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That's a big maybe. The buffet can and will run out of room at times. I can recall a time when we had I think lunch in the buffet before going into Juneau, and we ended up asking two women if we could share their table; there was nothing else visibly available for us. They were gracious enough to share.

I'd advise against mixing "poorly maintained" with "outdated". That smell and/or dirty state can arise quickly on any ship. Meanwhile, the decor may have a certain style based on the line, and some of those decor choices could easily be interpreted as outdated (others may see it as classic and/or nautical). I can't speak for any line aside from Princess, but I do believe there's a certain "cruise ship smell" or perhaps at least "Princess cruise ship smell". For me, that's a signal that I'm on a cruise, and I love that feeling. 😉

I promised a second reply about my photography plans. I've always rented at least one item and sometimes many items to augment our regular gear for Alaska. I have to see how our budget is looking as our side hustle is finally picking up steam and I hope to be able to "spend freely". If so, I hope to set myself up with a new twist on my "cruising kit": 28-70 f/2 general-purpose lens on a Canon R5 100-300 f/2.8 telephoto (rented) on a rented Canon R5 Mark 2 600 f/4 supertelephoto (rented) with a rented 1.4x TC on a rented Canon R5 Mark 2 15-35 f/2.8 (rented) in a pouch for wider shots I'm a little afraid that the 100-300 will be too heavy or bulky, or that the overall rental cost will exceed my comfort level. I may scale back to the 100-500 zoom and skip both the 100-300 and 600. My wife will likely end up with: 24-240 or 24-105 on her Canon R6 Mark 2 100-500 or 200-800 (rented) on a rented R6 Mark 2 14-35/4 and 85/2 Macro in a lens bag My son may end up with a Canon R50 with 18-135 lens. We shall see...that one in particular I will make sure I own so if he breaks it, I only have to cry to myself. 🙂

I am also an overplanner. We're doing a 2-night repositioning cruise in 16 days to get our 5yo son familiar with cruising, then doing a 7-night Alaska round-trip out of Seattle right after school ends. We (I) chose the Seattle round-trip since we live in the Seattle area. I chose the Glacier Bay itinerary as it spreads out the four main activities (Glacier Bay NP, Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan across four days) better than the Tracy Arm/Endicott Arm cruises (glacier viewing and Juneau usually on the same day, which makes for a LONG day, and then after Skagway it's ~48 hours of non-stop sailing to get to Vancouver). I booked a full suite for this trip as we absolutely love the suite breakfast and it gives us a little more separation from the kiddo. Reserve Collection dining means we can show up whenever and likely get a window table or near a window without having to be tied to a TD schedule (we did love TD pre-kid). I have a side hustle as a photographer, and that feeds into my overplanning behaviors. I'll address that in a separate reply. My wife has an interest in photography as well. For Juneau, we're doing the JNU-700 excursion, which is the whale watching "photo safari". We've done it several times before, absolutely love the tour operator Gastineau Guiding, and feel that the boats are the best on the water for whale watching. Truly enough space for everyone to be front row on the same side of the boat. In theory this excursion finishes at 6:30pm, so we'll be back at the ship for dinner and that becomes one of my extra indulgences (going to a meal with all of my camera gear). For Skagway, our son loves trains so we're obviously doing the train ride, and it'll be the longest one which is the Bennett Lake run. I think ours will be bus out and train back, given the timing and what the WP&YR shows on their website for this year's schedule. (We'll check again in December.) For Ketchikan, we're doing KTN-610 which is the Bering Sea Crab Fisherman's Tour. We've done it before and loved it, with great pictures as a bonus. This time, I'm really debating whether to stick to a monopod for my big lens or take a tripod; the bigger debate is whether to bring a "large" flash to help out my wildlife photos. We're going to plan out our breakfast carefully as our tour is at 7:30 and I'm hoping the suite breakfast can start at 6:30 that day. We've also planned the Ultimate Balcony Dining for that night as we'll be underway with peaceful sea views (I hope). We don't plan to do much if anything in Victoria. Probably a good night for Alfredo's Pizza and wipe away the tears of another cruise coming to an end.

On the topic of ulu knives, we bought one in 2010, and I highly recommend shopping for a knife and bowl set. Ours is a butcher block square (with rounded corners): a bowl on one side roughly the correct curvature to match the knife, and a cutout on the back side with magnets glued in so the knife stores with the bowl.

Remember, you can always add an additional camera, even if it means renting one. Alaska is likely far different shooting conditions that what you encounter at home, so augmenting your kit temporarily is often a wiser decision than trying to buy new stuff. Having that additional camera means you can have something wider at the ready. I've rented a long lens for every Alaska cruise we've done (500/4, 400/4 DO, 200-400/4 w/ 1.4x, or 600/4), but that's always been a third if not fourth lens for me, with 2-3 cameras.

Are you traveling with anyone else?

Fair warning: some of the vendors have signed exclusivity contracts with the cruise lines. Those vendors will likely not accept your booking unless you present yourself as a non-cruise traveler, and may also be hesitant to discuss pricing with cruisers. It's also possible that they have allocated all of their capacity to the cruise lines for now. We did a boat tour to Misty Fjords back in 2015. It was perhaps the first day of the season, and there were only two ships in port that day. The tour boat held 150 passengers. Apparently the "game" is that when the ship and tour schedule is first made, the tour vendor offers 75 seats to one line and 75 seats to the other line. Every so often, as the date gets closer, the tour guide negotiates with the lines on how much capacity they want. If one line isn't showing a lot of sales, they might throttle back their request, at which point the vendor can offer it to the other line. At a certain point, the cruise line makes a final commitment to the vendor (and ends up on the hook for that many tickets, no matter whether they sell them or not). The vendor could then sell any excess uncommitted capacity to the public (or could perhaps have reduced their capacity offer to one of the lines ahead of time if they wanted to sell to the public). We had an instance where we were in Juneau perhaps 1:30pm to 10:00pm. Our favorite whale watch tour/vendor apparently only had offerings on our ship at 2:00pm, even though they likely had plenty of time to go out on the water 1-2 times more well before dark. We wanted to do a "double" whale watch, so we called up the vendor and made arrangements. The vendor, for better or worse, would not commit to a second tour until the very last minute, even to a point where we didn't know if we'd get the second tour until we got back to the dock from our first tour. (We were ok with that...better a maybe than a flat no.) Interestingly, in order to make absolutely sure they were not selling that second tour to us without going through the cruise line, they wrote paper tickets for us and handed them to us to hold. If we were successful at getting on a second tour, we'd hand in those paper tickets to be billed.Sure enough, we made it out for a second tour.

I always use a process of elimination to figure out the formal night(s): It's never the embarkation day - they don't want delayed bags to impact formal night. It's never the night before disembarkation - they don't want formal night to delay bags going into the hallway. It won't be a port day unless you're blessed with an itinerary with nonstop port days. 🙂 Across what's left, think about which days they could get the most spa/photography business that are non-consecutive, and you probably have figured out the formal nights.

I'm able-bodied, but on a 7-day cruise, I'm bringing enough camera gear that none of you want me attempting to self-disembark. Regardless, it is a service that most (all?) cruise lines offer, it's perfectly reasonable to utilitize it, and is a matter for individual choice. Knowing that it's there and available helps first-time cruises make that choice AND make the appropriate preparations for it.

I'm interpreting that as signing in the presence of the operator. That would not be the shorex desk, but also doesn't mean you'd have to actually go on the tour. There's probably a representative of the tour operator on the dock, either as the bus driver, tour guide, or possibly the person holding the lollipop sign showing you where to gather.

No idea if it's still offered, but the Egan Convention Center in downtown Anchorage was operating a bag storage that includes both checked bags and carry-ons. I remember from our first cruise that our checked bags were taken there directly from the ship (we had a late flight), and we were able to add our carry-ons to our "pile" while we explored Anchorage. There was certainly a deadline in the evening, but you won't run into that.

In the grand scheme of things, past cruisers probably ruined it for present cruises, but two main reasons come to mind: 1) Privacy: people think they can walk around their cabin nekkid with the blinds open not expecting a drone peeking in. (or they think they'll be able to enjoy their balcony without the buzzing of a drone overhead). 2) "Return to launch site" doesn't work well from a moving vessel.

I'll echo the sentiment to take half the clothes you think you'll need. Our first travel agent said lay out your clothes on the bed. Put half of them back in the drawers. Pack/take what's left on the bed. Undies and socks are probably single-day wear, but everything can be doubled up. I would often wear a "fresh" shirt to dinner then wear it during the next day. Hang it up when I change to another "fresh" shirt for dinner and rotate my way through. Let the porters handle your bags from the earliest possible moment and they'll arrive at your cabin. Be ready for the final night luggage game: they want you to put your tagged luggage out in the hall as early as possible that night, but they recognize that you need some clothes for dinner. Don't forget some clothes to wear off the ship, but also keep some sort of carry-on bag (at least) for pajamas, toiletries, etc. My opinion here: first cruse, mostly rely on excursions booked through the cruise line. Future cruises you can start going independent, but the peace of mind that they will take care of you is useful that first time. We've had a few minor adventures where this promise was useful, whether it was the Seattle-Vancouver transfer to begin the cruise, my wife's first cruise excursion in Skagway where the videographer had been at the facility all day and joined her group's bus for the ride back to the ship (so when the guide had enough heads, she left 10 minutes early...as soon as my wife realized, a quick phone call brought the bus back for her), or a time when we'd booked the Tracy Arm Fjord small-boat excursion (scheduled to finish by 1pm but got us back to the ship at 1:45pm) and we got to the other side of the ship and down the gangway at 1:55pm only to see that our 2:00pm whale watch in Juneau had left without us ("we came from a ship-sponsored tour and you knew we hadn't reboarded the ship until just a few minutes ago" quickly led to a radio call and the bus returned). Another time we were on a Ketchikan tour to Misty Fjords intended to be boat out and floatplane back, but an hour out the boat captain was told the planes couldn't fly so we had a free tour and made a U-turn back to the docks. Half of the passengers were on the NCL ship and had to dash back to their ship, but they knew that they were on a ship-sponsored tour so the ship would wait... Take some magnets to "attach" papers and maps to the cabin walls. Non-surge-protected power strip(s).

My biggest takeaway from that first show was the presentation by Princess. They covered their Alaska "product", which was what we were interested in already. The rep had a mix of speaking to us plus a video to show, but during her initial "warmup" she asked the crowd how many had already done a Princess Alaska cruise and half the people raised their hands! Plus, they were all happy with their past cruises and were anxious to learn about new options. That told me we were making a decent choice. Now, 14 years later, I'm very glad we made that choice. I intend to stick with Princess until we're in a position to afford Seabourn (and our son is old enough to be left behind).