for the info. We're taking 11B and starting in Anchorage. If nothing else, I'm sure we can just take an Uber to the hotel if we go early.

[AshleyDillo]

4 hours ago, melmar02 said:

Thanks again for the info. We're taking 11B and starting in Anchorage. If nothing else, I'm sure we can just take an Uber to the hotel if we go early.

From the description on that tour:

Quote

TOUR DAY 1

ANCHORAGE

Arrive in Anchorage where an airport transfer (included) brings you to the hotel to meet your Adventure Specialist. Then you're free to delve into the city's unique culture: check out the eclectic dining scene, try a local craft beer or stroll the waterfront in the evening sun. Overnight at the Anchorage Marriott.

If you decide to fly into Anchorage a day early, I would assume you just meet up at the Anchorage Marriott on the official first day.  It appears that this tour also has the built-in travel day to get in the night before the tour officially begins (day two).  

Anchorage really isn't all that big.  The airport is probably 5 miles or so from downtown where the tour hotel is.

[Bob Jeffress]

I am booked on the 8B for next year.  Thank you for the information you have provided.  The booking itinerary says 7 nights but does list the pre cruise details.  Did RC give you C&A Points for 7 or 13 nights?

[steverk]

13 nights. 

Have fun!

[AshleyDillo]

On 2/16/2024 at 9:47 PM, Bob Jeffress said:

Did RC give you C&A Points for 7 or 13 nights?

You get C&A points for the cruisetour..so 13 nights.  If you're in a JS or above on the cruise you also get the extra point per night for being in a suite.