Alaska cruise and land review June10th-17th

[shutterbug285]

Alaska. trip of a lifetime

 

A little backround first. I am 47, kind if a nature nut and somewhat adventurous. this review is based on my experiences on this cruise and are my opinion only. fell free to jump in with questions or comments.

I will have to complete this in sections but will finish as quickly as possible

 

day one

 

so excited! get to Logan airport in plenty of time check in is a breeze but a sudden thunderstorm delays takeoff . A moment of panic, a dash to the connecting flight and Yeah! we are in Vancouver! vacation time!

 

the Vancouver airport is nice, the line for customs is long lol. after customs we pick up luggage and go to grab a cab. I have to say getting a cab or town car is easy. the cabs all line up on the left as you come out with a man there, directing the cabs and helping people. It kept things very orderly and easy. It looked like there were town cars on the right side -my sister took one of these lst year for her cruise and said it was only about ten bucks more fyi

 

on the ride to the pan pacific I was struck by all the landscaping in the front yards even the small yards, very formal in designed quite lovely. unfortunately the window in mini van cab were fixed and not clean enough for photos :)

 

check-in at the pan pacific was a snap, room was first rate. next was lunch at the steamship authority good food and they have there own brewery

 

after lunch we walked the sea wall down to Stanley park. its a beautiful walk i highly recommend. note: its about a mile and a half or better to the entrance to Stanley park from the pan pacific along the sea wall and the park is very large so if your not up for a good walk................. I did see some bus stops in the park. so maybe you could catch one there if you got too tired

 

 

 

 

 

[shutterbug285]

Panic moment after 20 minutes of typing and trying to insert pictures it froze! (oh oh please tell me I don't have to do this all again!!!) luckily it didn't load the second picture but also didn't erase everything

 

here are some more photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dcruisers]

Thanks for the pics and review so far....really looking forward to reading more!

 

We are also staying at Pan Pacific after our cruise. How is the hotel...worth the money?

Vancouver looks lovely. I have never been and am looking forward to site seeing. We will only have one day but plan to make the most of it.

[shutterbug285]

ok pictures are too big

 

lets try this

 

 

can't seem to be able to make them smaller.. suggestions?

 

 

 

 

 

[shutterbug285]

after about 5 to 6 of hours walking,we were tired, grabbed something quick to eat an headed to bed. the beds were very comfy...........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

more later

[shutterbug285]

I am not used to spending 178.00 on a hotel,and thats cheap for that hotel. It was a beautiful hotel, nice rooms,comfortable beds and the convenience of being right there at canada place and having them handle all your baggage and take it to the ship. i thought it was worth every penny!

[shutterbug285]

Thanks for the pics and review so far....really looking forward to reading more!

 

We are also staying at Pan Pacific after our cruise. How is the hotel...worth the money?

Vancouver looks lovely. I have never been and am looking forward to site seeing. We will only have one day but plan to make the most of it.

 

 

 

 

I am not used to spending 178.00 on a hotel,and thats cheap for that hotel. It was a beautiful hotel, nice rooms,comfortable beds and the convenience of being right there at canada place and having them handle all your baggage and take it to the ship. i thought it was worth every penny!

[shutterbug285]

sorry was trying to quote and ended up posting twice

[pattyj 1204]

Very nice photos, you must have an awesome camera Thanks for sharing with us.

[shutterbug285]

Another little piece of backround about me. I get up at 430 every day for work. so that coupled with the time difference.........I guess you could say i slept in. woke up about 230 vancouver time, couldn't get back to sleep so................let get out the tripod and see what vacouver looks like this early

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this building i had noticed the day before but not the globe, thought the 3D globe looked great in the dark

 

 

once it started getting light, iwent back in and got ready for the day. after a brief scolding for going out by myself lol. Iwanted to see more of the city and stanley park as well

[shutterbug285]

our ship was here!!!

 

 

we decided to get one of the hop on hop off buses so we could see a bit of the city too. I can't remember the name of the company we used but they have bright pink buses. A portion of the ticket goes to breast cancer and being that my mom is a breast cancer survivor that sold me . so on we hopped. I found out that the reason for some of the greenery we were seeing was that by law in Vancouver all building had to have greenery on the roof and the convention center,which i believe is the one with the globe, had the roof planted with grass...very cool .

 

we hopped back off at Stanley park because we wanted to get some video of the big trees and do some more exploring

 

 

 

 

we were going to go into the aquarium, but looked like a field trip had just gotten there and it was pretty crowded. We decided just to head off into the woods

 

 

 

 

while walking a saw a little trail, that led off into interesting trees. I followed in a little ways and came to this

 

 

see the little hole,well it looked like an animal home to me, nothing big but the thoughts of raccoons or badgers entered my head so I decided to retreat.....wisely as it turns out. more on that later

[shutterbug285]

Very nice photos, you must have an awesome camera Thanks for sharing with us.

 

 

 

thank you! I have/had an Olympus evolt e510 which, tragically had an untimely death in juneau............ more on that later :(

 

I gathered so much info on these boards from postings and reviews. I had to come back and tell everyone how it helped make my Alaska trip magnificent!!

[shutterbug285]

spent a little more time on the trail and decided it was time to turn back. following the trail back a little ways, we see a couple of critters cross the path and disappear into the woods. When we arrive at the spot they crossed i notice that ....oh look at that ...looks like they came from that little path i took. We hear rustling in the bushes on the other side of the path. peering intently into the shrubs I make out what it is

 

 

think i might have woken them up. there were two of them getting lunch. berries, i think salmon-berries ( someone who knows can tell me if I'm right they looked like this

 

 

so not wanting to be rude, we just left them to lunch in peace...NOT!

 

 

I was worse than paparazzi, OK maybe not that bad, but they didn't seem to care

 

 

 

or maybe they did care

[shutterbug285]

It was amazing to watch how dexterous they were, pulling down the branches to get to the berries. they were hard to get a good shot of, most times they were covered by all the leaves. Once we annoyed them long enough we had to head back. we jumped on another bus to finish the tour get and back to the ship

 

while waiting for the next bus we saw a few more critters, a curious little black squirrel and a thirsty raven- sounds so much better than crow, don't you think?

 

 

 

 

We caught the bus and headed back, snapping a few shots along the way

 

 

 

 

I also HAD to get a shot of lord Stanley, my daughter is an avid Bruins fan and game five was that night. ( luckily we didn't plan this trip for a week later. we may not have been welcome)

 

 

then It was back to the Pan Pacific,who was nice enough to hold my laptop for me and on to the ship.

The embarment procedure was quick. The man who checked us in had a question about why we didn't have a table assignment , he went to talk to another person , then returned and said we would just get it from the maitre d later. This turned out to be a foreshadowing of my biggest complaint of this cruise

[luv2vacation]

Loving the review - keep it coming. I really enjoyed looking at the pictures. The raccoons were so cute! Can't wait to see more.

[Twinkd]

Loving your review so far. We have a daughter who lives in Vancouver and we try to get over there every couple of years. I think is one of the most beautiful cities in the World - LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! Went on an Alaskan cruise in 2009 and heading back again next year for a Northbound cruise on the Radiance followed by 3 weeks of driving around and exploring Alaska again - can't wait. Looking forward to reading more of your review and seeing more awesome pictures - they are fabulous!! Thanks for sharing.:) Twink

[gaa]

This is so entertaining...can't wait to read more and see more pics. Thanks for posting!

[Kana boy]

Great photos and commentary. Thank you, looking forward to seeing what else you encountered on your vacation.

Aloha,

Cheryl

[shutterbug285]

thank you all for your kind words :). I still would like to make the pictures a little smaller so they don't scream at you,but can't seem to size them once they are posted. If anyone knows how please chime in.

[shutterbug285]

We are on the ship! Yeah! we head down to our room. Its an aft balcony room 9260. The room is great lots of storage and a nice large balcony. No luggage yet so we set out to explore the ship. I get my collector cup from one of the bars ( I had pre-ordered a soda package) and my boyfriend bud decided to get one too. Now I have only been on one cruise before and that was the Disney magic in 2006, so i can't give you a great comparison of dry dock upgrades. I found the ship to be charming, Nicely decorated and appointed. I apologize, for some reason I didn't get lot of pictures of the ship, don't know why I usually shoot everything, guess i was distracted always looking outside for wildlife.

 

We walked deck by deck, checked out the fitness center and spa,when we got to the pool deck game five of the Stanley cup playoffs were on. We got a sidetracked and sat down to watch the game. After a little good natured ribbing,from lots of Vancouver fans,(they one that game ) we went back to the room to get ready for dinner......Oops still no luggage...... shrug, no biggie. Lets get some food I'm starving

 

This is the first, and i have to say the only time, I was upset on this cruise. We went down to dinner and got in a fairly long line of people that did not have table assignments on their sea pass card. I wasn't really worried I booked this cruise over a year in advance. The line was long and we were not really moving very fast. I'm thinking OK whats going on?

 

As we get closer to the desk I start hearing people talking there is no seating for the 6:00 in the MDR! So after standing in line for over 45 minutes we get to the desk and are told in fact that there is no availability. I can tell you there was alot of yelling and arguing going on. people were crazy upset over this. I was as well. I mentioned before i get up for work everyday at 430. I never even considered the late seating for dinner, for me thats WAY too late. NO one could tell us why this happened and offered no solutions other than the late seating. Bud suggested just letting is eat in the pay venue's for no charge . they said no they couldn't do that. I would have been OK if they would have let us order from the dining room menu for room service, but the room service menu wasn't appealing to me for a dinner. so we got our late seating table assignments and then went up to the windjammer to eat.

 

In my opinion, waiting until you had 100 or so hungry people standing in line, was the worst possible way to handle this situation. they had to have known about this ahead of time. My thoughts go back to the check in, where they noticed we had no table assignment. There was only one other couple there at that time and at least we would have gone up to the windjammer when we first got on the ship instead of waiting till dinner.

 

After we eat we go to the welcome show. it was cute then back to the room. Yeah luggage has arrived. we unpack and unwind

Edited July 3, 2011 by shutterbug285

[lawnpro]

great review so far, seen you stayed in 1104, we are in 1102 in 19 days. do you have any balcony pics?

[shutterbug285]

good morning inside passage

 

 

 

 

 

 

[shutterbug285]

I can honestly say that a balcony cabin was a perfect choice for this cruise. we spent so much time on it. This morning started cloudy but nice

ooh what was that?

 

 

 

 

and that pretty much happened the entire cruise !

 

 

 

 

 

 

ok morning beauty fix fullfilled. i'm hungry lets go have breakfast

[shutterbug285]

after breakfast we walkaround and explored some more, found the schooners bar. I really like the decor and the colony club where we found some chess tables and decided to have a game

 

here are some pictures of the colony club

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to tell you I kicked his #@% playing chess but to be fair he is usually a very good player> i think he was distracted looking for wild life

I stared taking some photo's in the scooner bar. they had an interesting globe there and

 

 

ooh what that

 

 

see what i mean?? lol

[flashdog_1]

thank you all for your kind words :). I still would like to make the pictures a little smaller so they don't scream at you,but can't seem to size them once they are posted. If anyone knows how please chime in.

 

But the effect is SO good when the photos are big. Thanks.