harryfat1

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that we bought many 99 cents mini Alaska Christmas ornaments at the store in Ketchikan right by the ship. I will show them to you and Dani over at the RCI thread next month when we take out the Christmas tree. Can't believe we are almost coming to another holiday season already. We also bought a Princess ship ornament to add to our fleet of cruise ship ornaments from previous cruises so will have that out as well.

We store all our photos from 2001 onward on external hard drives when we first bought our digital camera - some young kids nowadays don't even know what a digital camera looks like as cell phones have killed off that entire industry. You can buy a 5 TB external drive to hook up to your computer as backups and 5TB stores A LOT of pictures. 5TB on Amazon is only $110 so it's not that expensive to back up all your memories https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B07VS8QCXC/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=5tb%2Bexternal%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2Bmac&qid=1665360415&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIzLjIyIiwicXNhIjoiMi41MCIsInFzcCI6IjIuMzUifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1 We also upload to Shutterfly to have backup of backups in case the hard drive dies as they eventually will. The re-download back from Shutterfly isn't as good as the original quality but it's free storage so it's not perfect but it's free. There are many online storage sites but I've been using Shutterfly forever. They allow me to create my own special web site to host pictures from every vacation. After I'm done here with my trip report on CC, I will create a special web page on Shutterfly with the pictures I want and share that special web page access with friends and families so they can see what we did on the cruise. That site will have much less detail as most people are not anal CC folks that cares to know all the info. That site will also have more family pictures that I don't upload here on CC for the most part. This is all free so if anyone is interested in doing that for each of their vacations (you can have a special web page for every vacation), you can check it out online while you are backing all your old photos.

Thank you for the kind words. Glad you have been enjoying the trip report. Appreciate the feedback. Some nights I wonder if anyone is even reading all the dumb stuff I am uploading nightly as sometimes I feel like I'm just talking to myself. Like the proverbial question - if one writes a trip report to post online but nobody reads it, does it become a diary/journal instead? We are at day 6 of the trip report so not much more left to go. Day 7 will be short as I'm a sea day person and day 8 would have been a great exploring day in your home town of Vancouver as I had everything mapped out on what to do after we got off the ship - store our luggage at Canada Place, walk around Canada Place and water front. Eat lunch in Chinatown and then take the Skytrain to the airport in the afternoon to catch the original 7:30 flight. Well, that plan went to the toilet when we saw online 36 days out that our 7:30 flight had been cancelled by WestJet and replaced with a 12:30 PM flight. So no touring of Vancouver. No nothing post cruise. Just get off the ship ASAP and rush to the airport. Never a good sign when you see the big red highlights under flights and on the left hand side, it says 36 days until departure...

Hi Patti, No worries. Take your time reading. These posts will be up for a long time - as long you pay your CC membership dues, you will be allowed to access them. Actually CC is very good in keeping old posts alive. All my posts going back to the 2014 Allure trip report are still around. I know you have been "catching up" from your various "likes" of my posts from few weeks back. Speaking of old reports, special thanks to you, Dani and Norris (Bimmer09) as you folks have been reading my blah blah blah stuff since 2014 and still following in the background. Much appreciated. I was looking at the Navigator of the Seas for Christmas sailing few months back when the prices were really low for a holiday sailing but I didn't want to commit to a second cruise until after we finished the Alaska cruise to see what the cruising world looks like with Covid. Then after we came back from Alaska, the price sky rocketed when they lifted various testing and bans. Now the price is too high so we will just drive down to So Cal for the holidays instead of doing a holiday cruise. But we are scheduled to go on RCI's Odyssey of the Seas in December next year to hang out with Ken and others.

Thanks for the compliments. I believe you just finished up a live report thread on the Princess boards as I always admire people like yourself that can do live cruise reports. I can't do the live reports as I have difficulties articulating my thoughts in real time - which is why it's taking me weeks to just get to day 6 of a cruise report over here. All these extra stuff like screen shots of deck plans are difficult to accomplish on a phone during vacation. Easier to do them back at home "post production". Thanks again for your comments. I see you have couple more Hawaii cruises booked going forward - hope you enjoy those. I have been to Hawaii couple times previously but never on a cruise - too many sea days for my liking.

Various signages to tell you where you are - pier #4 Pier #4 is on the west side - called Newtown At the center part of the town, there’s “The Rock” statue. This wasn’t here back in our previous Ketchikan in 2009. The famous rain gauge. It typically rains between 140 to 160 inches in Ketchikan and they typically only have 100 sunny days a year. We were lucky to be there on a rare sunny day

Walking on Sunshine: More tour kiosks waiting for Bob's relatives There's a big gift shop right by dock #4. If for whatever reason you can't make it to town, you can do your shopping here (visiting uncle in prison)

Anyway, as in Juneau, the Majestic Princess was assigned a faraway pier on the west side so you either have to take the free shuttle bus that the city provides or you will need to walk it. Since it was a nice sunny day, we decided to walk along the water front. Few more pictures of the area. Lots of activities at the Ketchikan harbor. No way you will see any whales by the shoreline here like in ISP Another HAL ship in town While I was at the balcony, saw a worker inside the lifeboat doing some maintenance on it

After breakfast, time to go back to the cabin and organize the backpack to get off the ship to explore our last port of call. Hovercraft: As everyone can tell, this was by far the best weather day we had the entire cruise. Alaska weather is a crap shoot. Depends on how lucky you get in any given sailing. For this stop, we didn’t book any excursions as Ketchikan is an easily walkable town as long as you are able to navigate some hills. The Majestic Princess was assigned dock #4 per the Cruise Calendar. You know you are anal when 1) you actually looked at the port calendar to see what ships are in town that day 2) you looked up on the map where is dock #4 in Ketchikan. For extra bonus anal points 1) you emailed Ketchikan tourism bureau to ask about the free bus system after reading about it in the brochure they sent to you 2) actually watched YouTube videos on taking the free bus from dock #4 to downtown and what’s at various stops. Yeah, I don’t know anyone that anal either…

We docked around 7:20 and it’s time for breakfast For breakfast today, the fam wanted to sit at the dark wood section so here we are. More crowded on this section of the buffet.

Finally sunshine for the first time this whole cruise as the bright sky greeted me outside at 6:47 AM as we approach Ketchikan harbor. The drawback of narrow cabins of these cabins is that the back feet of the chairs sometimes get caught on the balcony door railings and that makes opening the door difficult Ketchikan airport Also the warmest day of the cruise per the TV weather

Day 6 – Ketchikan Here’s the usual daily schedule insert: As discussed previously, we lost 3 hours on our scheduled stop at Ketchikan due to high tides in Vancouver by day 8 so we had to leave town by much earlier than the original schedule. That caused some grieve within our sailing’s roll call as people had originally booked excursions that ends at 4 PM. With the original schedule of 6 PM departure (or 5:30 all aboard as those are typically 30 minutes prior), a 4 PM excursion end time would leave you plenty of time to walk around town and even visit the uncle in prison (AKA shopping). However, with the revised schedule of 2:15 “All Aboard” per the schedule above, that 4 PM excursion obviously must be cancelled and they would need to find replacement excursions. As I mentioned yesterday, the Captain is under pressure to sail away at 2:15. So that's appropriate for the Queen's song - except this is from the TV series "The Magicians". I rate it as one of the best Fantasy TV series out there - like Harry Potter for adults that also sings. Just skip to the 1:25 mark to start the song:

Huh. I never noticed any float planes in the Caribbean ports. I will look closely for them in the future.

Everyone has difference preferences on what they want for their cruise so what we wanted from our cruise is likely different than what your family wants. We wanted to see two different sets of Glaciers on our cruise with Glacier Bay and Hubbard Glacier being top of the list. That pretty much eliminated all the Seattle sailings. We then picked the biggest ship from what’s remaining. We wanted two Glacier days as in our previous Alaska cruise, it rained on our one and only Glacier visit (Hubbard) and we couldn’t see much due to the rain and the gray skies and mists. So, we wanted two chances to see the glaciers this time in case of bad weather again. Princess advertised these sailings as voyage of glaciers and to that extend, they delivered. We saw both Glaciers as scheduled and got lucky with no rain. The ship itself is fine as it’s only few years old. The Hollywood Conservatory is good to view the Glacier for people that wants to view it from indoors. You mentioned the Noodles bar and Congee. I assumed you saw these from my trip report. What we didn’t like was Princess’ lack of major entertainment and the demographics isn’t right fit for us. We prefer RCI type of entertainment options with more active events but they don't have double glacier days. But you can’t have everything. You get the itinerary you want and deal with whatever short comings of the cruise line. Those are the tradeoffs.

This post from CC is many years ago but someone referenced the fire door in relationship to Princess. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2005483-can-you-open-balcony-dividers/ Just Google for Princess Cruise balcony partition to see various posts on it. I am no expert on this subject as I only needed 3 cabins and we were in the 500s so I didn’t dig into the topic you may want to since you have 6. The airfare promotion info I got is from Princess spam email. They spam me every chance they get as I am on their distribution list. If you are using a Travel Agent, he/she should be able to forward the Princess ad to you. You are quoting the “fares” deal. Not the $300/pp airfare credit deal. Below is the entire deal info for the airfares credit. If you opt for this promotion, then you can start booking your airfare on Princess’ EZ Air now as it’s more less than 330 days out. The advantage to booking early is you lock in the airfare/flight time you like and not have to pay for the airfare portion until your final cruise payment – which is probably around April of 2023. If there’s a sale on your airfare between now and then, you can revise your air booking for no change fees or even cancel prior to final cruise payment with no penalties. So this gives you the option to at the minimum lock in a price/time you like and then keep checking the prices weekly to see if any changes to prices/flights. Do note there are posts on CC that talks about the downside of booking via EZ Air so do your research. As I pointed out in my cruise report, the airlines (not Princess) canceled the flights I had booked but I never received any email notification until I checked my cruise personalizer so if you decide to go with this promotion, check on your cruise personalizer regularly. +++++++++++++++++ GENERAL TERMS APPLICABLE TO ALL OFFERS IN THIS CAMPAIGN ("Offer"): Offer is available to legal residents of North America. Offer may not combine with other offers or promotions. Other exclusions may apply. Changes or refunds may not be permitted. Offer and its parts (if any) are not transferable, not substitutable, and not redeemable for cash. Princess Cruise Lines, Ltd. ("PCL") is not responsible or liable for any errors or omissions. Offer may be changed or revoked at any time. A refundable deposit is required for all stateroom guests and amount varies according to the cruise length, stateroom type and number of stateroom guests. Please refer to princess.com for terms, conditions and definitions that apply to all bookings. 1 Up to $300 airfare credit per guest is applicable to all guests (up to 4) in a stateroom and varies based on itinerary type. Up to $150 one way and a total of up to $300 roundtrip. Alaska Voyage of the Glacier itineraries and Alaska cruisetours will receive $300 airfare credit. Roundtrip Alaska Inside Passage itineraries will receive $200 airfare credit. Credit applies to flights booked through Princess EZair for cruise bookings made between September 14, 2022 and October 16, 2022 on select voyages included in this promotion only. EZair flight options are not available before 330 days in advance of the voyage return date. Air travel must be available in Princess EZair to book for the offer to apply. Additional airline baggage, change and cancellation fees may apply. Please visit princess.com/ezair for information. 2 Free Roundtrip Transfers applies to bus transfers between the arrival airport and the cruise port for all guests in the stateroom and is only available on select cruises. This offer is not available to guests who do not fly into an airport. Offer is limited and available first come, first served on a space-available basis. Unused transfers are non-refundable, non-transferable, and cannot be redeemed for cash. Transfers are offered on embarkation/disembarkation days only. Roundtrip free transfers are valued at up to $88 per guest. Offer cannot be combined with other offers not mentioned in this email. 3 $100 Shore Excursion credit per guest is applicable to all guests (up to 4) in a stateroom. Guests with single occupancy will receive double the per guest credit amount. Shore Excursion credit may be used on a single voyage only, is not redeemable for cash, cannot be used in the casino, expires at the end of that voyage and is not applicable during the land portion of cruisetours. Shore Excursion credit is based on the ship's onboard currency. Offer expires: October 16, 2022. Any advertised offer may be changed or revoked at any time. Reference promo code: UL3/UP3/UR3. Campaign code: RF2AK014

Greetings! This is my trip report from our family’s vacation on the Majestic Princess cruise to Alaska from August 6 to 13. I called this posting “trip report” instead of “cruise review” because in my opinion I am not qualified to do a professional review. This is just a summary of what our family experienced during our vacation time – Days of our lives, so to speak. Keep in mind when I say “trip” report and not “cruise” report. Meaning you will be taken along for a ride for the entire trip process, not just the cruise portion. It’s the mailmen version of the vacation report, stopping off at each and many detailed points that may be of no interest to the veteran cruisers. So skip sections that don’t interest you. Background – We are an extended family of 6 on this cruise consisting of my wife, 2 boys, myself and my in-laws. My wife and I are both CPA’s (aka bean counters – we have very boring dinner time conversations) so I will probably have more numbers related discussion than most people care to read. Bias – Everyone has bias on their preferences when it comes to cruises & life in general. The key is to identify the bias and discount the bias versus fact. We like the big ships, the bigger the better. Our best cruise was on the Allure of the Seas – an Oasis class mega ship. You will see that bias in my report. That’s just our preference, but certainly will not be everyone’s preference so discount it anyway you deem necessary. I typically throw in some random pictures in first few introductory posts in what I considered highlights of the trip. Similar to movie trailers that gives you a quick overview of the cruise but not giving you any details. For that, you would need to stick around for awhile to read through my various posts. On the other hand, if you think these pictures sucks, then go ahead and hit return arrow on your browser as the future pictures won’t get any better than these few sets. +++++++++++++++ Dude, who cares about your background? I’m not interested in hiring you for a job. Hurry up and show us your cruise pictures already. Some of us have been stuck working from home the past two years with no future cruises in sight. The only view I have from my bedroom window is my neighbor’s fence as he mows the lawn and uses the blower during my Zoom meetings and I can’t hear a dang thing… +++++++++++++++