Alaska

[greenbed03]

Booking my first Alaskan cruise.  Looking for some advice on picking the right one, is there a location/city I shouldn't miss?    

[OCSC Mike]

General advice I always give about Alaska... spend as much time on land in addition to the cruise as possible. At the very least, visit Denali.

[Traveling Mike]

First you need to understand that Alaska has two completely different cruises.  One is the inside passage; it starts in Seattle or Vancouver and goes up the middle of the Alaska Coast.  The other one starts in the south and goes to Anchorage or starts in Anchorage and goes to the south.  The large majority of the cruises are the inside passage.  I have done two of them and enjoy all the towns that you visit.  All of the ports are ones you can explore on your own and do not need an excursion unless you want one.  I have not done the one to or from Anchorage, but I would love to.  The difference is to be able to spend extra days in north Alaska.  After you pick a cruise enjoy doing your homework on all the great places you will visit.

[LandstromCruise]

Agree with OCSC Mike. Spending extra days on land is valuable. I recommend doing the southbound and doing the land portion first. 

[OCSC Mike]

Just now, LandstromCruise said:

I recommend doing the southbound and doing the land portion first.

Same.

[Matt]

Be sure to check out all of our Alaska cruise advice and tips here: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/alaska-cruises

 

[Kathleen]

I’ve done the closed loop Seattle inside passage on Ovation withDawes glacier (I believe) and really liked it. A few years later, my husband and I returned to Alaska and mapped out and reserved our own land trip covering areas from Denali down to Seward and Kenai Fjords and everywhere in between. We did that using just busses and trains. We loved that experience also. 

[OCSC Mike]

22 minutes ago, Kathleen said:

A few years later, my husband and I returned to Alaska and mapped out and reserved our own land trip covering areas from Denali down to Seward and Kenai Fjords and everywhere in between. We did that using just busses and trains. We loved that experience also. 

Highly recommend something like this.

My wife spent a year planning our 2018 trip with an outside company since we were treating it as a special "we may never go back" type vacation. After 50+ itinerary revisions we flew into Fairbanks and took the train all the way to Seward (with several stops of course including 3 nights in Denali). We spent 10 days on land and everything was amazing but Denali and the Kenai Fjords definitely stick out in my mind.

[greenbed03]

Thank you all for the great advice.  Looks like I have some more research to do, but looking forward to that.  

[dejavu21]

On 10/13/2023 at 10:30 AM, greenbed03 said:

Thank you all for the great advice.  Looks like I have some more research to do, but looking forward to that.  

Some great advice above.  My wife and I did our first Alaskan cruise last year.  One thing you might encounter when your doing research is "Glacier Bay National Park".  We really wanted to go there and thus, we had to book Holland America because Royal had given up their rights to go there.  It was amazing.   We are going back July 2024, on RC, and loved the Vancouver area.  There are a lot of great things to do there if going up early, and have also heard great things about Seattle.  One thing we loved was cruising the Inside Passage as @Kathleen mentioned above.  The calmness of the waters and scenery is simply amazing.  As for Alaska, we loved it.  My favorite stop was Skagway and taking the scenic train ride into the mountains (with a hike along the way).  

Oh another tip.  If you go out of Seattle you are going to get the bigger ship (Ovation i think) and is Vancouver (Brilliance) which is a smaller ship.  So, if looking at both of those ships there are some really good YouTube videos by HARR travel and others that give complete walkthroughs.  

Last, the sun is up for a long time in Alaska, 5am - 10pm sometimes, so we took blackout shades.  Hope some of this helps.

[FLTraveler]

Agree with what everyone's saying. I did Quantum out of Seattle and loved it, but we really only had three days where it felt like we were enjoying Alaska versus just enjoying being at sea. If I ever do it again (and I want to!) I'd want to do one of the cruises that starts or ends in Alaska and I'd build in time on one end or the other to do additional exploration.