4olivers

Thanks for the Maya Chan Beach suggestion! Looks great and I went on and made a reservation and was able to get it for us, yay! Will show the hubs when wakes, this looks great.

we are currently booked with Butts Up for the triple tour, ATV Cave Tubing and Zip Lining. I am curious as well what others suggest. We will be on Carnival Magic, late April/early May. our 2 teenage boys are interested in all 3 of these and so I am hoping we are making the right choice by NOT snorkeling while in Belize. (we plan to do that in Cozumel, Roatan and undecided on what to do in Costa Maya)

we will be visiting Costa Maya in early May, it will be the last stop on our Carnival Magic Cruise. We like to explore, relax on the beach, LOVE to snorkel, drink, eat great food. We have the shortest time here, I believe 8-2, currently our plans are as follows for other ports:

Cozumel - Mr Sanchos most likely

Belize - Butts Up triple tour (cave tubing, ATV and Zipline)

Roatan - Little French Key

Costa Maya - NO CLUE

our boys are 13 and 16 if that helps.

we are traveling on Magic 4/28 and will have our 13 and 16 year old sons with us. We want to snorkel every chance we can within reason, my husband and I enjoy our cocktails so we will be drinking. Our boys are HUGE eaters and foodies to boot, so great food and lots of it is a must.

This is our first caribbean cruise and only second cruise, first was 12 days in Alaska. Very different experience I am sure! In trying to choose for Cozumel this is what we took into consideration when narrowing down:

In Belize we are planning knock out the wish list things to do our boys have - cave tubing, ATV and zipline

In Roatan we plan to spend the day at Little French Key and get the package with the guided snorkel tour

In Costa Maya - we have no clue!

We thought Cozumel could be a great beach day and we could also snorkel from the shore, eat and drink, relax...it will be our first stop of the cruise. We are open to tips, suggestions, feedback on our whole plan!

89 days and counting!

FIRST I apologize in advance if posting in the “wrong place” but I’ve been searching CC - various places and just not finding what I need in the sea of a zillion posts/threads.

This is only our second cruise, first was on Coral Princess to Alaska Summer of 16

We will be traveling with our 13 and 16 year old sons at the end of April, it’s also my husband and my 20 year anniversary. We will be on Deck 8, right side of the ship with a balcony.

Western Caribbean - Cozumel Belize Roatan Costa Maya out of Port Canaveral.

We are interested in:

Snorkeling, relaxing on BEAUTIFUL beach, great food, sons want ATV Cave Tubing Zipline as well. I want to see the monkeys. We’d like to see a Jaguar. We don’t want to get left at port.

Right now we are tentatively planing the following:

Cozumel -Mr Sanchos (did consider Money Bar)

Belize - Butts Up triple excursion ( cave tubing. ATV and zip line

Roatan - Little French Key with the guided snorkel package

Costa Maya - NO CLUE YET

Any input, tips, tricks, suggestions, etc?! We are sailing in about 90 days! So far no excursion is booked through the ship.

Thanks in advance!

So out of our 4 stops (coz, belize, roatan, costa maya) which one would you recommend as the port to reserve as a "beach" day to just relax, enjoy the water, eat/drink, shop a little?

We are going to Cozumel again on our cruise in October. It's a great place. We have done the Money Bar one other time and will do it again this time. The snorkeling is great there! It's free to go there, you just pay for your food and drinks. It's fine to take your boys to, also.

There are paid snorkeling tours outside the rope of the Money Bar. It's not a beach but there is sand and a "beach" area and is beautiful!!

Look it up on Youtube.

I hope you have a great time!!

So if we wanted to spend this day mostly shopping, enjoying the beach, doing free snorkeling, having local food/drinks would you suggest the Money Bar for the "free" snorkeling option? We will likely do an excursion in Roatan for snorkeling but we'd like to snorkel at least twice and would love it if one of those was "free"

We will be in Cozumel for 9 hours in April while on the Carnival Magic. We are a family of 4, ages 13, 16, 43, 44 - love the beach and snorkeling and are looking into excursions here. This is what we know we want in Cozumel...some shopping, eat great local food/drinks - we'd also like to relax on the beach and maybe get in some snorkeling here.

Since we will be also in Belize, Roatan and Costa Maya - we are trying to decide which port (s) we will do an actual excursion for snorkeling and we know at least one of those will be Belize or Roatan.

We have read about the Money Bar? free snorkeling??

There are 5 excursions through Carnival we are looking at:

Adventure Jeep and Snorkel at Punta Sur (5 hours)

VIP Luxury Champagne and Catamaran Sail and Snorkel (4 hours)

Deluxe Beach, Catamaran and Snorkel (4 hours)

Beach Buggy and Snorkel (4 hours)

Three Reef Snorkel by Boat (3.5 hours)

We have also read about Mr. Sancho's all inclusive day pass.

Those who have done Cozumel in a day, taking into consideration our main interests, what is your suggestion? Should we save a snorkel excursion for another stop and do the "free snorkeling" where offered? HELP!

A few excursion questions as we get started with planning for April! When we cruised Alaska we chose to do all but one excursion through Princess. We also did A LOT of excursions (2 per port) we knew it was likely our only trip to Alaska so we made the most of it and wouldn't change a thing.

We know this trip will be different, it's just our family of 4 to think about and not a big extended family group like our previous and only cruise so far.

My husband and I are early 40's and our boys will be 13,16 when we sail.

We LOVE snorkeling, lounging on the beach, exploring, trying local food, atvs to name a few things. We will be celebrating our 20th anniversary. We are sailing on the Magic and doing the western itinerary (Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, Costa Maya)

Here are my initial questions:

- best excursions at each port? Loaded question yes, but I know there are some top picks and popular ones so what are they?!

- best port for snorkeling ( we may want to do 2 snorkel excursions)

-book through carnival or no?

-which port should we save for just a beach day?

- do the excursions have to paid for up front? (With Alaska only the excursion we did outside of princess was prepaid months in advance)

Thanks - I know we will have so many more questions!!

We have done a land based trip to st Thomas and the BVIs as well as Jamaica. We have wanted to do a trip to Belize Cozumel and Roatan and when we saw these are 3 of the 4 ports of call everything just lined up.

We just booked our first cruise on Carnival, on the Magic - April 2018 western itinerary - Cozumel Belize Roatan Costa Maya

Looking for tips and feedback on the magic, excursion suggstions, etc

We booked balcony room on deck 8 we will have our 13 and 16 year old with us as well 🙃

Great feedback!! Thank you all!

We have decided on western itinerary and we will drive to Florida and go from there.

Thoughts on Magic?

My husband and I will be celebrating our 20 year anniversary in April and are looking to book our second cruise ever! (First was on Princess in Alaska) we will be traveling with our 16 and 13 yr old boys. We definitely want great snorkeling opportunities and are open to western, southern or eastern Caribbean.

Looking for suggestions! Help!

We are home, all recovering from jet lag and totally wishing we were still in Alaska!

A detailed review will come later but a few highlights and a big thank you to this forum or some helpful tips along the way!

We all 9 (ages 8-68) started our journey in Anchorage on July 12, staying one night there at the Captain Hook and having dinner at the glacier brewhouse, wonderful!

From there we did the next three days in the interior and were lucky enough to see Mount McKinley in all it's glory in full, three days in a row and the peak on the 4th day. :) we met people who were there on their third or fourth trip and were finally seeing Mount McKinley for the first time.

We did do 3 excursions on land, Chulitna River Raft excursion/ 5hrs took us to Talkeetna. ATV Excursion - HIGHLIGHT OF TRIP!! Natural History Tour / just OK but while we almost took the recommendations of many of you on here to book the longer trek into the park, we did not do that because we felt we would need the downtime on that afternoon and boy did we ever! We definitely underestimated how much our travel from the East Coast And hitting the ground running would affect us. Not to mention the fact that two of us in the group had a very difficult time unwinding and actually sleeping. It was simply surreal to see the daylight at midnight! I could not shut down to sleep the first three days so that was pretty rough.

We took the train from Denali to Whittier on Saturday 7/16 and THAT is another highlight!!! It was well beyond our expectations and the nine hour train ride was gorgeous every inch of the way. There were a couple of downsides to the train ride having nothing to do with Princess or Alasks and one was a very sad and unfortunate situation with a family in our car, this delayed us getting off in Whittier by about an hour and we started our journey heavy hearted and have kept this family on our minds ever since.

We had terrific weather only saw a little rain briefly two times the entire 13 days and will post more later. We did stick with doing two excursions per port and have no regrets at all!

A detailed report to come later!

We just did a whale excursion that included mendenhall as part of the package. It was great!! We booked through Princess for the excursion. I can't say enough great things about our experience. It was about a 5 hr total excursion between the 2.

(We were a group of 9)

We are just returning from an amazing first trip to AK ourselves. While in port in Juneau we actually did 2 excursions. (Flight seeing on a float plane and whale watching)

Both were AMAZJNG! Pricey? Yes, worth it? Absolutely!!

The company we used for flight seeing which we booked through princess was Wings, fabulous! There were nine of us in our group traveling ages 8–68 and we were on a 10 person floatplane so it was just our group, every person had a window seat and it was an incredible experience.

Whale watching was also amazing! The day we went out, Wednesday, July 20, there was a lot of whale activity according to our guide. We saw a few breeches but we also saw about 8-10 whales bubble net feeding, we saw lots of tale slapping by one big guy that went on for a long while. We saw 5+ different groups of whales and several other single whales, one surfaced about 20 ft from our boat totally unexpected to everyone inclUsing the driver, and surreal!

We loved Alaska! We did book 2 excursions in Juneau and had limited time to explore the town but we also have no regrets on that because we know if we ever get back we will feel more inclined to just spend time in the town exploring.

I will also say we saw whales from our ship a few times but it does NOT compare IMO to an actual excursion.

Have fun!!! :)

Can't find thread with suggestions - have limited time and connection, Amy suggestions on good lunch spot in Skagway? We are on the white pass train right now. We will have about an hour or so between train and dog sled excursion.

THANKS!!

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you are making a big mistake with this plan and you wanting to see bears. Not likely with what you have now. Biggest- miss- is Denali. The Natural History tour is worthless, you are all those hours and hours in transit getting there- then NOT getting into the park- which is loaded with bears. Up to you, if you want to make other choices?

Let me rephrase I guess....first of all we are a large group and the NHT was "included" in our package. This is our first trip to Alaska so yes I'm sure we are ( like every other first timer) going to learn what's great / what we we got right - what we might do differently next time.

I was simply asking what the chances are given our plan...of seeing beats/other wildlife. I was looking for more feedback on NHT bc THAT is something we can do a little differently. [emoji848]

I was asking about bears not necessarily because we are there tracking them or on s mission to see them but just curious because I personally am interested in seeing them in the wild....I have 8 other ppl along so it's not all up to me. (Next trip will be more what just my husband and I want to do)

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We leave a week from tomorrow! Starting in Anchorage (briefly) then on to Denali for a few days before embarking on 7/16. (Coral) stops in Skagway Juneau Ketchikan ending in VC. In Denali we are :

ATV excursion

19 mile Raft to Talkeetna

Natural History bus offered by princess

Skagway...white pass, dog sled

Juneau...5 glacier float plane and whale watching

Ketchikan...misty fjord tour

Having read a lot of trip reports I randomly see posts for bear sightings. Given the areas we will be be, for those of you experienced AK travelers, (not asking you to predict the future here) but what's your experience on seeing bears? )Other wildlife also) - where we will be.

Any tips on spotting them?

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Is this part of a cruisetour, or are you booking a seat direct with the railroad?

 

On a cruisetour, I think the glass dome cars are automatically part of your package. At least, they were on mine a few years back. The locomotive pulls both types of cars - for cruisetour passengers and regular rail passengers.

We are part of a cruisertour with Princess

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I recall reading in a random post somewhere that you needed to request one of the glass dome train cars, is that what you call them?

We leave in two weeks and will be taking the train from Denali to Whittier to board our ship on the 16th. Do we need to request through our travel agent or princess directly one of the glass dome train cars?

This is one of the highlights that my mother-in-law is looking forward to and we were assuming the whole train had the glass dome style cars. Just want to be sure we can get on one of these and verify that it is in fact something we need to and can request.

I have gone back and read through various threads and cannot find this topic/specific question. Thank you again to everyone who answers these questions and provide great information especially for those of us newbies!

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Newbie here...do you get charged daily or at the end of your trip for the weeks charges that are billed to your room?

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You will most likely only need tennis shoes for 90% of the cruise. So figure out a pair for night time and drop the others. At least you didn't mention Uggs. I laugh when people mention those. Sandals and flip flops are really uncessary for Alaska unless you are using flip flops at the spa.

I live in NC and even in the winter when it's raining and 40 out I prefer flip flops! I travel with a pair in my car so they are a given! ;)

No boots or uggs for me! The main excursions we have that I think will need something besides flip flops.... ATV tour in Denali, whale watching, sea plane/glacier tour, dog sled and a short hike we plan to do.

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Helpful!! Thank you! Our boys are 11 snd 15 and one wears shorts with a sweatshirt here in NC even when it's 40° outside! My other son tends to be more cold natured like his dad!

We are checking 2 large suitcases and carrying on 3 so if it fits between those bags it'll make the cut, if not I'll have to start pulling stuff out to leave behind. :)

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So we are 2 weeks away from wheels up and beginning our 13 day Alaskan adventure! I've perused all posts I could and taken in all the tips, we are officially underway packing our family of 4 now in hopes of weeding out the unnecessary and being organized....

I have hiking shoes, tennis shoes, flip flops, heels, casual sandals and comfy slip ons set aside to be packed. I see so many posts about ppl (ladies) only taking 2-3 pr of shoes, period, I just don't seem to be able to do that!!

What are your most often worn pr of shoes while in Alaska ladies?

(We are on land 4 days and cruising 7, traveling 2)

Also for a July trip, do most wear shorts or long pants?? HELP!!!! My suitcase is overflowing already so I know I need to scale it back a bit!

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