PandasRUs

On 1/11/2020 at 8:34 AM, phabric said:

We will be on a Princess ship?

 

Does the HOHO have a stop near the Princess dock?

 

Is it better to purchase HOHO tickets in advance or on the day?

I would be interested in this too (different ship).

On 12/23/2019 at 5:25 AM, dogs4fun said:

I found the walking tour that we used on our first visit to Tallinn. It provides walking directions from port, hits all of the high points of the old town & includes photos. If you would like a copy of the PDF, email me (address included in signature).

 

I would like a copy of the walking tour, but I don't know how to email you. Sorry

Thank you for the beautiful pictures. Looks like we will be able to enjoy some fall colors while there. And the buildings are spectacular. Looking forward to being in St Petersburg. 

4 minutes ago, dogs4fun said:

We attended the closing ceremony at Peterhof a few years ago  - it was spectacular!!! But - to answer your question, the fountains do not stop running right after the closing ceremony - they usually run until mid October. The fountain park is spectacular and definitely worth seeing.

Thank you. That is reassuring. I will continue to include this in our plans.

By the way, I love fall and fall colors. Will we see much of that on a Baltic cruise? We didn't see much color on our Australian and New Zealand trip because of the types of trees they have or, more accurately, don't have there. Was wondering what it is like in this area?

We will be in St Petersburg for a 2-day stay and are trying to figure out which places to visit and which tour to take. We are interested in Peterhof, but we just saw online that the fountains are done by the middle of September (if I have the correct site and year, it looks like the closing ceremony is Sept 12-14). Would it still be worth a visit there? I will check with tour groups when we get it narrowed down to what we want to see.  Thank you.

Thank you so much for the information. It is all very detailed and helpful. I have bookmarked your website to use in my planning. 

We will be on a Baltic Cruise the middle of September and one of our stops is Warnemude Germany. We are still in the research stage as to what we want to do in the area so no specific plans at this point. My maiden name is Ockel. In Rostock there is a bakery named Cafe Ockel. I think it would be fun to at least stop by for a picture (and probably a snack). My niece discovered this place was there but she was not able to go when she was in Germany a couple of years ago. I would love to be able to take some pictures for the family. Does anyone know about this bakery? Is it easy to get to? What else is there to do in the area?

Thank you.

DH loves museums, but isn't big on zoos or aquariums. But the Alaska Sea Life Center sounds interesting so I may be able to convince him to try it.

This is a totally free day. My understanding is our luggage is taken to the hotel for us and we just show up at the when we are ready (after check-in time of course).

I contacted PJs a while back but she is busy that day. She suggested the shuttle or Windsong tour of Exit Glacier. But she didn't indicate anything about other taxi services. Most of what I have read mentioned taxis in town so I was wondering it they would take us to the glacier. And I also read that cell service is poor or non-existent there so I was wondering about return trips. Doing a taxi would be a bit more flexible, it not too expensive.

This is the last day I have to plan for our trip coming up in 2 weeks.

Thanks for the responses.

Since we are on a HAL tour after the cruise, I assume our luggage is taken care of and we can just get off as early as they allow.

My plan (hopefully) for the day was to visit Exit Glacier first. Then we could go back to town and spend the day walking around, have lunch, etc. We could then catch the shuttle to the Seward Windsong where we will be staying and check in. And lastly, go to Ididaride.

Since the Windsong seemed to be concerned about getting us on the 8:15 tour of Exit Glacier, we need to find another way to visit if we are to stay with my current plan. I know there is a shuttle that runs hourly and is $10. Are there taxis that go out there? If so, how would we get a taxi to return to town?

We are on a cruise tour where the cruise ends in Seward w/an overnight stay there before going on the land tour.

Our documents state our ship arrives in Seward at 6am. We are trying to figure out our day (without a boat trip). When I called for an 8:15am Exit Glacier tour, I was told that they were hearing that people were often not off the ship until about 10am. I have only been on 3 cruises, but have never had disembarkation be that late. Has anyone had experience with Seward? Is it really that late?

We have not purchased a beverage card on the 3 cruises we have taken so far. We do not drink alcohol. If we wanted sodas, we have taken them with us. Neither of us drinks coffee but I drink chai but have skipped it on the cruises.

Our next cruise in a couple of weeks was purchased under the anniversary sale so we have 2 $50 beverage cards. I am sure we will use it for some sodas along the way. And now I will probably enjoy my chai this time also.

My question is, if one of us does use up our card (that would probably be me with the tea), would we both be able to get drinks with the remaining card?

Is the $50 put on our sail card or do we have an additional card we need to present?

We also have prepaid gratuities and $500 OBC total. In the past we have used any OBC for the gratuities. Our excursions are already booked (only one ship excursion). I guess we can use the OBC to purchase a few photos. We haven't used spa services, but maybe this time? Any other suggestions on how to use it? We don't get any unused back at the end.

Thanks for the suggestion, but we do not stop in Talkeetna. That's why I am only looking for tours that are near the park entrance.

We will be on a HAL land tour in early August. In Denali we will be staying 2 nights at the McKinley Chalet.

We have finally decided we would like to do a flight-seeing with a glacier landing. In my research I have found 3 that I think are from this area -

Fly Denali, Denali Air, and Stampede Aviation. I have checked them all on Trip Advisor and found they all have good reviews. Fly Denali has the most, then Denali and last was Stampede Aviation. The last review for Stampede was in 2014.

Has anyone had experience with any of these three? Any suggestions?

Thanks.

We will be on a HAL cruise tour with 2 nights in Denali. We are planning on doing a flightseeing tour there. It looks like the four options are:

1 - plane w/out landing

2 - plane w/landing

3 - helicopter w/out landing

4 - helicopter w/landing

We would be interested in hearing experiences for any of these options - what you did on the tour, what you liked, what you didn't like....

Looking forward to hearing your responses.

It looks like there are 2 hop on hop off tours. We have decided we would do one of these tours for our day and a half before the cruise. Is there much difference in the two? Is one better than the other?

Thanks

Oaktreeb

Thanks. That's pretty much what I figured (both on the tour information and the HAL reps). I just like to make sure so as not to have too many surprises.

I have already confirmed that the Windsong does have a shuttle bus that runs all day (hourly). We will just need to pack our day bag lightly.

Now back to planning.

Thanks. That's what I thought, but that's not what they are telling me.

I think emails and phone calls don't always go to the "right" people and so the information they get and give isn't always the most accurate.

I am going to assume that they will take care of our luggage. And it sounds like there is no set time to disembark (as a group). So I will just go ahead and plan my day - just not sure of the actual timing in the morning. But we will work with it.

Thanks again.

Thanks dakrewser.

This is all very confusing. My original contact with them had nothing to do with the luggage. I was just trying to get some timing to figure out what we could do and when. In one of their emails they mentioned transfer to Anchorage. But we are staying in Seward and the tour continues the next day to Anchorage.

We are not leaving or joining the tour at this point. We will be getting off the ship and beginning the land portion of the tour that day. I have confirmed that there is no bus tour or anything like that planned for the cruise-tour that day. The ship arrives at 6am. Check in at the hotel is 3pm. The description says to enjoy an optional excursion. We had decided to do our optional excursion(s) on our own. All I wanted to know from them was if there was anything required such as a meeting on the ship before disembarking and if there was a bus tour of the area included. From what they told me, it sounds like I need to either take one of their excursions, or take their bus to the hotel. If not, I need to take my own luggage.

It would seem to me that the night before disembarkation we would put a tag on our luggage that says it is to go to the hotel for the cruise-tour and set it out in the hall. I would think the next time we would see it would be at the hotel that night.

But maybe I just don't understand how all of this works.

Thanks for the reassurance. We have been on one other cruise-tour 6 years ago and felt everything was handled so well. But what I am being told by HAL is if I don't use one of their transfers I will need to take my own luggage. It would seem to me that they would just take all of the luggage (tagged and set out the night before) at the same time since many will be going on the Kenai cruises. I assume on most of those that the people will not be going to the hotel first unless they go there and back right away.

We are planning our own tours and wanderings so were thinking of taking the hotel shuttle after walking around town. We don't want to carry our luggage.

In a couple of days I am going to call or email them again. It seems that in the past we got different answers from people. But who to trust.....

We are booked on D3C cruise-tour in July/August. We leave Vancouver and disembark in Seward at 6am. We spend the night in Seward on Sunday and end our land portion Saturday in Fairbanks.

I am having difficulties getting helpful answers from HAL about the disembarkation in Seward. At this point, we are not doing any HAL excursions. I am trying to figure out timing for our potential activities.

One email said we needed to be off the ship by 10:30. Then we would be transferred to the hotel.

Then I called. The nice gentleman tried to get answers for me, but after 15 minutes he said that no one was answering and I should call back.

I tried emailing again. Now they say we need to be off the ship by 9:30. And if we are not taking part of the hotel transfer we need to take our own luggage. This is a cruise-tour so I assumed they would take care of our luggage no matter if we did a HAL excursion or our own or none.

Has anyone had experience with this tour (or maybe another where the tour is after the cruise)?

Thanks

Thank you mapleleaves.

I think I found a map that will be helpful.

And yes, each of the prices I quoted, I figured in all of the entrance prices.

We are looking forward to our relaxed tour of Juneau.

In October we did the pre-cruise tour that included a tour of Sydney, 2 nights in Cairns (including a trip out on the coral reef), a flight to Uluru, a bus ride to Alice Springs, and a flight back to Sydney. Is this the tour you are asking about?

Thanks for the suggestions for our day in Juneau. Since the others in our group do not want to rent a car, we will probably do the tour of the Glacier, Gardens, and Hatchery. After that we will do a walking tour around the city. Is there a self-guided tour that we can view on the internet?

Again, thanks for the suggestions.

We will be in Juneau in late July. We are a group of 4 adults - not active or high adventure. We have ruled out any whale watching or flight excursions. A couple of us may do flightseeing in Denali. And we are looking at the musher camp in Seward. It appears to me that our choices are then to do the Mendenhall Glacier, Glacier Gardens, and/or the Salmon Hatchery. And there is also the walking tour of downtown and the tram.

The tours I have found are HAL for the 3 locations ($80) and an excursion from the internet to the Glacier and the Gardens ($60).

I also checked into renting a car and going to all 3 locations. That comes out to be about ($55 per person).

Would we find other excursions in port which would meet our interests?

Are there places I am missing?

Suggestions are appreciated.

I had the privilege of helping "train" one of the dogs. As we were disembarking our ship in Auckland NZ last October, I was asked to carry a backpack through. I walked around the corner and when I got near the dog, she sniffed out that bag very quickly. I don't know what was in there, but she was definite about there being something. I was happy to be able to help.