bcgrad98

We have the verification problem for all of our accounts that were first registered on Jan 2, 2023. Our other accounts that were in existence before can get in just fine. Also had issues with the birth year saving as one year ahead of the actual birth year we entered for these 5 accounts. Something is still off with the website, and I have gotten no where with Princess reps. Basically, these 5 users can only access using their booking numbers and can't get into the main princess website.

The Hampton Inn by the Convention Center has a cruise package that included parking and was a good deal for this upcoming December. We've stayed there and walked to the port. We've also stayed at a SpringHill Suites nearby that was very easy to walk from. 

Thanks for the trip report! We're sailing SB on Golden in just under 2 months!

If you like Elephant Ears (that's what we call them in Indiana), then stop by The Klondike Doughboy and get yourself an Alaskan Fry Bread. They are elephant ears/knee patches/whatever you call them - fried dough with cinnamon and sugar...YUM! Best one I ever had!

This happened to us as well. There was nothing asking other passenger names when I made the reservation. I called and spoke to a Carnival rep and they got it fixed for me without any problem. I have no idea why it works that way.

Our schools use Great Lakes Scrip Center and the fine print on their RCCL scrip online indicates it can't be used for on board purchases. I'd love it if that was an option!

I looked into this for our upcoming cruise. I spoke to an RCCL rep about it and it didn't sound hassle-free to me. The way I understood it, you have to have the scrip when you book because it's for new bookings only. I would hate to buy a bunch of the scrip and then not get what we want in our booking and be stuck with a lot of money tied up in scrip or lose out on the pricing because I had a delay in buying the scrip. The person I spoke to when I called seemed familiar with scrip and was able to answer questions. I'd suggest calling and asking about the restrictions (which may be the same as any gift card they offer).

Let's blame the late hour (and the fact that I'm a RCI newbie), but I read this heading and thought Great! They've started a program to allow pets on board. Now I won't have to feel guilty about boarding the dogs.

 

How am I going to tell Buddy (black lab/corgi) and Charlotte (beagle) that they've got to go to the vet's office after all?

 

Vicki

Sorry to have misled you :)

loeytalldog - if you think of it and find out, we'd love to get confirmation.

If it's gone, we'll save some money!

Can anyone tell me whether Pets@Sea is still open on Freedom of the Seas? Crazy I know, but my son was really excited to see it remained after dry dock, and he's looking forward to his purchase. However, we saw someone's posted Compasses from a month ago and didn't see any reference to it. I can survive without it, but my son will be disappointed if it's not open anymore.

No, we couldn't choose. I believe it depended on when you arrived in the meeting area, but I'm not sure. We weren't too early to get there and were just herded to the front of the theatre. :)

It did pick us up like a tender. There were two different boats used. One was smaller and probably held 50-75 people and the other held 150-200 maybe. We were on the larger of the two. It could pick up the speed a bit, but most of the time was at a rather slow speed. While we were near the glaciers, we were just sitting around. The only time we really got rocking much was when the glacier calved and caused some good sized waves. We had been sitting parallel to the glacier and they turned the boat perpendicular to it to minimize their impact. I get motion sick, but I had taken dramamine that morning knowing we'd be on a smaller boat and in the helicopter that same day. I never felt bad at all.

I had purchased a vase at our local dollar store. I had scissors along to trim the stems which was necessary due to the weight of the flowers. I used the bouquet flowers to create a corsage and boutonniere which turned out beautifully!

The Tracy Arm excursion was a bit pricey, but I think it was worth it. The ship didn't get anywhere near where we did. We got to see the glacier up close and all the wildlife along the sides. We returned to the ship at 1:30. Typically, I believe they take you to the dock, but we had people with excursion meeting times at 1:20, so our boat's crew were in contact with the organizers and they arranged for us to get back directly onto the ship to allow those passengers a quicker turnaround. I would suggest if you're planning to do a second excursion that day, schedule it for 3:00 or later if you have the option. Our meeting time for the second excursion was 2:50 and we had enough time to eat and get back to the room without feeling rushed.

Skagway: In the final Alaskan port, we opted to go on the Yukon Jeep 4x4 tour. We had a caravan of 10 jeeps as we drove from Skagway up into the Yukon Territory. We did some "off-roading" up a mountain for a short time, made a restroom stop in Carcross, and returned back to Skagway. The off-roading was okay, but I would rather have had time to spend in Carcross and making other stops to see the gorgeous views along the way. We did get to see a porcupine and some of our fellow tourists saw a bear alongside the road. Once back in Skagway, we spent a bit of time walking through the cute little town. We found a place near the center of town that sells fry dough. (I think that's what they called them. Here in Indiana, we call them elephant ears.) It was the best one I've had in years! I could have eaten a second one all by myself! If we make it back to Skagway, I think we'll opt for the train ride. I think we would have enjoyed it more than we did the jeep tour. I kinda feel bad for DH because he drove our jeep the whole time. He didn't get as good of looks at the scenery since he had to keep his eyes on the road. The other two people in our jeep had no desire to drive and neither did I.

Victoria, BC: We walked from the ship to the Fisherman's Wharf which was a cute little area with some restaurants and houseboats. From there we walked to the downtown area and then back to the ship. For us, there wasn't much to see in the short time we were there.

We made it back to Seattle pretty early on Sunday morning. Based on the timelapse videos that can be replayed in the Seattle Space Needle, the ship docked around 4:30am. We opted for the Walk-off Debarkation and were assigned to Group #4 which was scheduled to meet at 7:55. Around 7:40 we were heading down and they just sent us right off the ship. Debarkation was a breeze as we walked right up to customs without a wait. He looked at the passports and said, "Have a great day!" Got a taxi with no wait and headed for our post-cruise hotel, Hampton Inns & Suites - Downtown Seattle. We dropped our bags off and headed out to explore Seattle. We received a nice complimentary upgrade to a junior suite which was nice!

Seattle: We opted to buy the Citypass. We used all our passes between Sunday and Monday and relaxed in between. We visited the Chihuly museum, EMP Museum, Space Needle, Aquarium, and Argosy's Harbor Tour. We are members of our local science museum, so that membership got us into the Pacific Science Center free of charge. On Tuesday we walked around town to various sites and shops in Seattle and then flew back home late that night.

These are just a few of our thoughts from our fabulous cruise. While the Alaskan cruise was much different than our past cruises, we definitely had a great time. I'm happy to try to answer any questions that I can. Thanks for following along!

Juneau: This was the port we were looking forward to the most as our planned excursion was to go glacier hiking. Princess uses North Star Trekking for this excursion and they're very well organized. There were 8 people from our ship on the excursion, so we ended up with two helicopters to take us to the Mendenhall Glacier. This was our first time on a helicopter, so we were a bit apprehensive. It was a pretty smooth ride with beautiful views. We actually didn't cover much territory in the 2 hour glacier hike, but we explored a variety of glacial features. We refilled our water bottles with water from the stream on the glacier and were able to drink it. It was a fun hike and I'd recommend the tour. Our flight back was just as beautiful and reminded me of Disney's ride Soarin' as we would fly over the cliffs.

After the two excursions in one day, we were pretty tired when we got back to Juneau. We made a quick stop at the shop by the ship to get my Christmas ornament and then got onto the ship to rest.

Tracy Arm Fjord: We took the Tracy Arm Fjord excursion and enjoyed it immensely. There was too much ice in the water to get to the South Sawyer Glacier, so we only went to the northern portion, but it was beautiful and gave us a good show of calving. We saw some mountain goats, seals, sea lions, black bears and otters. Near the end, we found a humpback whale and were able to follow him around for a bit. He never completely breached, but he did surface several times. If you get the chance, I recommend taking this excursion!

View of Ruby Princess in Tracy Arm:

Lots of ice...looking toward South Sawyer Glacier:

One of the many waterfalls:

Ice that had just fallen off the glacier:

Just off the Ruby in Alaska on June 28. There were no multi-pose packages available and staff hadn't heard of them. The only packages were different sizes of the same pose. We tried the Platinum Studio and while the pictures were good, I was not wowed. I was more wowed by the the formal portraits we had taken around the ship. They were amazingly well done. They were selling plenty of pictures at $25 each and not just to me! I wish they would have had the package, but no luck for our sailing....

Ketchikan: We opted for the DIY tour. Ship docked at 6:30am and we were off the ship almost immediately. We quickly hailed a cab and took it to the Deer Mountain trailhead. It was a nice cool morning and we'd layered up pretty well. We are from northeast Indiana where there are only bumps - not really hills and definitely no mountains. Hiking in our area, which we don't do very frequently, is on pretty level terrain. Small hills are pretty easy to hike. This trail was pretty tough for us. As we approached the 1 mile mark, we were debating if we should turn around and head back. But, we'd seen pictures of amazing views that we really wanted to find. Just past the one mile mark, we found it. Simply beautiful views! We took a break, pulled out our phones and re-read the reviews of the hike. They said it got easier after the first mile, so we kept going.

Here are a couple shots from the 1 mile point:

We passed through an area that had experienced a pretty significant landslide. It was a little scary to cross that area as the path wasn't very wide and it was a decent dropoff. We ran into a lot of mosquitos any time we'd try to stop for a rest or pictures. They weren't really biting us, but they were driving me crazy! We hadn't gotten any bottled water to take with us (big mistake!!), so we were getting quite tired. We made it to a beautiful clearing with stunning views that was probably within 10 minutes of the top of Deer Mountain. I couldn't go any further, so we called it good. Here are some pics from the meadow area where we stopped:

It took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to make it that far. We weren't very fast and had several groups pass us. Coming back down was a lot faster but much harder on the feet!

We called the taxi driver and he came back to pick us up at the trailhead. We had him drop us off at Creek Street so we could explore the town for a little bit. We went to a few stores (prices were pretty good in the shops) and then headed back to the ship to rest our weary legs and spend some time in the hot tub. As we rested, we were watching the bald eagles fly around the ship. Simply beautiful!

Weather: great for the entire cruise! The temps were reported to be highs in the 60's, but it felt warmer than that. I think it rained one evening as we noticed the deck was pretty wet, but we were inside during the whole rain shower. We spent time in the hot tub on deck 16 aft which apparently isn't much of a secret any more as it was often occupied. The aft pool is heated and was comfortably warm. We didn't try the main pools.

Food: I am a very picky eater and my husband is pretty adventurous with food. The only thing he got all week that he didn't like was the Mahi Mahi the night we ate in DaVinci. The rest of his meal that night was fine, but he didn't care for the Mahi Mahi. We ate in Michelangelo three times. I had the Tri-tip Roast something or other for 3 meals in the MDR and the kids chicken tenders the other night. Food was okay for me, but nothing spectacular.

Because it was our anniversary trip, we decided to try a specialty restaurant for the first time. We chose the Crown Grill as I'm not much of an Italian food fan. Let's just say dinner was amazing! Service was fabulous. Food was fantastic and plentiful. And, the atmosphere was great for the occasion. I had the filet. It was huge, perfectly well done without charring, and was just right in temperature. My husband had the lobster and a steak of some sort. It was also fabulous. The desserts were amazing as well! The Crown Grill was even better than we expected and was worth the $25 cover charge. Just to note, it was a flat $25 per person. We expected at least gratuities to be charged on top of that and it was not. I'm still sorting through pictures, but I'll try to grab some of our pictures from the Crown Grill. I know I've got some of the dessert! For now, I've got to go play a golf match. I'll come back with reports on some of the ports and excursions.

This is my first attempt at posting pics on cruisecritic, so I hope this works. This is the $10 bouquet of flowers that I purchased from Pike Place Market.

These are pics of R508. We loved the room. It was so much more spacious and had a lot of storage (more than we needed). Here are some shots of the room.

The bathroom was the same size as the normal inside stateroom bathrooms, so I won't post a picture of it :).

We've received so much benefit from these boards and the information and reviews provided by so many of you that I wanted to take some time to share our experience on the Ruby Princess June 21, 2015 sailing out of Seattle.

A bit about us...DH & I are 40-ish and we were celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. We had completed 5 cruises prior on various lines but all to the Caribbean and Panama Canal. This cruise was our first to Alaska and first to repeat on a ship. We've always chosen inside staterooms so we can travel more often.

Pre-cruise.... We flew into Seattle on Saturday and were able to explore Pike Place Market (and get my flowers for the cruise) that night. We stayed overnight at the Ace Hotel in Belltown. I was trying to keep costs down and with the US Open being played nearby, decently priced hotels were hard to come by. I decided that I could stand one night of shared bathrooms at the Ace Hotel. It would be an adventure, right? The reviews of the hotel are really good. We survived, but it's not a place that I would stay again. It was clean and the staff were very friendly. The room was really small and I hadn't thought to double-check that the room would be air conditioned. Oops! They provided a fan which helped, but it was still really stuffy. The shared bathroom wasn't really much of a problem. They were clean. It was just a bit awkward.

We decided to get to the port early, even if we would have to wait to check in. We used Uber to get to the port which went fine, but it probably didn't save any money over a taxi. We arrived at the port around 10 am and they finally let us check in after a decent wait. We were the first to check in which went smoothly. I believe they let us board at 11:45. It might have been a little earlier.

We went straight to our room (R508) which is a sideways interior stateroom midship, deck 14. Our room steward was Jun (pronounced like June). He was very nice and did a fine job throughout the week. We did not get any towel animals, but that's okay.

I'm going to break up the review into several posts and try to grab some pictures to throw in....I'll be back soon!

Just off Ruby this morning... formal pics were $25. If you want digital copy, add another $10. You must buy the print to get the digital, so that would be $35. Also, no packages of different images were offered - only a few packages with different sizes of the same image.

This is great information to see. Thanks for taking the time to post the patters! We set sail on 6/21 and are trying to figure out which night to enjoy a specialty restaurant to celebrate our anniversary.

Thanks so much for the info about the excursion in Tracy Arm Fjord! We will be there on our wedding anniversary, so we're splurging!

Great question! We'd love to know that answer, too! We are looking at a 17-18 hr drive home after the return and want to have the kids in school the next day! If we don't make it back for school, we can live with it.