rj59

I just sailed the route for this cruise on Zaandam, when because of a severe storm going south from Ketchikan, the captain wanted to avoid the 17-foot swells and gale-force winds on the open ocean by going into the inside channels south of Prince Rupert, which would be a longer distance but quicker than struggling on the open sea. The ship had to make several failed attempts around midnight to pick up the local pilots, waiting until they got smoother waters and winds in a protected area, but I awoke to no swells and beautiful scenery outside, despite the rain and winds. In October and April the conditions are likely to be similar, so there really wasn't a whole lot to see, other than forests and islands on each side, with higher elevations hidden by mist. After two hours of rocking and rolling on the open ocean, we entered the usual Vancouver Island inside passage. Honestly, I thought the lower channels were better, with some snow-capped mountains and narrow passages with sharp turns (I saw a humpback surface right next to the ship there), and great sunset aft views. I was tempted by the Great Bear one, but for me a regular Vancouver Island inside passage one is better, since you get most of the experience but with better likely weather and glacier viewings. Just cruising passages in Alaska is also more impressive, with the majestic mountains and some very narrow parts, whereas the northern Canadian channels just looked something I could see by just going on a San Juans ferry. My Zaandam cruise would have been unbearable on the open ocean going from Seattle in such a storm, and I've had some really rough ones in September, so there's a good chance of really rough seas for Noordam going up to Ketchikan from Seattle. A local in Juneau also said October is the worst month for him, because it has the most rain, is already cold, but doesn't have the brightness and outdoor activities that snow brings. I also found for myself and most other passengers that that was too much scenic sailing, and there were few of us who braved the winds and rain to be out viewing on the promenade deck, and those who watched inside just saw things through windows dripping rain. 

No such thing as a single share any longer. I always go solo, but you never book or search on HAL, since it doesn't show solo pricing. I use cruiseplum, which not only allows you to search for one passenger, but you can also rank the search for overall cabin cost per day, and they have a hot deal and solo discounts section. I've never seen a solo discount on HAL, so I simply have to look for the cheapest fare option, like a Zaandam I just did to Alaska for $750 for a solo, and then cruising to Mexico just after holidays. The Top 10 section on HAL will show deals also, but then you just have to double the listed price to get the solo one. 

Just got off Zaandam and have been on Kdam multiple times. Kdam is horrible for Alaska, for two reasons. First, it will be over 100% occupancy, so lines and crowds for dining, buffet, shows, and limited public spaces will be bad, with Kdam attracting lots of families. Secondly, it doesn't have a traditional outside promenade deck, and very little top-deck space, so horrible for glacier and whale watching. Zaandam has outdoor loungers on the promenade deck by the water, which was the best place for Glacier Bay, since it was drizzling, and I saw multiple whales while walking around it or sitting on a lounger, bundled up in provided blankets. To me, it doesn't show its age, and is ideal for Alaska, because it's easy to get around, there are secluded spots all over with good views, inside and out, and you get to know more passengers and crew with 1000 fewer passengers. The small size also saved us from a serious storm, since we were able to hide from 17-ft swells and gale-force winds by sailing a very narrow inside passage route from Ketchikan. Embarking/disembarking in Vancouver and ports is also a breeze with a smaller ship, so you maximize your port time better. Finally, it has the most eclectic and interesting art/antique collection of any ship, everything from signed guitars by Queen/Rolling Stones/Bowie to old stained glass and flower prints, to replicas of Egyptian art. It also has a huge library with a coffee shop with nice recliners to see out near the water, and no generic BB Kings/Rolling Stone/Billboard corporate bland entertainment, but instead a cool house band in one lounge and a piano player in the other, playing what they and the audience wants. There's also a sports bar showing games. Oh, and a secret forward viewing area outside crew doors on deck 5 in the theater, and they also opened up the bow on deck 4 for both sailaway in Vancouver and Glacier Bay, which was fun. 

I wouldn't do the HAL transfer. You'll be waiting for various flights to come in, enough to fill a bus. Instead, just take a taxi, which has a flat rate to any place downtown, I think $35 CAD, so about $25 for two people and climbing on or off buses or having a bus deal with crowded downtown streets or find parking. At the Pan Pacific, the quickest and easiest place to eat after a day of travel is the food court across the street, which has a wide variety of Asian and other foods, as well as fast food like Tim Horton's. 

I just got off Zaandam. As the coupon says, it could only be used a specific Mariner cocktail. On my previous cruise they let me use it for a Weng Weng. 

I'll be on Zaandam tomorrow. They usually only serve MDR lunch on the two sea days, and probably Glacier Bay, since everybody is on board, and on a menu list for another ship I saw a quick-serve lunch option one day, with a few item options, which they sometimes do on port days with a late arrival--probably Juneau. They used to have a single menu for all MDR lunches, no reservation necessary, but recent menus showed some more lunch variety. The good part of Zaandam sailing to the inside of Vancouver Island is that you get scenic views on sea days and usually calmer seas, so my activity is to be on the promenade deck outside, in winter gear and covered in blankets, admiring scenery and looking for whales and Dall's porpoises (black and white, like orcas). The problem you'll have with this Tracy Arm excursion is that much of your time will be cruising the fjord, instead of being at the glacier itself, whereas ships that actually visit Tracy or Endicott Arm sail up the fjord and then drop off people on a tour boat once they get close to the glacier. 

Get a drink, go to your room, and order room service. I've always had my room ready upon boarding, so I unpack while waiting for my food to arrive (I carry on my bag). It helps avoid the 'ohmygosh free food!' gluttony in the buffet, and the crowds. Another thing I do is bring a plastic tray, so I like to hit the Distant Lands and get some sushi and a bowl of stir-fry and take it to eat on the Lido or back deck, if it's nice out. I used to find quiet at the embarkation lunch in the MDR, but those aren't going on now, unless they changed. 

Updated Standby list now shows the option to book a veranda standby for $79/day. If one isn't available, you will be offered an inside/oceanview for the lower price of $49/day if available, or you have the option to cancel and get a refund. Seems like a good way to get more money out of the program and to satisfy the people who don't want to risk getting an inside cabin. I'm happy that they're increasing options and fine-tuning the program to make it more sustainable and worthwhile for them and for passengers, although I did feel pretty special getting a signature suite on my first standby attempt. For a solo passenger who loves HAL but not current solo pricing, it's a great deal, although it will be an adventure trying to get a standby spot on an Alaskan cruise this summer. 

My preference is to just visit breweries in Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan and get a flight of samples at each place. Bowden Street in Ketchikan and Devil's Club in Juneau are my favorites, although Barnaby Brewing in Juneau had a friendly cat who slept on my lap while I drank there one afternoon. 

Mine is $250 off $1000 on the Blue Cash Everyday. I make sure to increase my chances of getting the offers by adding all the cruise discounts and some other travel ones, to increase the chances of me being targeted. I also found that when I later cancel a cruise, they haven't taken the credit back, although the conditions say they can do so. So I'm planning to use it for the standby program, but if I don't get a spot the money is refunded, so I'll see if they still let me keep the credit. 

They'll always adapt for any dietary needs. Ideally, contact them before the cruise, but after boarding go to a dining room rep to make sure it's set up. Most lines and ships have Indian chefs, so they'll bend over backwards to not only get you a menu, but adapt to any needs or special requests. While generally Carnival food is mediocre, they actually have an Indian vegetarian meal every night in the MDR, and other lines like NCL have a really good Indian section in the buffet, as does Celebrity. I believe I saw an Indian vegetarian option on the MDR breakfast menu also.

It's slightly misleading, because of Dawe's Glacier, where I believe it's Endicott Arm that has a sharp, narrow turn that is often full of chunks of ice in the water. A couple of years ago I went there three times, and Princess and Carnival captains decided not to risk it, so we got a distant view of the glacier. Celebrity was able to get through the do the twirl-around by the glacier.  They also sell excursions to get through the ice on a smaller boat that gets close to the glacier, picking up people in the fjord, or on the Zaandam this summer, dropping people off at the fjord entrance before Zaandam continues to nearby Juneau. What I really wish is that they'd include Hubbard Glacier on some ships that aren't going from Whittier, since it's the most impressive and massive glacier and actually growing, unlike the ones in Glacier Bay. I remember going there on Westerdam from Seattle, and the huge calving had booms and huge splashes in the water. 

In practice Alaska tends to be more casual, because there are usually only two sea days and days in ports can be long. If you go out of Seattle, the ship doesn't get into Victoria until 8 pm the final evening, so most people want to eat and get off the ship. More luggage space is taken up with cold-weather clothing also, so less room for fancy wear. My own practice is to wear Dockers jeans or some other kind that are black or gray, which look like regular pants, so I'm not judged. For Alaska, the first night should be even more casual, since you're sailing out the beautiful Puget Sound or up the inside passage of Vancouver, in summer with long days, so people like me want to be outside enjoying the scenery, not dressing up. 

If you're ballroom dancers, I'd recommend Princess, since they often have ballroom dancing in their piazza. Even better is Celebrity, at least older ships with a Sky Lounge, where every evening they have recorded ballroom dancing music. I've seen serious Asian ballroom dancers on most Princess and Celebrity cruises I've been on. Cunard will also have dancing in the ballroom where they do afternoon tea, quite a spectacle on their formal nights. Unfortunately, HAL is build around live music venues and doesn't have a traditional atrium, so there really aren't good venues for dancing. 

On 4/23/2024 at 12:36 PM, DCGuy64 said:

I wonder how many people actually ever make good on that. Even on this site, I have seen people say such things, only to announce, with great fanfare a few weeks later, "I'm booked on 3 more cruises with them!" I tend to take such comments very much with a grain of salt.

I've sworn off Celebrity, Royal, Carnival, HAL, Princess, and Cunard, but have always booked them again. My solution to horrible weather? Don't sail across the ocean on long cruises. My solution to embarkation lines and over-capacity ships? I have two cruises booked on HAL Zaandam, with a max of 1400 passengers. My solution to bartenders? Turn down the beverage package for FAS, especially after experience with rude bartenders on Joy and the fury every time I had to wait while they poured from a flat open can of Coke Zero into a glass. After-season shop items? That's when everything goes on clearance sale, so that's the best time to shop. It's unconscionable for NCL not to have Azores hoodies, though, or Transatlantic-themed designer barf bags. 

2 hours ago, Horizon chaser 1957 said:

And this morning’s SNAFU - we have no boarding passes.
We have our confirmation, our online check in is now complete, but no boarding passes. With being confirmed 24 hours before sailing time, our booking has disappeared from the HAL website. Navigator won’t give us a valid boarding pass. I deleted and reloaded the app, and no joy. So I’ve printed off yesterday’s confirmation from our TA, a copy of the luggage tag with room #, and took screen shots of the check in confirmation on Navigator.

As long as we make it to the check in counter we’ll be fine. Getting through port security and Customs may be an issue. Fingers crossed!

I found when I cleared 2 days before a cruise in January that I never got a boarding pass in the app, and I only saw one online the day before the cruise, so I had the same adventure trying to get into the terminal in San Diego with a basic boarding pass with no boarding time. I also found that they didn't have me in the facial check-in machines, and once I was sent to a counter, they couldn't print out a boarding pass in order to get onto the ship. So total panic on my part, especially when the agent wrote on a sticky 'he's in the system' and told me to show it to ship security. Once I got to the ship, they just looked me up and I went on board and fortunately nobody else was in my $350 signature suite :).  

You mentioning not seeing your booking caused me some panic, because I saw that mine disappeared last night too and presumed they had canceled me. I just called, and they confirmed that I was canceled and don't have penalties, and they sent me a confirmation. I'm really disappointed that they didn't bother notifying me either way, but it's a lesson learned, to be on the phone at 48 hours, since they're not doing their job by sending the notifications they promise on the standby page. I'm a little bummed I'm not going, since it's supposed to be unseasonably sunny and warm in Ketchikan, but I'll have plenty of other opportunities to enjoy playing the standby lottery--maybe Eurodam this weekend as a start. 

6 hours ago, Horizon chaser 1957 said:

So I just got off the phone with HAL at 24 hrs 10 minutes before sailing.

WE ARE CONFIRMED! And for $69 CDN per person, we’ve upgraded to a veranda cabin. Now to finish packing and water the plants! 🎉🎉🎉🎉
  @rj59, my fingers are crossed for you!

I foolishly waited for them to contact me, so now I guess I have to call in the morning. I'm not sure if I want to take the train in the morning, sit with my bag all day in hope of a last-minute no-show, and then face the heartbreak of watching Noordam sail away while I head back for a train home. In any case, I'm on Zaandam on May 29, non-standby, so I'm covered either way, and if I cancel and get my money back I can just try again later in the summer. It definitely is hugely stressful, though, especially if you have to deal with parking, transportation, pet sitters, and HAL not following through on their promise to notify you 2 days in advance either way.

Absolutely no worries. The airport is a 10-minute Uber/Lyft/taxi ride away. I usually do walk-off disembarkation and am off by 7:30, through customs, and walk across the street to take a bus to the airport, and am usually there by 8 (they have facial recognition customs, so no more waiting for agents). If I have a later flight I sometimes walk all the way to the airport. What will hold you back is if you have tons of luggage doing walk-off and wait forever for an elevator to get to the exit floors. Another secret I found is that they announced deck 1 forward as one of the exits, but everybody went to the midship one, so I took the stairs forward down to 1 and there was no line at all, and it probably made the elevator ride quicker.  To make it even quicker, you could walk across Harbor Drive and have an Uber/Lyft pick you up heading in the direction of the airport, so you can escape the waiting inside the port area. Or just hop in a taxi right outside. 

25 minutes ago, ChinaShrek said:

I am not seeing any standby cruises in Europe. I would consider one of those because I could book flights with miles and easily cancel for a refund if I needed to.

The program is designed for those who live within driving distance of a port, even if you can get around it, as I did by flying from Seattle to SD the morning I got on standby. You're also gambling there won't be a flight delay, missed connection, or cancellation, 1-2 days notification means an overnight flight and rushing to get on a ship and dealing with jet lag. It would also mean opening them up to Europeans, which would really complicate things. I think demand is so high for Europe/bucket list trips that there are fewer cancellations, with people investing more in airfare, excursions, and the fare itself. HAL also ensures the fullest ships by being able to offer cabins for no-shows up to 90-minutes before sailaway, which isn't possible for people going to Europe, whereas I can drive to Seattle the day of standby and if I don't get on the ship, I just drive home. 

1 hour ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

Other than solos, I’m not following the benefit of this program for 7 day Alaska (or any of the “bus runs”). 
 

These cruises are the same price (or Pennies more) than the standby program and you get a regular booking weeks in advance. Heck, in some cases it’s cheaper than the $49 offer.

 

What am I missing?

 

 

 

 

 You're missing the leap in fares the rest of the summer, and fares in Mexico and elsewhere the rest of the year, when they appear. These last-minute fares also don't have many cabins available--I did some mock bookings and there were only one or two inside and oceanview, and only guarantee balcony. That said, another argument for non-standby is that you can get military, shareholder, and other OBC, which they don't give on standby. 

Are you sure it's tendering and not busing somewhere? The inlet there is so narrow that a ship not docked would block all the other ships.  Maybe it docks on the other side of the inlet? I know NCL ships dock at a nearby town called Wards Cove and get bused into town. I have had some weird tendering in Skagway--we were docked at the pier with the rockslides on Celebrity, but they made us tender from the water side to drop us off in town, for safety. 

Smoothness depends largely on how many passengers on various ships are in port. Koningsdam on a Saturday might have a lot, whereas my Zaandam at the end of May only has a few small ships, so it should go smoothly. There's no way for port personnel in Vancouver to monitor check-in times, with all the ships and points of entry. I hate having to walk down into the basement, so now I go into the upper level from the side door and have carried my bags, but now it seems they wisely have drop-offs there, which also alleviates my worry of the basement porters putting my bag on a different ship. The problem for Koningsdam will be later in the summer, when there will be more passengers and more ships on a Saturday, along with regular tourism in Vancouver. So yesterday there was just Koningsdam and Zaandam, 4000 passengers if full, but on alternate Saturdays the rest of the summer it will have Royal Princess and Koningsdam, with 5200, probably more of the ships are over 100% occupancy. 

11 hours ago, Horizon chaser 1957 said:

I’ve heard debate about whether that means at/ after the 48 mark you can cancel at anytime, or if at that point you get a one time offer to cancel or to stay on standby until 90 minutes before sailing. We’ll see what happens and go from there. We live close, but with parking etc. 90 minutes is just too tight.

I'm waitlisted for the Tuesday cruise too. My last chance to get to the ship is the 10:30 Amtrak from Bellingham on Tuesday, so if it's not cleared that morning, I'll call to cancel, if they haven't denied or cleared me before that. I don't have my hopes high, because last week the cruise was listed as sold out, whereas when I cleared for Koningsdam in January, there were lots of cabins available a few days before the cruise. I did a web search and several Vancouver news sites were promoting the standby program, which means more interest and thus less likelihood of getting on a cruise, especially with Alaska being so popular (crazy that a 5-night at the end of April with no glacier options would be sold out). But being between Vancouver and Seattle, I can just keep rolling the dice until I get lucky. 

It's the huge demand and limited labor/boats. Alaska has huge cost of living, so attracting enough workers/boats during the summer season with possibly thousands of passengers visiting Juneau each day means having high prices, especially with a cruise line cut. I've gone whale watching in Puget Sound and out of Victoria, where prices are under $100. I've seen dozens of humpback whales for free on return trips, the day of a Victoria visit, since there are a lot of them near the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As soon as you see Vancouver Island, look outside on a balcony or the promenade--I go back and forth to each side of the promenade, and on a Princess cruise a few years ago saw a dozen or so humpbacks right next to the ship, splashing and frolicking in the water, and then playing in the wake. In the winter, I get free whale watching sailing into Cabo. 

The best way to see Mendenhall is to buy a ticket for the Blue Bus when you get off the ship, where there are tour kiosks. It will take you to a park where you can go on a short hike to see Mendenhall, as well as a waterfall. Mendenhall is at the end of a lake and is receding quite a bit, so the best option, I'd say, is to just visit the park and see it that way, with the added beauty of the lake in front of it and the waterfall and hiking in the woods. The advantage of the Blue Bus is that it runs every 15 minutes or so, so you can just return when you want and not be tied to a schedule. They also have a tourist center in the park, different offshoots of the trail to get different views, and if it's later in the summer, there's a creek by the parking lot where you can see salmon returning.