Alaskan Cruisers NOT do a cruise/land tour?

[Budget Queen]

We only have 2 days before boarding our ship in Whittier. Landing in Anchorage Thursday early afternoon and boarding the ship for a Saturday departure. What tours can be done in this short of time.

 

You can either do extended day trips out of Anchorage, or go to Seward. Very simple with a rental car. Plenty to see and do, if you give more information, on what you want to see and do??

[Budget Queen]

Although, there are posts about Princess having the cruisetours down to a science- I have to disagree. They offer some pretty poor cruisetour itineraries, and cruisetours- group point to point are the most restrictive.

 

A big "problem" I have with Princess is there frequent inclusion of the WORTHLESS Natural History tour. The highlight of cruisetours for many, is scenery and wildlife. This misses it completely. This "tour" only gets you on the public road. Some people have problems with Princess' table seating on their rail cars- I see repeative complaints of having to "sit across from strangers and them not switching seats". :)

 

The most significant point I wish to make- do your homework, and KNOW every detail about your chosen cruisetour, most do not.

[mtnmusic]

In planning my upcoming Alaskan SB cruise on the Coral...

 

I am contemplating a small pre-cruise tour on my own, an Alaska Train Tour to Denali (2 nights) thru Princess Tours.

 

I've read quite a bit about Cruise/Land Tours, and was just curious if there are very many who choose NOT to do this, and only go on the cruise? Because I'm also contemplating that way as well. :confused: Decisions, decisions...

 

There are ways of doing this on your own without it costing an arm and a leg and you'll have better lodging and can pick and choose where you go and what you see and do. We're staying in a Queen Suite in Anchorage overnight for $141.75, renting a midsize car from Alamo for 3 days ($128.15 total), driving to Denali (a 5 hr trip) with 2 nights at a B&B ($128.40 per day) and have booked Park Shuttles from Denali to Toklat (6 hr. tour) for $24.50 per person. The shuttles are HopOnHopOff and run every 30 minutes or so. The last day we head back to Anchorage with a substantial stopover at Talkeetna before flying out at 8:40 that night. All being equal, we prefer the flexibility (and price..) of doing it ourselves rather than taking a cookie cutter cruise tour. It would be a shame to be this close to Denali and not see it.

[gm217]

Is there a website where you can find tours and things to do in Anchorage. Would it be easier if we rent a car to get around?

[tampafish]

We are taking a land/cruise from Fairbanks in Sept. Does anyone know about staying in Vancouver after the cruise? We are flying out of Seattle on Mon. at midnight so we have all of Sun and Mon. to see Vancouver and Seattle. Princess has no land excursions after the cruise. Any ideas or hotels to stay at. How about getting from Canada back into the US??

 

 

We're actually going the other way, flying into Vancouver and staying 4 days and then getting on our north bound cruise. We are going to spend 2 nights in Whistler and then 2 nights in Vancouver at the Westin Bayside. There is a ton to do in Vancouver including a Hop On Hop Off trolley through the downtown area that goes to a lot of the main sites including Stanley Park. I think you could pretty easily do your excursion in Vancouver! On Vancouver's website you can register to have them send you a nice book about all the stuff to do and it's free. It really helped us figure out what would be the best things to see for our tastes in travel.

 

I believe there is a train from Vancouver to Seattle as well as a ferry or two. Check out the city of Vancouver's website for more info http://vancouver.ca/ or the tourism Vancouver site (where I got the free book) http://www.tourismvancouver.com/visitors/. For my DH and I, half the fun is the research and planning of our trip. So enjoy every minute. Hope you have a fabulous trip!

[tampafish]

Is there a website where you can find tours and things to do in Anchorage. Would it be easier if we rent a car to get around?

 

We reserved lots of books about Anchorage including the Mile Post (awesome book!) from our public library. After doing about a month of research on Denali and the Kenai Penisula we actually decided to do 4 days post cruise on our own in Achorage and Kenai. The whole group tour thing is really not for us - we like to explore, get lost, change our minds and find cool things a long the way. You could even try going to a local bookstore and looking through a few books about Alaskan travel to get more info on Anchorage. There certainly are a lot of options with Anchorage as your launching point!