indychillin

I contacted the HAL Shore Excursion number Monday the 20th about an excursion for our upcoming June 29th 19 day sea/land/sea HAL trip and expressed to her the frustration of wondering if our trip would be cancelled at the last minute? She said there was a list of cancelled land/sea tours and put me on hold, looked up ours and said it was not cancelled. She said staffing was the issue that caused them to cancel so many. So maybe call in and ask about your trip?

Agree! Obviously doing an Alaska cruise for Alaska but in the evenings, it is sure nice to enjoy good music, if you are not going to have comedians or magicians at the Main Stage (DH favorite entertainers)

Wow @Sebbiesgrammy I am sorry to hear your trip was cancelled, especially for your grandsons! We start on June 29th a Y5z 19 day trip with double Denali and Yukon and haven't been notified of a cancellation yet. I keep eyeing my email and hold my breath as I open each email they are sending with adjustments to our boarding time or masking policy info etc. wondering if our tour will get canceled as well.

So, @NCTribeFan the dropping of BBK is immediate on Zuiderdam? One reason I booked that ship was because it had BBK and that is such great music and fun. We are on Zuiderdam on the 29th. Secondly, sorry to hear you contracted Covid on the trip. How many days were you quarantined? How do you think HAL worked through that with you?

Glad to hear your trip was not cancelled. Hope all goes well and eager to get some posts from you on the trip!

@cruisingteachers4, I am curious if your trip was cancelled or not? Sounds like we are on possibly same itinerary, just later dates. We start on Z-Dam on June 29th and off at Skagway to do our land tour which is Whitehorse, Dawson, Fairbanks, Double Denali and then Anchorage and then southbound on NA on July 10th at Whittier.

I also received the email with mask mandate this weekend. We are booked on a 19 day HAL sea, land, sea tour on June 29th. I have been checking CovidActNow.org website for how Alaska cities on our trip are doing with Covid cases. Cases are up high in Ketchikan and Skagway especially. Twice the number of cases in a week in each of those cities than in the whole state of Indiana right now. So it does not surprise me to see HAL put a mandate back in place. CovidActNow website is just tracking USA so I am not sure about Yukon cities on this trip, but guessing their numbers are getting high too. I have been following posts of a similar trip 'Semi live review Y1L Holland America’s Alaska Land and Sea CruiseTour, June 1 – June 19, 2022' and they were 33 people in their tour group and she posted yesterday that 17 of the 33 did not get to leave Anchorage to board Nieuw Amsterdam in Whittier because their group had 12 positive cases. So, sadly, Covid is having a big impact on travelers and locals. My impression is that many locals in Alaska and Yukon work at least 2 jobs related to the tourist industry in the summers so as they go down with Covid, so do the tours, the restaurants, and shops. For all of us coming and going this summer, I encourage us to not be casual about it, but be cautious, wash hands often, so we can all enjoy our trips. These areas are not like the lower 48. They have not gone through the all the cycles we have with the pandemic yet, I am guessing.

Loving the photos and insight. How long did it take you to bike the trail with stops along the way?

Thanks so much for your daily blog! My husband and I go on June 29th Alaska/Yukon trip starting in Vancouver for a 19 day HAL trip sea for 3 on Zuiderdam, land for 9 and back to sea on Nieuw Amsterdam on July 10th for 7 days from Whittier to Vancouver, so we stop in most all the same places you are blogging about.