donaldsc

We have a family tradition that when the grandkids turn 10 we take them to AK w/o their parents. One of the very important reasons that we considered in advance of making that decision was that their parents don't have the time to do a long AK trip and we wanted to give the kids a chance to see glaciers before all of them disappeared. DON

It is obviously easier to buy insurance from the cruise line or from your TA. The more difficult issue is to compare benefits. You will almost always find the coverage from cruise ship insurance is very bad. DON

We have booked a B2B cruise. We will get 1 free cultural immersion on each of the cruises. Both of them sound pretty good although we have not taken them yet. DON

Funny shut down story here. This occurred years ago on our AK driving trip before the state was overrun w big cruise ships. We were in Juneau on a Sunday wandering around town. Sunday is important here. There were several interesting shops that we wanted to visit but we decided to wait until the cruise ship visitors left and the places were less crowded. When we came back later everything was closed. The shops probably closed the second the cruisers left. Luckily for us we got to stay in Juneau for a couple of days to make our next ferry connection we we went back on Monday which was a normal open day for the shops. DON

You could make the Love Boat horn the ringtone on your cell phone if you love it so much. Although I hate to start this it might be interesting and also absolutely irrelevant to cruise for people to discuss what ring tomes people have on their phones. I have Also sprach Zarathustra for people I know and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" for other calls. DON

I use the tour consolidators to find an interesting tour. I can then usually figure out the name of the company that is actually doing the tour and I contact them directly. At worse I will end up paying the same as if I booked with the consolidator but I can ask questions directly to the tour provider and the provider gets to keep all of my money. At best I end up with a better tour which is less expensive than the consolidator cost. Overall a win-win for everyone except the tour consolidator. DON

I stand corrected. We used the ferry a number of years ago so my info was out of date. Also we did have a car. I totally agree that doing AK on an expedition cruise is the only way to go. DON

I know exactly what you mean. Check out WeatherSpark. DON

My point exactly. 1) Go totally off season. 2) Go to places that are not accessible by ship or only by small (<200 or 300 passengers). 3) Travel by Alaska Marine Highways. You may have to stay in a small town for several days because they don't not have a marine highway every day, 4) For the moment there are still small ports going out along the Aleutians that get very few tourists. I can name several small towns that are still for the moment unspoiled. DON

87 posts on what is in your checked bag. Come on!! It isn't that complicated. 1) What you absolutely need in the 1st few hours on board. 2) What will ruin your trip if you don't have it and what you can't quickly pick up at the 1st port. 3) What will cause your death if you don't have it. DON

It wasn't very crowded in Fairbanks in March. I spent almost 2 week there for the aurora and the ice carving festival. I do have to admit that it was a bit cold there. DON

I am really glad that I did my AK cruising in the gold old days. I have done AK on normal sized but not ridiculous sized cruise ships. We have done it on small ships sized from 50 to 200 passengers. We visited the smaller ports that the bigger ships do not visit. We have used the Alaska Marine highway to visit towns that nobody visits. About the only type of ship we have not done AK on is a small trawler yacht and a sailboat. We have also done land trips ranging from a 2 1/2 month driving trip including driving the haul road to Prudhoe Bay, We have done several small group professionally led photo shoots and also 2 weeks in Fairbanks in March for aurora photography and the ice carving festival. We have been to Anan for bear viewing 4 times. We have a family tradition that when a grandchild turns 10 they go on a week AK cruise plus a week DIY land tour w/o their parents amd we are out of grandkids. One place that we have wanted to do is a cruise along the Aleutians to Nome and I may yet get to do that one. I did have a cruise that hit those spots on a Hurtigruten ship but it was killed by Covid. I guess what I am saying is that we obviously love AK but considering what it appears that AK tourism has degraded to I seriously doubt if we will be back.

TA DON

This means that you get half a day in port in Juneau and Ketchikan. This is definitely not good!! DON

Are you stuck w that cruise. That has to be one of the worse port times of any AK cruise that I have ever seen.

Typing "how many ships will be in cococay december 14th. 2024" into Google will give you the answer DON

I have not done my Atlas cruise YET but I believe the restaurant you are referring to is the pool grill during the day and a 5 star steak house in the evening. DON

Read this article from the NY Times that was printed several years ago on cakeage - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/cakeage-restaurants.html DON

This was a few years ago when we did the HAL Voyage of the Vikings which was about 30 days with some friends of ours who liked their wine. The brought 2 cases (cases - not bottles) of wine on boards. I think at that time HAL did not charge a corkage fee but if they did our friends would have been glad to pay it. DON

Two Points 1. Didn't you have insurance? 2. This is where a good TA would have been helpful. We had an instance where we had a long ground hold in Las Vegas that might have caused us to miss a 2nd flight out of Atlanta to Athens. We called our TA while we were sitting the the ground in Vegas and she had an alternative flight already held for us out of Atlanta by the time we got to Atlanta. She also called us as we were landing in Atlanta to tell us what our options were. Turned out that we did make our Atlanta connection but our TA quickly handled a problem that we would not have been able to do. Getting a bunch of perks from a TA is good. Having a TA who gets you out of jams - priceless. I will agree w you that it would have been nice for Atlas to give you a credit for a future cruise. However lets face it - it wasn't their fault that you missed your connections DON

Don't have to do that. A better solution is to buy a trickle charger which keeps the battery charged. We are away from home for 3 1/2 months in the summer and when we get back home the car always starts w/o problems. I don't know if anyone has mentioned upgrading your home thermostat to a smart thermostat so you can monitor the temperatures inside of your house. Smart thermostats also save you money on your heating and cooling system. Another thing to consider if you have a sprinkler system is to upgrade your sprinkler timer to a smart wifi enabled timer. A year or so ago one of the valves on our sprinkler system failed and we lost a bunch of plants. My new system automatically sends me a text message if I have either a low flow or high flow problem with my system. To make this work your sprinkler system upgrade has to include a flow meter. In addition to monitoring system operation I can monitor daily flows and change the sprinkler run times from any place in the universe. The smark sprinkler system timers will also connect to the cloud you you get the proper amount of water regardless of the weather. If the temperature gets hot it automatically increases the watering time. If it is cool it decreases the watering time. If it rains the system will not run either while it is raining or even after it has rained. My irrigation bill this summer is lower than it has ever been in spite of the fact that Las Vegas has had a really hot summer. Hope this helps. DON

Wrong!! You are allowed 1 bottle per person on almost every cruise line except for some high class lines that have no limitations.. Read the wine details on whatever line you are cruising on. Any more and you pay corkage. For those who say how would you know remember that they check your carry on stuff when you board the ship. They will know. People who complain about corkage fees should try bringing your own wine into a land based restaurant. You will have to pay a corkage fee there as sale of wine is a major profit center to any restaurant. An additional point about corkage fee. The more expensive wine you like to drink the more you save by bringing on your own wine. Consider 4 options. Option 1 - you don't want to bring wine on board and you don't want to spend more than $15 on board price for one. At this shipboard price you are drinking undrinkable swill so don't even bother. Option 2 - you drink $15 per bottle at home. This $15 wine will cost at least $30 on the ship. If you bring the wine on board you will pay $20 corkage fee plus the $15 wine cost for a total of $35 to bring it on versus the cost of $30 if bought on the ship. You are $5 better of to buy it on the ship. Option 3 - you drink $25 per bottle at home. This $25 wine will cost at least $50 on the ship. If you bring the wine on board you will pay $20 corkage fee plus the $25 wine cost for a total of $45 to bring it on versus the cost of $50 if bought on the ship. You are $5 better of to buy it on the ship. Option 4 - you drink $50 per bottle at home. This $50 wine will cost at least $100 on the ship. If you bring the wine on board you will pay $20 corkage fee plus the $50 wine cost for a total of $70 to bring it on versus the cost of $100 if bought on the ship. You are $30 better of to buy it on the ship. In other words the more expensive the wine the better off you are not buying on the ship. Also if you are used to buying really good wine at home you will have an educated palate and they might not have a wine that you like on the ship. Hope this helps. DON

To extend what CruiserBruce has told you - I thank that your idea of a long trip is a wonderful idea. A couple of thoughts however based on our 2 1/2 month Australia land trip and also a 35 day New Zealand combined cruise and driving trip. Recognize that you can't see it all so you have to decide what is important to you. Besides what you want to see you will need to decide how you are going to get around Australia and/or New Zealand once you get off the ship - tours or DIY driving or flying from city to city. You need to do a bit of advance planning and I would suggest you work with a good Australia TA on this trip. I don't know if they have them in Spain but in the US there are certified Australia travel agents. We used one on our long Australia trip and she was a great help. Some people will suggest that a round Australia cruise. I don't think that this a good idea. You only get to spend 1 day in each of the ports that you stop at and you waste days getting from port to port. Also you never get to see anything except coastal locations. There are inland locations are you will miss completely. Hope that this helps a bit. Feel free to come back to CC with specific questions. Also note that there is an Australia / New Zealand board on CC. DON

Alaska ships are all sailing at greater than 100% of capacity. There are no last minute deals. DON

If you can manage w just a bit of stabilization that you can carry in your pocket a chain pod works wonders. DON