The Fun Researcher

$7.99 plus grats Got that price this past Black Friday.

Just posted this photo in another thread, but Columbus Cove is our favorite spot. Beautiful beach looking out at the ship as the backdrop. Close to food and restrooms too.

Columbus Cove is our favorite spot. We don't find it loud at all. Pretty chill really. I circled that in red on the top-left of photo. There will be more people but we've never found it loud or obnoxious. The other option is the area I circled in red towards the bottom. Not many people plop down there. The only downside is the sound of the zipliners going by (line drawn in red), and it can be a bit windy due to it's exposure.

Awesome. Absolutely love the pillow! I'll take two please.

The more we cruise, the less and less appealing Lobster night is. I like lobster but like you say, they are pretty small and with only one included with the meal it's almost not worth it. It takes at least two of those tails to make a proper meal of it IMO. Two tails would be about right for me, not even three. They are more of a novelty to us now. I'd rather have a different excellent entrée on the menu that I could choose instead. Dan

I'm just repeating what they said. They were genuine folks and didn't seem to have any reason to exaggerate. Wonderful crew. https://www.juneauwhalewatch.com/ We saw the ribbons of waterfalls primarily in the Endicott arm, where there were a lot. I did not notice many of them elsewhere but I wasn't looking along shore much as we were travelling between ISP, Sitka, and Juneau. Nugget falls by the Mendenhall Glacier seemed to still be gushing full force. That was awesome to be so close to. Glad to hear June is very nice also. We felt very blessed with our weather, with no rain the entire cruise, and mostly sunny for about 2/3 of it. Of course weather changes a lot anywhere in the country and we lucked out. We absolutely loved our Alaskan cruise, and would rank it right next to our very best Caribbean cruise (9 night to the ABC's and Labadee onboard the newly Amped Navigator March 2019). Alaska will hold us over for a long time. Now that we've experienced it, I think there are many other locations we would like to visit first before going back. Not knocking Alaska, it was absolutely fantastic ad special, but it doesn't have the repeat factor for us like warm weather cruising or exploring other new and exciting locations. Maybe we'll go back in retirement. Happy cruising!

Yeah here is Sitka mid July. Just a little snow left. We don’t know any different so still thought it was gorgeous

This is our only year going to Alaska but we were on our whale watching tour in Juneau on July 14. Sunny and around 75F. The captain of the ship and crew said that it has been raining pretty much all year up until our week. Take that for what it’s worth but we had no rain our entire cruise. ours is just a one off example though

I vote July. We had amazing weather July 10-17

Is it the request for a table for 2 that is tripping things up? That is a special request right? Aren't the odds typically that a pair would be placed with another table unless requested otherwise? I'm guessing you make this request via email before the cruise? We've been making table requests every cruise going back to 2014. Sometimes we've gotten pretty much exactly what we request, sometimes close. We've always had a table for the correct party size though. However we've always been a group anywhere from 6-10 persons and would like our own table. We're fortunate that it makes it easy for them since there are a number of 6-10 person tables in the dining room. I think "2 tops" get requested a lot so maybe it's the fact that you are fighting for a smaller pool of tables? I'm with you though, if it were just my wife and I cruising together I wouldn't want to sit with others either.

I've never seen a MDR open for lunch on embarkation day. If you want to avoid the madness of the buffet on embarkation day, we've found that a specialty restaurant for lunch on embarkation day is a very relaxing way to start your cruise. For us lately that's been Jamie's Italian on our last two cruises but the venues vary by ship. You can check in your cruise planner. Just an option

We've never had that happen. Not saying it didn't but pretty shocking if you had early traditional booked. One way to mitigate or solve this is to go to the Maître d' at the entrance of the dining room as soon as you board and get a table confirmed. Don't wait until you show up for dinner.

I agree that it would be easier to take the luggage with you in the cab/Uber/Lyft. However, if you are a family of 5 like ours it can be difficult to fit us all with our luggage in one cab/Uber/Lyft. In that case I've normally had to drop off everyone and luggage (except me obviously 🙂 ), then return the rental, then get a ride back to the ship. However if it's just two people you should easily be able to get yourselves and luggage to the ship from the rental location.

Sounds good! Just be aware that the stronger the magnification the more steady you need to be to have a stable image. The view can get shaky as you go higher and higher in magnification unless you have a tripod or something. 15x might be perfectly fine though

ETA, I also evaluated the size you mention, the Vortex 10x42's and while the optics were sharp, they just don't let in as much light, so viewing things in lower light conditions is going to be more difficult than the 10x50's. The 50mm outer lenses are great for letting as much light into the binocular as possible. The tradeoff is that they are slightly bigger/heavier than the 10x42's.

I second the Vortex 10x50’s. We also purchased the Vortex 10 x 50 binoculars for our cruise on the Quantum July 10th. They were fantastic. However, we bought the next model down, the Crossfire HD, 10 x 50 binoculars. I had my hands on both at Cabela’s, and while the Diamondbacks were slightly better, I could not justify the additional $100. It’s up to you. I thought there was maybe a 10% performance improvement with the Diamondbacks https://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Optics-Crossfire-10x50-Binoculars/dp/B07V3L3ZSX/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=23XPCEZISTIXG&keywords=vortex+hd+10x50&qid=1690214242&sprefix=vortex+hd+10x50%2Caps%2C235&sr=8-4

It really does seem like they have made things worse. It seemed to work just fine in the past when they had dedicated space for my time dining. Just throwing this out there, but you don’t think it could be because the wait staff would get a lot less additional gratuities for My time than Traditional, do you? I know if I was jumping from Wait staff to Wait staff each evening, I would be less inclined to leave an additional gratuity for them at the end. We tend to find a good waiter and stick with them with MTD but I’m guessing many don’t. That could create a pretty big delta between wait staff in traditional vs MTD

Quantum = 169,000 gross tonnage, 29 ft draft Solstice = 122,000 gross tonnage, 27 ft draft We really enjoy the solstice class. By the way, we will be on the sister ship the Equinox in December right before Christmas.

That’s only if you purchase an additional land tour as well, correct? I can see that being a fantastic addition to the cruise. something Royal doesn’t offer correct? We did a day each at Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park before the cruise, both spectacular but I’m sure the land portions of Alaska are something amazing.

Explain please

In my opinion, the itinerary choice matters far more than the ship itself. I would be interested to see pictures from other classes of ships that got right up close to Dawes glacier. How often does that happen regardless of ship size? Otherwise, the OP chose an itinerary that doesn’t visit any glaciers like you will see at Hubbard or Glacier Bay. We made the same choice, but knew that ahead of time. We did make a separate trek out to Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, which was amazing.

Interested in hearing what you consider misassumptions? Seems to me more people are commenting based on their actual experiences, like us. Your situation is much more like the old way of my time dining, which is awesome, and we love the Freedom class by the way. Love the fact that your early dining was as 5:45 PM. Much better than our 5pm. Any idea what time your lunch venues opened? It was pretty brutal for us to have all of them open at 12 PM with early seating at 5 PM. Unfortunately, it seems that your situation is more like the exception than the norm nowadays though. The mass of lines outside the main dining room were the largest we had ever seen waiting for my time dining. No way it was five minutes. Glad your experience with different

I have a sister and her family that lives in Seattle and after our Alaskan cruise last week she mentioned checking into cheap last minute cruises. Is there a website you use for that?

Thank you. Yeah, I really don't like how they've changed the implementation of MTD. I'm used to prebooking something like 5:45pm or 6pm in the past. 😞

Was just on Quantum last week and couldn't disagree more. I was perfectly fine with how close we got to Dawes. I knew the odds of getting close were slim. There is an excursion that you could have taken that tenders you off the ship right to the face of Dawes. The Endicott arm was just spectacular with lots of floating ice, greenish blue water, the waterfalls on the hills, etc... Gorgeous. A little research would have given you a clue that ships, more often than not, cannot get that close to Dawes glacier. Did you make use of your stop in Juneau to go to the Mendenhall glacier? You knew the itinerary. Not Royal's fault. If you wanted Glaciers for sure, book an itinerary that goes to Glacier Bay or Hubbard Endicott Arm and Dawes Mendenhall