Jeeden

Yeah I saw this mentioned above. Every location has a bad experience but I'll certainly keep an eye on that. Definitely open to alternative hotels if anyone has recommendation

Thoughts on Albergo del Senato for a family of 5 for 2-3 days prior to Cruise next July (2025)? As I started to dig into the hotels I figured out pretty quickly the big chains didn't offer much for award usage, price, room size, location, or experience, and then started on the independent hotels. I think we want to stay around Pantheon for all the obvious reasons (I was torn on this or Trastevere, but it seems better to stay in Pantheon and go over there for dinner and shopping than vice versa). Albergo del Senato is a good price point and with all the bonuses (location, A/C, wifi, scenery, rooftop, etc), but we have that large family (literally and figuratively, I'm about 6'4" 260 and my sons are pretty big too) with odd numbers and it doesn't seem like their rooms are setup for it. I'm fine booking two rooms, but would like to avoid 3 as that is getting pricey. The kids will be 11, 15, and 17. I'm open to other equivalent recommendations for hotels, but they all seem to be around the same configurations.

I appreciate everyone's help. We wound up booking from Rome to Athens. ... now for the REAL planning to begin. First up is finding lodging for a family of 5 for the few days we plan to spend in Rome before the cruise!

Thanks. We definitely will be staying at least overnight when we get off the ship no matter which direction. I tend to like to "front load" our vacations, but work schedules might mean we need to do the Athens to Rome itinerary

Looking at Rome - Athens/ Athens - Rome cruise in July (7 vs 21) 2025 with large family group. Anyone have advise on if one direction is preferable over the other? I was thinking Rome to Athens as we want to spend a couple of extra days in Rome and it seems like a bad idea to put those on the end of the trip when kids and others might be tired. Other considerations though? 21st would be closer to peak Europe holiday crowds? Thanks

Yup, as said above, Alaskan Brewing was great for us last summer. Our large group all did the glacier early in the day and then we split to downtown/fish hatchery with the kids and met back up at the downtown Alaskan Brewing Public house for beers and afternoon snack before going back to the ship. It was a great location with plenty of room in the back. Pretzel bites and beer cheese were incredible, we got like 20 orders of them and the beer was good.

I would suggest getting off the ship, taking the free gondola all the way to the end of the port (where the zipline gondola station is). You can then walk back up the nature trail, walk past the zipline landing zone, walk up the beach and check out the shore and starfish, then when you get to the cannery walk through that. Then you can stop and get lunch/snack at the smokehouse, crab restaurant, or donut stand and continue on to town. Look around town, then take the shuttle all the way back to the pier and get back on the ship.

We booked horseback riding for my wife and daughter through Alaska Shore Tours while my sons and I did ziplining through another provider on Radiance last month and they were very happy with the meetup, transportation, and the exclusion itself. We booked all of our excursions through independent operators for our cruise in each port. None of the excursions were more than 30 min from port, going to be close on time (most were mid-afternoon returns with the ship in port until dinner time, etc so we were comfortable doing so. If it was a country we weren't familiar with, concerns about equipment (ie. aircraft maintenance) or a time crunch we it might be different, but I think this is pretty low risk.

If you can swing it I can't recommend the Alaska Railroad train from Anchorage to there enough. get the Gold Star Class on the Coastal classic which includes drinks, breakfast, and a dedicated glass top car and outdoor platform. It is totally worth it.

Not to turn the thread into a whining session, but as mentioned above you do see this sort of thing within a lot of industries now. I would provide the care sales industry as an example. The last few times I bought a car (with exception of my new Rivian I just got! haha) every time I have been at the dealer I have obviously known more about the vehicle than the salesperson. I remember buying my mustang a number of years ago when the new design came out and hearing stories of people going on the lots and asking for a particular one they knew they had in inventory with a turbo 4 engine and having the sales person bring up several cars in a row that were wrong color, wrong options, wrong engine. Of course this isn't just the car industry, but many others. A couple of seconds of reading a forum or asking a colleague could educate a care salesman on a vehicle or a TA on the details of Seward, but they aren't interested in doing that, it is easier to just keep throwing answers at you until one sticks. A few years ago I had an award from work where they would give you and a spouse a trip anywhere in the CONUS and Hawaii. My employer really tried to make it "hands off" where they would give the TA an allowance and you would just tell them where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do and they would plan it. I told our TA we wanted to stay in Maui for a week and wanted to snorkel and asked what else the recommended. They came back with an ok hotel, horrible flights, and "some snorkel place they found." I wound up planning the whole trip like usual (stayed at the Hyatt, snorkeled with Trilogy catamaran in Lahaina, mountain biked down the volcano, at at great restaurants, rented a car to drive to Hana) and the flights and hotel were expensive enough I just gave the TA the flight numbers/times I wanted and the hotel I wanted. We use a TA for our cruises, but basically we say what ship, date, itinerary, location on ship we want and then we plan the rest. I imagine there is a level of TA or assistant if you are rich enough that will do it the way you want.

I think the tent is part of the train station/alaska railroad operation, but the people you hand the luggage to and the transfer of luggage is a RC operation I believe. I was so glad we paid for the upgraded gold star class. It seemed like a reasonable increase in price on paper. If I knew how good it was I would have paid even more for it.

Brought our luggage to the train station with the cruise tags on it. There is a check in for the luggage (under a white outdoor tent) where they put it on the truck. A lot of people were filling out tags there, not sure why they didn't bring printed ones. We never saw the luggage again until the cruise when it was delivered to our stateroom. You then check in inside the train station itself, just tell them your name and tickets, they give you a voucher, some maps, etc. There is a bottle fill in the station for water and a very small coffee shop that is impressive at how fast they are able to serve everyone. It gets VERY crowded when some of the larger groups on buses arrive, but once we checked in we went outside to eat our breakfast and then they started calling groups for each car to come and board. Very casual boarding with time to stop outside the train and take photos etc. I have a million photos from it. It was just too good.

We did the train last month with a large group of friends and it was a highlight of the trip. We booked the gold start class on the coastal classic directly with Alaska Railroad. We booked it EARLY (like as soon as it opened in October for our July cruise) and were glad we did because we heard it sold out mid winter. It was EPIC, perfect for kids and adults alike. We had the second level glass top car that we stayed in the whole time (no limit like the regular class). It included a nice breakfast downstairs, 2 drinks at a bar per person and complimentary non-alcoholic drinks. All of the adults wound up splitting the vouchers for the kids drinks. It also has an outdoor area in the back of the train under cover so you can take photos and see things without looking through the glass. I spent almost my whole time out there. It was great for the kids to be outside or inside as they liked. It was really perfect and I would not do the trip any other way. You book directly on the Alaska Railroad site once this season is over and then you just take an uber to the train station downtown the morning of the train. It is a very early morning, but we just arrived the night before so were still feeling east coast time which made it easier.

Our large group of family friends went to 49th state brewing when we were there a couple of weeks ago and can't recommend it enough. Lots of drink choices, lots of food choices, reasonable price and a great decor with very good views. Make sure you have a reservation though (we did from months ago).

From what I have read they have some desks at the station in Anchorage for some of the cruise lines including RCCL where you can drop off the bags. I assume anyone manning that desk would have the information. If the desk is closed then I would assume that the luggage gets checked on the train as a normal train passenger, but I hear even in that case you just need to pick it up on the other end and there are often porters and/or luggage carts standing by for luggage to go on the ship. We are headed out in 3 days and taking the CC to Seward and while I'm a planning nut, I'm not worried about figuring out this detail right now. Jeremy

So the forestry service provides a certain number of permits to all the commercial operators each year at the beginning of the season. In years past they have expanded how many of those permits are allowed about half way through the season. They did not do that this year. Many tour operators used their initial allotment of permits in an unlimited manner assuming that the forestry service would provide more. They made a bad assumption and as a result used everything they were provided. Any tours that are continuing to operate are likely: - Using permits that they self rationed to last the entire season - Going places that don't require drop off permits to the visitor center (example, flying onto the glacier, kayaking up to it, going to the side of it for viewing, possibly visiting it as part of another tour like whale watching (I'm not sure how that is determined) basically not going to the visitor center parking lot to drop off/pick up people Rental cars, taxis, ubers, etc are not restricted by this limitation because they do not require permits to drop off / pick up there. Mainly because: - You are not a commercial operation using a rental car - Uber and lift are not permitted to go into the visitor center for pick up/drop off and need to do so down the road (I think that was a battle several years ago) The cruise lines all just contract out with local providers for most excursions. It is possible the cruise line has not been informed of a cancellation from the provider yet or the provider still has some permits left.

I have been trying to look into fishing excursions for Ketchikan. I would probably prefer a land based one, but most of those require flights somewhere and are too long. Found some nice boat ones, but they are longer than I'm looking for as well (5 hours plus as opposed to say 3).

Thanks so much for the tip!

Thanks all. You are correct, I haven't been to ISP before. I didn't realize the tours went that far out as most of the maps seem to give the impression everything is in and around town. We would take one of the vehicle excursions, but already have used most of the budget for ISP on our whale watching tour there. Maybe they will have some discounts on the tours as we get closer. Appreciate the help.

My group has a whale watching excursion booked for the morning at ISP and I think we are looking at lunch, shopping, and hopefully some bear spotting in the afternoon (zipline seems great, but a bit $$$ for the ride), but I can't seem to figure out the details on the trail situation if someone has information... I have seen some maps that show some trails around the adventure center, but then I read about everyone doing "the nature trail" which is basically a road that parallels the green transporter gondola. Is it not possible to walk the trails/boardwalks the bear spotting tours use on your own? We don't need a "real" hiking trail, but would frankly like to have a similar experience to the tours, but on our own to accommodate our schedule and our budget. Understand we would need to be "bear aware" etc. Thanks!

I would too, but they really make it difficult to pull apart who is running a tour and who is a booking company. I am usually pretty good at it, but apparently didn't sniff it out very well this time.

We have a whale watching booked for the morning with the kids and this sounds like the perfect afternoon for us (we are there mid-July) The Zipline seems cool, but already shelling out for the whale boat. Is this something we can do without booking an organized excursion?

I agree, they seemed good, my son's and I have one tour booked through them in skagway while my wife and daughter have a tour through Alaska shore tours which seems to also get good reviews. I have no personal experience yet though

I'll add to what has been said. Go to REI and get a good goretex rain jacket and if doing excursions, whale watching, rainforest treks, etc rain pants for everyone. Then the rest is layers. Suggest casual pants, t shirts, and then fleece pullover/hoodie sweashirt/etc. Hiking boots or hiking sneakers are best, but sneakers can be ok if you are ok having wet feet. This lets you stand in a downpour on the deck of a whale watching ship with a whale 3 ft from you while everyone else is inside foggy windows, but then lets you shed the layers when the sun comes out for an hour and the temp rockets to 80 degrees in the sun before raining. On ship, wear the same stuff you would inside a ship in the tropics, it's inside 🙂

Looking for recommendations for Skagway bicycle tour with kids under 13 (about 8-12 years old). My wife and I were in Alaska years ago and had a blast in Skagway doing the jeep tours into the Yukon. We are now returning with our children (9,13,14) and friends with their children this summer. Looks like most jeep tours have had it at this point so looking at other things. The bicycle tours look great, but both independent and through the cruise it seems the age limits are 13 and up which eliminates a lot of the kids in the group. Most of them are 8-12 years old, good at riding gear bikes and somewhat large for their age. I can see the reasoning on the limit for the downhill one, but the rainforest bicycle tours seem perfect. Are there any recommendations? We are trying to not to make every stop a hike so would be open to any excursions people have to recommend. We want to be on the adventurous side (not just sitting on a tour bus) and around $100 a head (so no float planes etc). We are already planning to do whale watching in Icy Strait. Thanks