CPAatSea

Heads up for anyone who is going in 2024 and plans to use the trains at all. The Denali Explorer is live and can be booked. Last time I checked it wasn't available. I'm not sure how long it has been available but there are already some dates showing limited availability so book your Denali Explorer train tickets if you need them!

5 minutes ago, katmu said:

I am definitely planning to have non-drowsy dramamine along for the 7.5 hour cruise.  One of the YouTube videos I watched of the same cruise was one a day when waves were probably 6 feet during a portion of the cruise.  On others the waters weren’t as rough.  I still think it’s worth it. 

I haven't been seasick yet but this might be the test. I've been in some pretty rough waters before and I did okay so I'm hoping that'll be the case here. I agree with you it's too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I called Major Marine yesterday and booked a package that includes the 7.5 tour and a hotel room. They give you 20% off the tour for staying at their hotel for a night. It saved us about $90 on the tour and their hotel looks lovely so I'm excited about that.

I also booked my airfare in the past two days so I'm officially locked in for my starting point. I was able to get a good deal on a flight from my home airport to Fairbanks with a stop over in Seattle. Our stop over is almost 24h but we booked it that way on purpose. Neither of us have ever been to Seattle so we're excited for our bonus day to experience a city we've never been to. This also allows us to get into Fairbanks at a reasonable time... some of the flights to Fairbanks land insanely late like 2am 😳

Alright I think we have a winner plan. I talked through it with my husband and he really wants to do Goldstar on the Denali Star line so we're still going to fly into Fairbanks. Here's our plan:

Sunday

Fly to Seattle and overnight in Seattle with time for quick sightseeing

Monday

Fly from Seattle to Fairbanks

Overnight in Fairbanks

Tuesday

Board Denali Star in the morning and travel from Fairbanks to Talkeetna

Overnight in Talkeetna

Wednesday

Morning Denali Grand Flightseeing Tour with Glacier Landing

Board Denali Star in evening and travel from Talkeetna to Anchorage

Pick up rental car

Overnight in Anchorage

Thursday

Leave Anchorage in the morning and drive to Palmer for Helicopter Glacier excursion with Dogsledding

Drive from Palmer to Seward

Overnight in Seward

Friday

7.5 hour Kenai Fjords excursion in the morning

Drive from Seward to Anchorage

Return Rental Car

Overnight in Anchorage

Saturday

Board Glacier Discovery train from Anchorage to Whittier

Embark on Cruise

This allows me to swap out our helicopter excursion in Juneau and book Wings Airways excursion to Taku Lodge instead. I'm also going to cancel the excursion I had booked for Scenic Cruising at Hubbard Glacier since I think the Kenai Fjords day will scratch that itch and provide equal opportunity with more time and for less cost.

There's a little bit of back tracking going to Palmer but I don't mind. This allows us to get some train experience but also provides us flexibility for some of our trip with the car. Any of you planning experts let me know if I'm missing anything but I think this is a pretty solid framework that accomplishes everything we're hoping to do.

1 hour ago, no1racefan1 said:

Doing the happy dance!! I was able to re-fare my current booking using the princess.com Live Chat. I logged on and confirmed my shareholder OBC, excursions, and payments are all there AND we are now paying about $500 less!

 

Only weird thing is it says I owe $89.90 on my fully paid excursions, but then it says the cart is empty. I'm thinking what happened is the 'Score for 24' promo requires a $500 deposit, and we had only paid $480 so far. So it looks like the shareholder credit was applied towards the booking (because our new fare shows $100 less than what I was quoted/what the website shows) in order to meet the deposit, so then the amount of that OBC that had been used to pay for shore excursions is now applied elsewhere, so now we need to pay for that amount.

 

Net amount being billed is still the same, I just need to sort it out to make sure nothing gets messed up with our excursions. Either way, I am so stoked!!

 

Edited to add: I also immediately went to AARP and bought a 10% off GC to apply to the balance, just to make sure that $500 deposit issue was taken care of and didn't come back to haunt us later.

That's awesome!

15 minutes ago, cmmaxwell03 said:

 

I found a helicopter/dog sled tour out of Anchorage with a company called Alaska Helicopter Tours.  I watched some videos/reviews on Youtube and thought it looked like fun.  We are also signed up for the Taku Lodge/Seaplane trip.  I have read that there is always a chance of the helicopter/seaplane tours being canceled if the weather is bad, which is why I wanted to choose 2 different 'flight' options in two locations.

 

Also - if you have not already booked the Taku Lodge excursion, I found the company that performs the excursion and booked with them directly.  Their price was $100pp less than through our cruise line.  In Juneau, they are located right at the dock.  The company is called Wings Airways.

Thank you! That's our strategy as well.. to book 2/3 'flight' excursions hoping at at least one of them doesn't get canceled due to weather.

I also read the weather conditions in Juneau are a little less predictable than Anchorage so better bet of your excursion in Juneau going ahead as planned.

6 minutes ago, no1racefan1 said:

I know!! I already have a list of things I wish we could do, that we'll have to go back for someday 😆

 

We did the helicopter to the dog sledding camp on the glacier in Juneau back on our very first cruise in 2006, and it's one of my top 5 travel memories!

 

If you're flightseeing out of Talkeetna, I know they offer glacier landings. I was looking into K2 Aviation when we were thinking about Talkeetna flightseeing. I've seen that they sometimes offer specials/discounts on their FB page, so make sure to follow that for tour operators you are interested in! Major Marine Tours does as well, if you use them for the Kenai Fjords. I've also heard they usually have a black friday sale. Plus, it's just fun to have all things Alaska in my social media feed, LOL.

Great tips, thank you!

10 hours ago, no1racefan1 said:

I love, love, love that this thread has turned into a place where we can all share our planning and bounce ideas off each other!

 

I'm kind of in a holding pattern waiting for more things to be available to book for 2024, such as tours and some lodging. Pro tip: it seems like all the places I have contacted about 2024 availability open it up in September/October (after the 2023 season ends). So if there's something you're interested in that isn't showing availability yet, don't fret!

 

In the mean time, since I can't NOT be planning something for our trip 😅, I'm continually checkin on our flights to see if award rates have come down so I can cancel and rebook using fewer miles--and possibly be able to upgrade! I've also been checking our cruise fare on Princess in case we are able to re-fare. So far the fare has stayed the same--although they are offering $200 OBC right now for new bookings.

After reading this yesterday I watched YouTube videos all night. The Kenai Fjords are a must for me. I think we may try to do the six hour tour the Saturday morning we board our ship. It starts early enough we'd be done by 2p and still have plenty of time to board the ship.

I think I'm going to skip the Matanuska Glacier hike since we'll also land on a glacier doing the flightseeing. I think that will scratch enough of the itch that I don't really feel the need to do both.

I currently have us booked in Juneau for the helicopter on to Mendenhall glacier with dog sledding. I may try to find an opportunity to go dog sledding during the land portion of our tour. If we can go dog sledding and land on a glacier while flightseeing I will cancel that excursion and replace it with the seaplane flight to Taku Lodge. I watched videos last night and that looks awesome. The hard part is only having max 2 weeks for vacation and wanting to do all of the things.

I just have to say I just found this thread and read through all five pages and it's SO helpful.

I thought I was an early planner but you've got me beat. We are doing the same Princess itinerary as you but we're doing it a few weeks after you. I booked the cruise in December and hadn't thought much about it, but now that I'm getting closer to booking time for airfare I started trying to decide how I want to do the land portion in Alaska before the cruise.

We knew we didn't want to do one of the cruise line land tours because they seem expensive for what you get and we also like to have some autonomy over how our days look. Prior to finding this thread my plan was to fly into Fairbanks and take the Denali Star all the way to Anchorage stopping in Denali for 2 nights and Talkeetna for a night along the way. This thread has me second guessing my entire plan and now I may be back to square one.

What I do know for sure is that we will probably fly in Monday or Tuesday for a cruise that leaves on Saturday. Talkeetna is a must for me because I want to do the flightseeing out of Talkeetna that includes the glacier landing. This thread also has me intrigued by the Matanuska Glacier hike and the Kenai Fjords day trip so I need to look into them a bit more. Maybe I'll fly into Anchorage instead of Fairbanks and I'll only go as far north as Talkeetna and just cut Denali out. I was really excited about the train ride from Denali to Talkeetna, but I think if I take the train from Anchorage to Whittier I'll get a lot of the same experience.

If anyone has any tips on anything I might be missing my ears are open. I'll come back to this thread in a few more days when I iron out exactly what I want to do. We still have about two weeks before we need to start booking airfare so plenty of time to change my mind 100x 😉

Does anyone know when Princess will release its Alaska itineraries for Summer of 2024?

Thanks for the info. I have stayed in a Mini Suite with Large Balcony on the Getaway and it was GREAT. I have booked 8134 for 12/6 cruise.

Did you end up staying in this cabin on the Escape? I'm booked on it now and I was curious if you had any more info (e.g. bed location) or pictures. Thanks!