Dancer9933

Book the shows online prior to boarding they were the best part of the cruise for us

Has anyone seen whales on a kayaking excursion in Ketchikan or Icy strait?

With a group that large, reservations ARE recommended...it's hard to seat a crowd! So...make your 1st night dining reservations however you can, and then, on night one, make standing reservations for you group for the remainder of the cruise You do NOT need to do all nights in advance.

Thanks! I had planned to book two groups for every night. We don't plan to do many activities together so dinner is going to be the time we are most likely to see everyone. Our group ranges from 24-85 so we have a wide variety of interests.

We only have one full day in Denali and we have booked to Wonder lake. The partial day we are doing a hike near the entrance and dog demo.

Thanks for the idea with the soda cans. I am aware that bear are dangerous but they aren't going to let me brother bring a gun on the ship. As long as we don't surprise the Bears I think we will be ok given our group is likely to be 10 people or so.

Anyone have experience with MTD on Radiance in Alaska?

Thank you for your opinion I will look into Dewey lake and my husband is planning to bike in Skagway so I will suggest Dyea to him. I will be doing more research into ISP as we will not be paying $100 per person to maybe see bears. I have hiked backcountry with topo map and compass before and my brother who will be with our group does a lot of backcountry so I am not worried about getting lost. Bear spray in my opinion should be enough especially given that we plan to use bear bells to alert the Bears to our presence before we see them. I appreciate the warning but unless I see a lot of bears in Denali this is my chance.

For the people in your group that took the train on the same day as the cruise how did the luggage work? Do you just put your tags on and they take it to the ship? Just trying to figure out how much time to allow for dealing with bags before going to see the glacier before boarding the ship. Thanks for the great review! We are going in August including doing Denali on our own before the cruise.

I am looking for advice on hiking not nature walks in both ports. I am thinking 5 miles in each port with the intention of seeing bears at ISP since the salmon will be running in August. We will be hiking in a group and I am planning to buy bear spray in anchorage. Any resources or experiences would be helpful.

Awesome review! We are going southbound on Radiance in August and this is going to help us pick excursions. The details about the shuttle in Denali are awesome, I was wondering how that worked with the stops. I can't wait until you post the compass! I am hoping to plan our dinner times around the shows, mostly I want to know which nights have one vs two shows. Thank you so much for the awesome review!

Traditional dining was not available when we booked. I would have preferred traditional as that is what we have done the last 3 cruises. I am trying to make the best of my time given that we are a large group and don't want to have to wait every night

Does anyone know how many tables for 8-10 are in the anytime section on Radiance?

That would be helpful to me too!

We are ok eating in two groups but I am glad to hear they just ask for the cabin not exactly who is with us. We plan to split 9/6 and switch up who sits with who. We have a mix of family and friends so I think only a few of us will be flipping back and forth. Would it be a problem if one night we only had 7 people for a reservation for 9? In case someone wants to do a specialty restaurant ?

My family likes to wear cocktail dresses and the men wear suits. However as long as you don't have just bathing suits on the staff will not say anything. I am just warning you because some people wear tuxedos and ball gowns so you may feel out of place with polo shirts dress shirts with or without ties could be a nice compromise.

I don't always tip but When I do I hand it to the kayak guide or whoever made the trip for me to make sure they get it. I will give a couple bucks to the driver but depending on how crazy expensive the excursion was in the first place I may not be as inclined to throw money around.

We are going to try to book two reservations around the same time since the max is 10 per reservation. Does anyone have experience doing this? I am curious if it is a problem to switch up the groups from the reservation ie keep the numbers the same but flip a few of my aunts for my parents. Do they scan sea passes for everyone or just the person that made the reservation? Thanks in advance!