abbydancer2003

Crown D6 Today was the 2nd full sea day. Originally, it was Ketchikan. The clocks went back to Pacific last night, but family said they wanted breakfast so we sucked it up and got up at 8am Pacific time. At 8:30 I texted Beth about the time. She asked if it was 7:30, I said nope 8:30. I figured they’d miss breakfast, but they beat us there. After breakfast we decided to go to the IC, have some tea and coffee and watch the towel folding demonstration. About 2/3 of the way through, we got phone notifications that QE2 had died, so we decided to go up to Beth’s room and watch BBC. At about 11,Lily said they were in their room and we could watch there. Much more comfortable, so up we went. We watched until lunch time. For lunch I had a salad and then beef goulash. I don’t remember what I had for dessert. After lunch, we went back to moms to watch the scenery, and then to have the what I’m calling the low tea there. We’d set up afternoon tea again, but this time, just scones and tea. It was very nice and not too much food. After that, Glen and went down and got ready for dinner. At about 6:15 we headed to explorers and participated in famous faces trivia. We knew we were going to leave early so we didn’t take it too seriously. There was a woman next to us who also had to leave early so we helped each other out. T If you haven’t seen this game, they show a covered up head shot of a celebrity and reveal pieces at a time. The number of points you get depends on how quickly you can identify the celebrity. We weren’t very good at it at all. Midway through, we headed to the wheelhouse for the band, 2 Cool Dudes. Turns out tonight it was 1 cool dude, just Fiona (the female half of the band). Apparently her partner passed out in the steam room and burned his arm. I spoke to her, and they are planning to leave early October, but she’s not sure if it will now be sooner. I wish him well. Following that we met the family for dinner. Because this was formal night, it was a tough one for some of the family, including me. I started with the Alaska berry soup, as did most of the family, and I had the Beef Wellington. I don’t actually like the filling between the meat and the pastry, since it has pate, so I remove it. It works for me. For dessert, it was back to the flambe choice, this time pineapple. After dinner back to our increasing creative, and thus amusing Scattegories game. Following that, we decided to go to the Casino. We took Ellie with us, since she’s 21, but her card wouldn’t work to play. I was going to leave some money in my bank for tomorrow, but I asked at the cage when the casino would be open. Turns out it closes for good at 11 am, so I cashed out. After that bed. Tomorrow is the last full day. It’s a sea day during the day, and Victoria in the evening.

Crown D5 Today is Glacier Bay and the replacement port of Icy Straight. We got up in time for breakfast. The patter said we’d arrive at Margerie Glacier around 9:30, but it didn’t look like it from the view out the window. Beth and Co joined us right before it closed, so we enjoyed it with a view of the approach to the glacier. After breakfast, we put on our warn clothes and went outside. We noticed people on the top of the bridge, so we figured out how to get there, and went up. We started texting the family about it but texts didn’t go through. The Grand Pacific is sad, as it’s retreated significantly since our first visit in 2007, and no longer has ice in the front view. (You can see it up the hill though). Margerie still looks good though. At some point I tried calling my mom’s room, but no answer. I tried. Once the ship rotated and the glacier was falling out of view, we went back to mom’s room. No-one there, so we texted and then watched the start of the sailaway from Margerie. After a few minutes the family came back, and we spent the rest of the morning watching the glaciers as we turned to head out of the bay. The scenery was stunning, and everyone enjoyed it. As we were watching, Glen mentioned that some potato chips might be nice. For grins, I went to the app, and ordered some. They came pretty quickly and everyone was happy. As we left, we went down for lunch. I had another one of their great fruit soups, and then potato latke’s. Not quite my grandfathers, but pretty good. For dessert I had trifle. After lunch we stopped by the room. The wine tasting was at 3, but Glen didn’t want to go so we skipped it and relaxed a bit as we went to Icy Straights. At about 3:10 Lily texted and offered to go with me, but they’d charge her, so we didn’t bother. At about 5, Beth texted that they were in line to get off the ship and were in the Casino. We got our stuff together and met them. It took a while to get off, which was a little annoying as our time was short. First thing we did was talk to a local rep about the up the mountain gondola. The problem for us was that it was 50.00 per person, and we didn’t have time to do the hikes, or zip line down, etc. With 6 of us, it would be 300.00 and wasn’t worth it for the time we had, basically up and down. So we took the free one to the bigger port area. We also didn’t have time to go to Hoonah, so we wandered around the main building for a while. The building is U shaped, with museum stuff at the end s and the cannery museum at the bottom of the U. The sides were shops. We all wandered around for a while. I noticed a long line at the donut shop and decided not to tell the people there that the donuts were only OK. Fresh mini donuts dipped in a flavored powdered sugar. Oh well, it’s a fundraiser for the community. After getting our fill of that, we stopped in the small cemetery in town. Most interesting thing there was that the graves had coins left all over them. Maybe it’s Tlinglet tradition. There was a line for the gondola bark, so we decided to take the 15 minute walk back. That was through the woods, and the adventure park there that looks abandoned. We arrived back at the ship around 7:30. We dressed for dinner and then met the family. I started with beer/chedddar soup, a hanger steak and finished with the flambe of the day, cherries Jubilee. After dinner, back up to mom’s for the usual Scattegories and then bed.

I don't know if anyone is actually following this, but in case at some point someone wants to hear the rest, I'll post it all tomorrow. Thanks.

I'm guess 22.

I got mine too. We board the Silhouette a week from tomorrow, so my 2165 to go for zenith will go down to about 2053 - although I may have booked the cruise under a double point offer, in which case it might be under 2K.

I'm guessing that the flight from Honolulu to Chicago was long, but not a Polaris flight, since it was domestic. I've gone business class on United from New York to San Francisco and it sounds like the same experience, other than the lack of friendly flight attendants.

exactly why, when my mom decided to take us on an Alaska cruise, we picked Princess. It will be the only time she'll ever do Alaska, so Celebrity was out.

Actually, if you count the long weekend we took right after the wedding, and the fact that he was married once before, could be both.

I bought a 6 pack expecting that I'd need them all. We used 3 in September for an Alaska cruise (me, DH and my mother - she paid for 7 of us, so I figured the least I could do is give her one). We're doing a transatlantic in a couple of weeks, and we'll have to test in London because we leave 4 days before the cruise. I'll bring all 3, use 2 and have the 3rd in case we mess one up, or someone on our roll call needs it, if we don't mess up.

OP is active on the roll call. My first cruise was my honeymoon (DHs 3rd I think). On day 2 I decided I was never going on another one. (cruise started with 3 sea days). By day 4 I was hooked.

I don't the the Solstice has any of the Revolutionized features, ie there's Michael's Club and Luminae but that's it.

By the way, I had friends on your third cruse and they got Covid. He told me that the list of people who left via the "covid exit" was around 125-150.

Is the green thing peas or guacamole?

We've been on Reflection once. Our first time in a Sky Suite and Glen's first X cruise. We normally eat between 8-8:30. We only had to wait once, and that was Sicily because we didn't leave port until after 7, so everybody came then. They sent us to Michaels Club and either the hostess came and got us or the concierges sent us. (By the way, the same thing happened to my sister and me in the Caribbean on the Equinox, which doesn't have the extra deck.) Our friends in Aqua said they had to wait every night, and we were told they had no room for us (suites are as available). No baked brie for me.

I can sort of answer this. Some ships, including the Eclipse, (I'm guessing the ships that haven't been revolutionized) they have an older system, where you can't load directly to the machine, but have to go to the cage and have them load a ticket (for lack of a better term). This can only be in even multiples of 50.00. You put the ticket into the machine, play and when you cash out, you get a new ticket for whatever is there (more, less whatever). You can then play a different machine or take to the cage for cash. I don't understand what they mean by you can only cash out winnings. One of my friends did say that he had to play all he put in, but he used OBC to buy promotional credits. (55.00 worth of credit for 50.00) - I think he had to play it all but I never did understand what he ended up with, as it was a lot of back and forth emails.

I don't quite understand the thing about the casino. I was on the Eclipse twice this past summer and it also only allowed 50.00 increments. I'd put 50.00 OBC from my account and get a ticket that I could put into a machine. I could play as long as I wanted on my even multiples of 50.00. I could cash out at any point and get cash back on what was there. Are you saying that if I put 50.00 in, and I cash out when it's at 51.25, I only get 1.25 back? And if I cash out at 47.50, I get nothing back?

Apparently Ailene and Sticks are a duo on the Island Princess now. They are excellent and play a decent amount of ballroom music. On the Ruby they were in the Wheelhouse. On Discovery, the atrium.

I was on the Discovery that week as week 2 of of a B2B. The first week there were no lines. This was easter week, so the ship was almost 100% full. (Interesting in that there were lots of empty rooms, and lots of triples and quads). I've also done lots of departures from both berths at Los Angeles, and never seen lines like that. Also, if the Solstice is going to 46, that means it's the 3rd ship, and so there will be signage for what to do. The first week of the Discovery it was at 46. 91 (I think) where it was here was empty, but they thought it was too short. Turns out they figured out how to maneuver it, because with the full ship the second week, check in at 91 and bussing to 46, would have been a disaster. I'm probably doing the Solstice in February, so I guess I'm interested too.

I see they are still doing it at the very inconvenient time of 1pm, which is not good if you want to enjoy a lunch in the dining room.

I did the same thing, even though I watched it a second time with my own invitation. It played in a window I wasn't watching.

I think it's a grapefruit fork.

Glad you had a good first cruise, hopefully the second will be just as good. By the way, Siene works in the buffet for lunch and Made in the dining room, so hopefully, you'll see them again.

FYI, the bar on the Reflection is U shaped with chairs around it and the bartender in the middle. Also had (as of 2017) a wall of self service beverages. I'm on the Silhouette next months, which my understanding was the same MC as the Reflection, but has since been revolutionized. I've been in the airport (or Denny's) style of lounge on the Equinox, so I'm curious to see how it is different.

Glad to hear it. I've done one b2b on Princess since the restart and was quite relieved when we didn't have to test.

It's been a while since I've done a live from a Princess cruise, but this is unique for me so I'll try it. This will be my third Alaska cruise of the season, and my 10th overall, mostly on Princess. None of this years were first booked for 2022. In 2020, my mother, who was 88 or so at the time, was cleaning out papers in her home. She found some stock she didn't know she had, so decided to take us all on vacation. First thought was European river cruise, but she doesn't really have the mobility for that. Next we thought about a week in Paris or Tel Aviv, but that would mean she'd sit in the apartment, the rest of us would tour and then we'd come back to the apartment for dinner. My sister and I didn't like that, so we thought of an Alaska cruise. We booked for July of 2021, but that didn't happen so we moved to September of 2022. We chose Princess because of the itinerary. We wanted Glacier Bay and Seattle so Crown Princess it was. We leave tomorrow (Thursday) for Seattle - we're coming in two days early because of Labor Day weekend, and the current flight situations. There are 7 of us - my mom (Stephanie), me, DH (Glen), sister (Beth) and 3 nieces (Lily 29, Ellie 21, Beck 19 going on 20 - birthday day after cruise ends). For us, it's been crazy as at the end of July, we tore out our entire 40 year old kitchen, so we've had workers here every day, This morning, our contractors were working on grouting the backsplash, setting up the electrical in the kitchen, installing the cabinet knobs, and in the middle of this, the big appliances were delivered. We live in a condo and have a small kitchen, so packing today involved dodging a lot of stuff. I think we'll have a functional kitchen when we get home. After our contractors left we took a home covid test. Tomorrow morning, we'll go to my mom's house, do our proctored test and help her with hers. However, I don't want a surprise so we took a test tonight. We're mostly packed, but up early as we're leaving here at 9a,m. Good night