Sigyn

the older I get, the more I enjoy cursing. I mean, cruising.

Aw. I hadn't noticed that. Despite being a member here since 2009, I've only posted in the months before a cruise, so I don't stay around that much to get to know individual members. I am cursing more now, so I will probably get to know this aforementioned breakfast club. Hmmm. Spellcheck changed cruising to cursing because I slightly misspelled it, but I'm leaving as is because it seems fitting.

that's an interested saying about the rabbits. What does it mean? I'm always curious about regional sayings.

The member who posted the review joined on Thursday just to post that. It does sound like he had other, bigger concerns about the cruise due to a special needs adult son and was disappointed overall with the cruise due to problems experienced due to limited beverages available and such. There is absolutely no way that bars are closed on sea days.

Dec. 30, 2022 - 36 days ago.

Update: It was easy getting to the port and getting on the ship, but horrible trying to get an Uber to pick us up after the cruise. They kept bailing on us. Took over an hour to get one that could find us and actually take the trouble to call/text me. Nightmare.

I did book a specialty restaurant our first night in December and it was fine. Not sure why I made a fuss. 🙂

They did have a special dinner option of roasted turkey on Christmas Day in the MDR. And they served Baked Alaska. Menu attached.

This is all interesting information and the staffing shortages make perfect sense. I haven't completely ruled out the one-way car rental, despite the cost. I thought about it overnight and while it's very pricey, it still gives us more freedom to sightsee along the way than we'd have on the bus. I remember the town of Portage, or should I say the former town of Portage, was particularly interesting when I saw it in 1999 and you could see the buildings that were abandoned after the 1964 earthquake sank the town 6 feet and the tides rushed in. I wonder how much is still visible, 24 years later. I saw it 35 years after the earthquake but those buildings could only stand for so long before disintegrating. This looks interesting, about the town: https://www.thealaskalife.com/blogs/news/portage-the-sunken-alaska-ghost-town-that-nature-is-reclaiming There are also other sites along the way that are worth stopping at, so it's something to consider for a car rental.

It's Celebrity specific, since other cruise lines do have the train available for morning disembarkations.

I called Hertz in Seward and they did say that one-way rentals are available. It's $761 for a one-way rental of a mid-sized sedan for two days. That includes the $200 drop fee for a one-way rental. Ouch. Super expensive. I normally get a corporate discount that cuts the cost way down, but not this time since it's a franchise. She did knock $50 off for my Hertz membership. It was $811 without that! Taking the bus for $68 each way would be a better option and then just using Lyft or Uber once we're in Anchorage. Our Airbnb is centrally located and only 10 minutes from the airport so it's not as if our Uber fees will be very much. The convenience of having our own car is outweighed by the extra $600 expense.

I would like to do exactly this, but the Hertz website doesn't show that I can do a one-way rental. I'll call the Seward Hertz. Good to know. Thanks, Patty.

I called Celebrity a second time to see if the first customer service agent was incorrect in telling me that there is no train available as a transfer option to go from Seward to Anchorage when we disembark the morning of Friday, July 7. The second agent confirmed the info from the first agent. There is NO train option. She said it's not sold out. There is simply no train option being offered. The bus is the only way to get passengers from the ship to Anchorage that morning. I know that others here have told me that is very unusual. Do you think the train is just delayed in offering its morning service to the cruise line? Or that it's truly unavailable? I see that I could do the train in the evening, on my own, but I don't want to do that. I'd rather get to Anchorage and get settled in after a week of cruising. We are spending two nights in Anchorage and have a 6:15 am flight on Sunday morning, so by departing Seward Friday morning we'll have most of Friday and all day Saturday to sightsee, but that's it. We're staying at a guest house in an Airbnb by the lake, and there are bikes we can use and a lot of cool things to do once we're settled in. I don't want to arrive at the Airbnb at midnight since it's a guest house in a private home.

Such a small world. My friend's son, who lives in Los Angeles, was in Finland for a one-day layover recently and ran into his high school friend, also from LA, in a grocery store. In Finland! The friend had moved there, as it turned out. And yet they ran into each other 5,600 miles from home.

I don't know about Celebrity, but I booked a Carnival Med cruise in 2016 that sailed rt from Barcelona on the then brand-new Vista and it seemed that all of the passengers were from the US. A much higher class of passenger than a typical Carnival cruise, no question. The Mediterranean cruisers were comparable to the people I met on the recent holiday cruise we took on the Norwegian Prima as opposed to the party hardy-hold-my-beer crew that filled the 5-day Carnival cruise we took with friends out of Jacksonville a few years earlier. But they seemed to all be Americans.

good grief. that's scary as all get out. wow. huge bear. I remember reading, several years ago, when a bear went into a tent when some scouts were camping and pulled a boy, around age 10, out of his tent and was dragging him into the woods with his head in his mouth when the scoutmaster heard something and went outside and made a commotion and stopped the bear. The boy survived, but had puncture wounds on his head. And I'm assuming a great fear of bears and camping for the rest of his life. Poor kid.

a 100 lb concrete slab? and they have learned to unlock doors? They are bionic bears! When I visited Alaska many years ago, I went with my then-boyfriend and we visited his sister, who had a B&B in Homer. She had deep scratches on her back door from local bears, who would try to get into the house. She took it in stride but I, a Southern California beach girl at the time, was dumbfounded at the idea of living in an environment where bears just ambled up to your back door and pawed at the wood to get inside.

It's frightening how used they are to stealing food from campsites in King's Canyon. The next night, I heard some people move into the campsite next to ours around midnight. I couldn't figure out why they were arriving so late. They were rustling around the site a lot, and I even heard them walking around my tent. We woke up the next morning, and the campsite next to ours was empty! Our friends were in a tent down the hill from us, and they said that they saw a bear walking around our tent late in the night when they got up to go to the bathroom. So that wasn't a neighboring camper moving in, it was a bear, sniffing around for food. We were smart, luckily, and had all food-scented items in the bear lockers, even the clothes that we'd cooked in, after the encounter the night before. The park ranger visited us the next day, and said the bear had stolen a cooler full of steaks from one campsite and warned us to keep our food locked up. We assured him that we were. So, yes, my "pet a grizzly bear" post was a joke, pure and simple. I saw 17 grizzlies the day I went to Denali and I had no desire to walk up to any one of them, particularly the momma I saw with two babies. Grizzlies are seriously large bears.

This post I created last October might answer some of your questions. I ended up booking a northbound cruise on the Celebrity Millennium, Vancouver to Seward, once I took into account port times and other factors that were important to my husband and I based on the schedule we had for cruising. A lot of people shared insight on various ships and itineraries:

Makes sense. Some friends and I were camping in tents in King's Canyon in Sequoia National Park in California several years ago and after dinner, while taking the trash to the bear-proof trash dumpster, a black bear walked up to take the bag away. Just dropped it and backed up slowly to go back to the campsite. So disturbing! The bear licked all of the dinner wrappers and waddled off to another campsite. We heard people banging on pots and pans all night long to run him off.

I like the way you think! 🙂

Do you recall which tour company you used? Which did you prefer? Gosh, a girl can hope!!! 😂

I was joking, of course!!!!

Have you ever gone camping again? I cannot imagine anything so scary.

Yes, but I like other $16 bottles better tho.