Cheryl H

HI...So we are going to be cruising on the breakaway next week with our children. I was jw what type of electronic device (like tablet, nabi, leappad,) we should buy for them. We are buying it for my son as a bday present just want to see what other ppl have that their kids love. Also we don't want to pay for wifi so does that mean that they won't be able to play some apps or all apps.

We need something that they can play during meal times so they don't get too antsy.

Thanks

When our son was 3, he took his Leapster and game cartridges (and headphones). We let him take it to the dining room, but I don't remember him getting very bored. It seemed like the servers had fresh fruit waiting for him and they kept the food coming at a fairly good rate.

The other item we brought along was a portable DVD player for our room. He brought along some favorite DVD shows from home like Wonder Pets, Elmo, Veggie Tales, etc. There really wasn't much on TV for him so he was glad to have some down time with his DVD's.

I think when he was 6, he had a DS by then and we let him bring that along. It was particularly helpful for excursions. He wore headphones so he wouldn't bother anyone. He enjoyed the excursions, but when he was ready to play games, he pulled his game out of his bag and played it. (He has a drawstring bag that he wears). He was happy and we were happy.

These were the days before ipads and kindles.

For Misty Fjords, I think most of the pilots take the same flight path....but a couple of the companies actually land and you can get out and take photos. We used Seawind Aviation and had a great flight. We were amazed. Seawind did land near a rock and we got out to take some photos and take in the scenery for a few minutes.

This time we are using them again, except we are going to see the bears with them. But first we are doing the Bering Sea Fisherman's tour. Seawind was so nice to coordinate with the Bering Sea folks....We are doing the Bering Sea Fisherman tour first since they only have 1 tour per day...then Seawind is picking us up from that dock and taking us to the bears.

Have fun planning!

We've been on this itinerary twice on the Jewel of the Seas. Loved it both times. On most Royal Caribbean ships, there is a solarium (indoor) pool that is kept warm and tropical. It has a glass canopy roof. It's lovely in there and a great place to relax.

Both our trips were in October and the weather was lovely. We wore jeans and short sleeve shirts and had a jacket with us just in case.

We've done some excellent tours, but I think our all time favorite was Blue Nose Sidecars in Halifax. We did a trip with them to Peggy's Cove. Had a grand time.

Lots of history to be found in Boston. We did a pre-cruise and a post-cruise tour with a private guide who is a national park ranger. But on another trip we did the hop on hop off trolley and enjoyed that as well.

Have fun planning! There's a photo book of all our pics from the various ports in the link below. I think the photo book is just called New England/Canada.

How easy is it to get just the shuttle bus back from Mendenhall? We will be on a whale watching excursion and will be dropped off there at the end but will need to get back to the pier? Where would we get tickets to return or can we just pay the bus driver?

I believe you just pay the driver. We actually purchased round trip from the white bus company. But we wished we had just paid for one-way. When we were ready to leave, the blue bus was there, but since we had already paid for the white bus, we waited a little while longer for the white bus to come back.

Someone else asked about where the ticket booths were: From what I remember the little booths along the dock where you purchase the shuttle tickets were really close to where we had lunch. We ate at Twisted Fish in the Taku building. it was delicious.

Oh how wonderful to be going on a cruise with your Mom. No color stories for me. Black slacks and tops to match are my standard packing. I think I took some navy ones once but I'm not sure they got worn.

I know last time we went to Alaska, I packed entirely too many pairs of jeans. Now we just pack a couple extra and send them down to the ship laundry half way through the week.

Have fun planning for Alaska!

Which do you prefer, Northbound or Southbound and why?

 

My thinking is I'd prefer Northbound, as Alaska is the highlight of the cruise... And as we reach Vancouver (on the southbound journey) it's kinda anti-climactic.

 

Your thoughts?

We did northbound in 2011. My thoughts were that the scenery would get better and better the farther north we went and I was excited to see the inside passage from our aft balcony.

However, it seemed to me that we went through some of the inside passage after dark on our way north. I wanted to see the narrows, but we never saw it. The other part is flying home from Anchorage was brutal. We were on a redeye home after a non-stop wonderful week of cruising and touring. I don't recall there being many choices to fly home during the day.

If I get to do a one way again, I'm going to fly to Anchorage first and spend a little time seeing the sights, and especially get to do the Kanai Fjord tour, and maybe spend a day and night in Seward. We loved visiting the Wildlife Conservation Center. We also got to go up the tram ride at Alyeska. There's so much beautiful country up there.

We are going again, but we are doing a round trip Vancouver on the Radiance in Sept.

Have fun planning!

we are cruising in Sept. and our ports are:

Portland 7-3

Halifax 9-6

Charlottetown 8-5

Gaspésie 8-4

Saguenay 11-7

there will be 2 of us and mobility is limited with my mom. I am trying to get some ideas of what to do in each port. I don't mind renting a car for the day and exploring. We enjoy nature (hoping to see some fall colors) and museums. Any ideas would be appreciated

Thanks for any help

When you say mobility is limited, do you just mean she can't walk too far? Could she ride in a sidecar? In Halifax, we did the Bluenose Sidecar Tour and it was our favorite tour of the whole week. We rode around Halifax like royalty. We had a few stops along the way. One stop was at a maple products store. We tasted maple butter, and picked up a few things. We had a stop at a local bakery for pie. We had a stop at a local author's home. And the final stop was at Peggy's Cove lighthouse. We had them drop us off at the boardwalk so we could have lunch at Salty's and we shopped at the glass and pewter stores and we walked the boardwalk back to the ship.

The motorcycles didn't go real fast and they stayed on local roads. It's a nice married couple that operates them. They had us measure our heads with a tape measure ahead of time and they brought along helmets. I would do that tour again in a heartbeat.

Well, even the US agents don't always know...in 2011 our Alaska cruise turned up N/A on the booking screen. When we called, we were told nothing was wrong. But we got to talking on rollcalls for the cruise ahead of us and the one behind us. They were being told that our ship was going into drydock and they were being given choices on what to do. Armed with that I called back. Nothing had changed, our cruise was still on.

Then the cruise on the other end of ours got offered a package for cancelling. I called again and they said our cruise was still on and not to worry. I explained that the other cruisers were being told about dry dock and surely our cruise was not going to go in the middle of dry dock.

I could never get anyone to admit our cruise was also cancelled. I was getting worried because I wanted to get going on rescheduling our cruise, flights, and tours.

Finally I posted on Royal Caribbean's facebook page and I got a call back and she worked on it for us. At last!

I don't have much faith in anybody working in customer service for RCCL.

From your other post it sounds like you decided to go with the 4 hour tour, so am I correct in assuming you don't need this questions answered now?

Yes, thank you! I didn't want to put my airport logistics and Granville questions on here since it was someone else's thread. After finding out all that, I went ahead and booked the 4 hour one. Thanks!

Thank you both! Actually looking at the list Martincath included, I found a pizza place that has carry out slices of pizza and gelato. That sounds perfect. It says it's inside the public market so we'll head straight for that.

Thank you Martincath!! I remember that you helped me know where the cauldron is from the Pan Pacific. We are still planning to check out the cauldron and the Tap & Barrell restaurant the first day we arrive. Plus Capilano.

Thanks everyone.

It's not just raw food - there are dozens of prepared-food vendors inside the Public Market too. Here's a link to the list. I suggest grabbing something you can eat while walking and heading outside again if the weather's nice - there are many buskers around so you can sit and be entertained while you eat, or grab some snaps of downtown Vancouver across the creek, or watch the totem-pole carvers working.

 

Lunchtime can be especially busy though, so the best advice I can offer is GO GET FOOD AS SOON AS YOU ARE OFF THE BUS (caps deliberate). Usually I see people being dropped off by large coaches outside Ocean Concrete and the hordes then slowly meander along the street, stopping immediately for photos of the concrete tanks (now beautifully painted), the crazy marble machine, the concrete trucks painted like fruit & veg, then stopping again at the totem carvers, then finally moving along and into the public market. Go past everyone, get food, then come back and see it all - you'll probably get back on the bus at the same spot you got off it, so all the stuff is still there to see...

That's exactly what I was thinking...so which direction do we head after getting off the bus? I'm looking at a map, but I'm not sure where the drop off is. Do we head straight for the public market? Is that where the majority of the fast food is?

Thank you so much. I knew about the form to be completed before exiting the ship, I just could not remember the order of events once at the airport. Thank you!!

By the way, on this 4 hour city tour, there's a 45 minute break at Granville Island to try to purchase and eat some lunch. We will be 2 adults and 1 child. He's 10 years old. 45 minutes is not long, any suggestions on where we should walk directly too at Granville? I saw a place listed as Beanstalk Bistro that offers pizza & grilled cheese sandwiches, but it is now listed as closed. Do you happen to know a good spot to get kid friendly fast food at Granville? I pulled up some youtube video's of Granville and I was seeing a lot of vendors with uncooked meats and such. I did see a yummy bakery, but we might want something more substantial than a cupcake.

We are considering a 4 hour tour with Vancouver Tours on our departure day after getting off the Radiance of the Seas. The tour is 10:00 to 2:00 pm. The tour ends at Canada Place and then they transfer us to the airport after dropping folks off first at the cruise terminal.

They added that they may put us on a different vehicle to go to the airport, but they aren't sure yet. So anyway, as long as we get to the airport by 3:30 for our 5:30 flight back to the USA.

My question is this, is 2 hours enough time to get our luggage checked and get to our gate? Will we have to go through customs or immigration at the airport? Or will we have done that already getting off the ship.

The last time we were at Vancouver Airport was just after the 09/11 tragedy and it was a mess getting through the airport. I remember they lined us up to pay a 20$ airport fee, but I think that fee is now worked into our tickets.

Can someone walk me through what we will encounter at the airport step by step? Thanks!!

Vancouver Tours (Land Sea Tours) are excellent operators and they do offer something fairly close to what you are looking for but more importantly they do offer custom tours, they maybe worthwhile contacting.

 

http://vancouvertours.com

Thank you for this link. We had decided on the 2.5 hour RCCL city tour that ends at the airport. But it looks like this company does a 4 hour city tour. You don't happen to know pros/cons of either do you? I may try to phone this company and ask for a few more details. My guess is a little more shopping time in Granville with time for a quick lunch.

We stayed at the Magnolia. Very nice! Our room had a pretty view of the Capital. We walked to the inner harbor, and also to the shops on Government Street. We booked a horse and carriage ride and they picked us up and dropped us off at our hotel.

The manager of the hotel left us a box of Rogers Chocolates and a nice note, in addition to the normal amenities. He also gave my son extra bath bombs. We were really impressed.

If we're looking at the August 27th sailing wouldn't the weather still be relatively warm because it's before labor day?

 

If you were going between this cruise and an Alaska cruise, which one would you choose?

I would think it would be warm still. Both our Canada/New England cruises were in October and we thought it was fairly warm then.

We loved Alaska and Canada/New England. I think it depends on what your reasons are to decide between the two.

To us, the scenery and seeing the whales made Alaska more amazing to us. But we loved the Canada/New England one too...lots of historical stuff in Boston, great seafood, lighthouses, etc. Financially for us the Canada/New England one was cheaper because the tours were less expensive than in Alaska.

I'm glad we did both. We are gearing up for our second trip to Alaska.

Have fun planning.

We are thinking of taking a family cruise to Alaska in June. It will be a large group - children ranging in age from 2- 14, young adults, middle aged adults and seniors- 23 of us all together. The ship of choice is the Radiance of the Sea and the cruise starts in Steward and ends in Anchorage.

Has anyone done this? Is there enough on the ship to keep the kids happy?

Would love to hear experiences. Not sure if it would be worth the big expense of such a trip since we have to fly from Southern California, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Thanks for any advice you can share!!!!!!!!!

Diane

We did the same trip in reverse in 2011 with our son (age 6). He loved it!! We loved it so much we are going back on the Radiance to Alaska in September.

In fact, I would say the only thing I would have changed about our trip is I would have gone southbound instead of northbound. (Hated having that long flight home from Anchorage at the end of our vacation.)

Did you have some specific questions about the kids activities? Tours? Our son loved all the tours. We did allow him to bring his DS and headphones along for when he got a little tired of all that scenery. He loved the Radiance's kids club (Adventure Ocean). He especially loved Adventure Dining.

There are pictures of our experience in the link below. I had to divide the Alaska pictures into 2 books. But if interested, you'll see book #1 and book #2 for Alaska. We pretty much did private tours, except we did do the ship sponsored gold mine tour at Juneau. It was enjoyable and then we took the shuttle out to Mendenhall Glacier.

Another handy thing we brought for our son was the DVD player for some downtime in our room. We were glad we had a balcony. Our son was busy sleeping when we were viewing Hubbard Glacier.

Have fun planning!

Cheryl

Loving your report. So the DIY Venice part sounds complicated to me. If you had it to do all over, would you rather have had a guide? It all looks so beautiful.

Cheryl

Hi Cheryl, just looked at your pictures when you went to Alaska. Now I can't wait to go again.:rolleyes: Oh why, is Sept is faaaar away?:eek:

Hi Virginia,

We had so much fun on that trip. I love creating photo books on Shutterfly. I tease my husband that we will need all the vacation picture books possible so we can enjoy looking at them when we are finally in a nursing home. By then, we will have forgotten everything and it will all be new again. :-)

I'm anxious for September also. Eight more months! I loved our tours last time. We are repeating the whale watch with Floyd from F.I.S.H.E.S. again, but the rest of our tours are new ones.

I hit the stores today for New Years sales. Mostly all chilly weather tops. I may bring a couple of them along on our trip.

Speaking of pictures, I've been looking at Paylady's thread on her pictures from her Italy cruise. That makes me want to book a cruise to Italy. Maybe 2017. Her pictures are over on the Royal Caribbean board.

Yes, we are going in July 2015 on the Radiance. Just booking some of our excursions.

Hi Ollie,

We are from Indiana also. (Plainfield). Have fun on your cruise. So far, Alaska has been our favorite. With Canada/New England our second fav. And RCCL used to do a west coast cruise which we really enjoyed too.

Have fun selecting your tours. We've had ours booked for September for a few months now. I'm a little nuts about having all details nailed down early.

Our first cruise to Alaska, we did a lot of reading up before going also. We brought 3 pairs of binoculars because I didn't think we would want to share (there are 3 of us). Well, we were so busy snapping pictures, that I forgot to look through my binoculars. I think my husband used his a little bit at Hubbard. I remember how excited we were when we spotted the first whales. I think we were getting off the glass elevators and happened to look out and see them.

We are going again and are on the same cruise as Virginia. We love the Radiance.

I have two Alaska books also. I need to start reading up again. We have The Alaska Cruise Handbook by Joe Upton and Alaska by Cruise Ship by Anne Vipond.

Cheryl!! Nice to hear from you! Other than the rain the weather was fabulous. It was mild which was great because so many of the places we visited were not air conditioned.

 

How's little Dustin, who isn't little anymore. Gosh, I hope I have his name right. My goodness, how old is he now? Get as many vacations during school time in as you can before high school. I had to stop taking the kids out of school then because they would have missed too much. Bummer!

Wow, great memory. Dustin is great! He is 9 and we home school him now. He's doing fantastic at his school work and it makes scheduling trips so much easier. We are booked on the Radiance again for Alaska for September 2015. After that I want to do this cruise! Your pictures are amazing.

I was wondering if you could include a picture of your new purse and the leather gloves you found.

Great review!! I feel like I need to be taking notes. Thanks for listing so many great details. Other than the rain issue....how was the weather temperaturewise.

We are doing our first Alaskan cruise this next summer as well- we just booked this week :) we are doing northbound on the Star Princess. We just got an interior room because of the price, and that way we could spend 4 days in Seattle before and a few in Vancouver :) happy planning! I have been researching nonstop!

 

 

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Fun! We did Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver prior to our Alaska cruise too. Are you tacking some tour time at the end of your cruise too? There's so much to see. Have fun!

If you were willing to do Royal Caribbean, I believe the Radiance of the Sea added 3 single cabins on it's last dry dock work.

Radiance usually does north and south itineraries, but there's one next season that is round trip Vancouver in September. That's the one we are booked on.

Have fun on whatever you decide. If you join in our your cruises meet & mingle thread, you'll meet lots of friends ahead of your cruise. You may even find out about sharing some tours with them. We are sharing a tour with a couple we met on our meet and mingle thread. Looking forward to our trip.