piper28

You can figure out where it's going to dock from these schedules (for 2015 at least).

http://claalaska.com/?page_id=318

Just back from our Alaska trip on it, and we docked at dock 3 northbound, and dock 2 southbound. Looks like the rest of the season it's following the same pattern.

More surprising for us was that for Juneau we docked at AS for northbound and CT south, instead of the franklin street dock. Was a lot more convenient. But it looks like the rest of the season it's mostly docking at franklin.

I've been suggesting to Princess for years that they make some of the one way 7 day cruises 10 day ones and add stops in Seward, Homer and Kodiak Island. Or stop in Sitka and Icy Straight. I go to Alaska every year but sure would love some different ports.

Princess did a route similar to that several years ago on one of the small ships, 14 days rt out of vancouver. I got the impression it didn't sell well, which is a shame, because I always thought it looked interesting, and have been hoping they'd bring it back.

My wife keeps swapping for more vodka than she really ends up needing. I think we only need a couple more to have enough to fill an entire 750ml bottle now sitting in a cabinet here at home.

I've got my eye on one cruise in particular that is included in this, and while I don't remember exactly what the price was before, I don't believe it actually went up (it's higher normally anyways because it's a holiday cruise). I'll probably end up booking it, and then if something comes up with a lower price I can always swap for that anyways after I figure out what the cost benefit to me is for the beverage package. I'm not a huge drinker, but I do think I'll get more benefit from it than the on board credit they're offering, so I wouldn't argue with getting it if no reductions come forward.

You're welcome to some of our rain. Seems like we've gotten a ton this June and early July so far. However, you can only have it if you take our mosquitoes too.

I'm thinking of going all the way to Whitehorse this particular trip myself. I found myself intrigued at getting a photo of the world's largest weathervane (a dc-3 mounted as a weathervane). I fly model airplanes myself, so I find the idea kinda intriguing. My wife I think pretty much rolled her eyes.

I've also pondered whether timewise it'll be practical to then take 1 down to 8 and come back that way. Figure I'll play it by ear that day.

We've driven skagway to carcross and back once before, and done the train up and bus back, so a lot of the stuff along that part of the route we've seen before.

Even if we don't make all the way up and around, it's still worth the trip, never know what you'll see. Last time we had a bear walk about 3 feet in front of our car.

Hmm, any idea if the elevator from the Pan Pacific can go straight to the level with the conference center? I'm assuming that it would then make sense to go straight there instead of going down to the main cruise terminal level if we're having our luggage taken there by the bellstaff.

Watching coverage of the women's world cup and it was definitely looking fairly smokey in Vancouver. From their broadcast booths it looked like it was hard to see across the harbor.

If you come in on the southern end of the airport (I flew in on Delta, which appears to do that), I think the distance is actually around 1/3 of a mile or so, maybe even slightly longer. I do remember it being a lot further than I expected :).

Finally, it seems like Alaska cruises attracts a lot of first time cruisers since it's a popular destination and a ship is pretty much the best way to see Southeast Alaska. These folks are much less likely to know about Cruise Critic or the Roll Calls.

I think this is a large chunk of the reason. Unless someone's done enough research ahead of time to find cruise critic, there's just so many new cruisers on these routes that I think you have a much smaller percentage than usual (which is already small) that are on here.

Heck, I made the most traveled group on my last Alaska cruise, and my numbers weren't that high :).

The only time we really had a problem with it was in one of the suite's on the back of the R class Royal on deck 6, and was really only on the one stretch of the cruise where the ship was going flat out. The real problem was that the ceiling had a squeak to it, and that was driving us nuts. I've been in the balcony cabins on the aft of the Ocean and Royal on deck 7 and never had a problem with the vibration. I'm sure some people would have problems, but in general I never found it to be a big deal besides that one night. (And quite frankly, I don't sleep well at night in general, and

As for the hangers, I've had problems with them anywhere on the ships. Doesn't matter, they will rattle anywhere. I just take down the empty hangers, which seem to be the ones causing the noise problems, and put them on the floor of the closet.

We were in an exact same car on a Princess cruisetour.

Princess has the domed cars, but they have the bench seats that face each other across a table, so you're sharing the table with someone else if you have a party of 2. From what I could see from the outside, the HAL cars seemed to have seating that looked more like what you'd see on a bus (or on other trains), and at least from the outside, looked more comfortable. Personally I found the bench seats to be uncomfortable by the end of the long run from Whittier to Denali.

This is contrary to my experience -- any waiter, head waiter, cruise staff

member -- really any customer facing person is happy to take a picture

for you. Passengers frequently hand a camera to a waiter and ask them

to take a picture of ... a group, a birthday cake, whatever.

 

In general, there is no love between departments, and no concern

about 'conflict of interest'.

Yup, I've never seen a crew member (at least one that's not actively engaged in a duty that would prevent it) look at all annoyed at being asked to take a picture for someone. (Although I admit I don't ask crew myself, but that's more because I don't really have any interest in being in the picture anyways.)

Couple weeks from now we're doing a hike/float trip where you hike a couple miles of the Chilkoot trail then do a raft float down the river (no white water, just a mild float). I thought it sounded interesting, so we'll see in a couple weeks when we give it a try.

I've got to admit, we were hiking while in the Denali area and had to wait for the train to pass at one point. Watching the cars go by, I did think the HAL cars looked more comfortable than I found the Princess ones. Haven't actually been on one, but that's the impression I got from the outside.

I was once told by a "professional" NEVER give away your pictures as then they won't be valued as much. But I've been to many events where the professionals charge similar and people agonize which one to buy, while I almost give away similar quality for a few bucks. Guess what, they don't buy any more than a couple either. Photographer/photographer is a difficult business, better to charge as much as they can bear :D

Traditional photography business has really been clobbered by the digital camera market. Wedding photographers in particular have been hit pretty hard from it, especially since their traditional business plan involves them owning the negatives and selling the prints. Nowadays it's a lot harder to convince prospective clients that they shouldn't get digital copies of the photos, and photographers are having to adapt to survive. The really good ones are still able to make do with that business plan, but there's an awful lot of people that have reached the thought that enough of their guests are likely to have cameras, and they can get "good enough" without paying the per print fees that those professionals want. So some of the professionals have moved to a model where they charge for the service and not the prints. Changing times.

My guess is we'll see a plan sometime in the future that allows you to pay a set fee for the digital copies of your photos from the cruise. That price will probably be higher than I'd want to pay myself, but I'm sure others might end up liking it. (I think Disney might have some type of plan like that now? Never been myself, but I thought my relatives have mentioned it.)

We have booked a helicopter tour in Juneau for August and both DH and I are seriously reconsidering. I'm not usually an alarmist but this really brought home what can happen on some of these excursions. let's all go hug a loved one.

In all likelihood, you're more likely to get killed on the drive to the cruise ship than on the helicopter trip. Personally, I'd rather go out doing something fun than worry about the chance it might kill me.

I couldn't imagine paying $35 for the quality these photos are (or lack thereof). Even at $25 I've always felt they're overpriced for what you get. Far too many of the pictures I see out for sale are either noticeably over or under exposed (generally over). And heck, if I'm noticing that, they're pretty off.

Thanks folks. The timing was about what I figured, and should allow us enough time to do some exploring. The rental car cost isn't too bad for what it is, cheaper than Skagway at least.

Kinda annoying that it's Avis everywhere, if they were National locations it'd be a lot cheaper for me :).

Pondering doing a rental car or something in Whittier since we're doing a back to back. Any ideas on when non-tour passengers can get off the ship (small ship, so I don't expect it'll be too late), and with an 8:30pm sailing time, any idea when we need to be back on board by? Oddly, itinerary doesn't seem to say anything about boarding.

Did you have chip and pin or chip and signature? Our card companies are introducing the latter later this year. I'm curious how you got the European type card.

Some US companies do indeed issue chip and pin cards. The ones doing chip and signature are doing a real disservice to their customers. (USAA is one that does have a chip and pin option, we used it a number of times in europe.)

The companies that advertise the combo with a trip to Mendenhall after the whale watching part will list a certain amount of time there, but in general, they'll all let you stay as long as you want - with the caveat that you're on your own to arrange transportation back to the ship. The later arrival time for the ship definitely limits one's options though.

The one time we've actually seen orcas was actually after coming out of Glacier Bay. I'd have to guess it was in the vicinity of Hoonah. They were a ways off, but I was able to get some respectable photos with my camera.

But the reality is, there isn't a substitute for the whale watching trips. I'm headed to Alaska for the third time, we did whale watching tours on the first two, and I have every intention of doing another one this trip.

The wife and I have double booked the Pacific (sister to the Ocean) and the Emerald for July 0f 2016 - at this moment, we are leaning towards the Emerald and NOT the Pacific - the small ship is nice but they are just old enough and we really enjoyed the Ruby (sister to the Emerald) = we are going to the Baltic and both large ships and small ships dock in all ports so no real advantage to the small ship. We choose the Ocean because we were cruising in the Norwegian Fjords

Actually, I would pick the Pacific over the large ship for the Baltics. For some of the ports, you end up docking closer in to town than you would with the large ship (although Copenhagen that might not be true). Not sure if that Baltic cruise includes Helsinki (I know they've not always had it on there), but Helsinki we docked right in town instead of the western docks, and for St Petersburg, we docked on the River Neva within site of the winter palace. Made for a real interesting sail-away. Disembarking in St Pete for a private tour was also incredibly easy. And the Kiel canal transit was interesting. That cruise has so few sea days, having the larger ship really doesn't necessarily gain much in my opinion.

From what I can tell, this doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to do, but figured I'd ask and see if anyone sees something I'm missing.

I'm considering picking up a rental car at the airport rather than JRC or Avis down by the cruise dock. From what I can tell, the express bus that runs from downtown to the airport is a reasonably short walk from the cruise ship piers. One of our stops for the day will be Mendenhall, so heading to the airport doesn't even seem like it'd really be all that out of the way either.

My rationale here is that the company I normally rent from is available at the airport, and I'd be able to use a free day there, so even counting the bus ride up and back, it'd be considerably cheaper for the rental.

Looks like the last bus back from the airport leaves around 6:11 from there, which would get us back in plenty of time to catch the ship.

I wonder if the lines will ever realise how many feel the same way.

 

Or is t just that they can fill enough of the mega ships that they need not worry.

I can kinda understand the rationale behind why things are moving this way. And part of the key is that they're indeed filling these larger ships. The issue becomes even if the small ships can remain profitable, the size of the profit compared to the big ships is pretty insignificant. They can make the same profit that a year's worth of small ship sailing makes in a fraction of the time with the larger ships.

Logistics wise I'm sure it's also probably a lot easier for a line to not have ships that range from 600 to 6000 passengers in the same line. There's a pretty significant experience difference between them too, which is something that can catch the general public off-guard (might be hard for people on here to believe that, but believe me, the average person that doesn't know much about cruising and sees ads of the bigger ships and their amenities would really be in for a shock on a small ship - heck, I've run into some of these people before).

I do think it might have been interesting if they'd taken the small ships and maybe the smaller ships from HAL and spun it off into a line with similar levels of amenities to Princess or HAL. But my guess is that there's 2 things that would argue against that: a) they probably figure it would compete too much with the seaborne line, and b) I know at one point Azamera wasn't making a profit with this line of thinking, no idea if it actually is today, or if RCL just thinks it's worth running the line for the experience even if it's not making much/any money. I actually figured they'd probably dump the line, given that they haven't I'm guessing that they probably have started to be profitable. (I can't find anywhere where they break the numbers down by line, so can't confirm anything.)