Trip Report June 12th - 25th, 2019 Princess Connoiseur Cruisetour

[ErLee]

We are in the Seattle airport on our way home from the trip. We had an amazing trip from start to finish! I'll get working on my review this weekend 😉

[puppymama1]

We are looking at doing an Alaska cruise and land tour next year... I am just in the early stages of research so I will definitely be reading your review!  We have sailed on Royal Caribbean twice and wanted to stay with them, but I can’t seem to find an itinerary that includes Glacier Bay so my second choice would be Princess.... we too are outside Atlanta.. north of Atlanta in the city of Canton!  

[ParRoo]

So excited to read your review. Hope you had an awesome trip!

[ErLee]

I forgot that I had already written about Vancouver, embarkation, and our cabin - yay!  

 I am not one to take food pictures and go into detail about everything we ordered, but I thought before I get into the day by day review, I'd just mention the things on the menu that we ordered that were really good and give some general impressions about eating on the ship.  We were on Anytime Dining. It worked very smoothly for us.  The first night the line was long but moved quickly.  On the formal nights I made reservations which worked well because the lines were pretty long if you didn't.  One comment about formal nights - I had read that in Alaska formal nights are a bit more casual than you might see in the Caribbean.  That's not what we experienced on Princess - the majority of people were very dressed up on formal nights, way more than I've seen on my most recent cruises on other cruise lines!

 

On College Fjord night I also made a reservation because I wanted to eat and be done before we got there. The other nights we just walked up and only once were we given a pager, but it was only about a 10 minute wait.  We ate dinner in the dining room every night, and breakfast and lunch up at the buffet on the days we were on the ship.  We ate some pizza from up by the pool for lunch on embarkation day, and it wasn't too good; pizza is my favorite food, and I didn't go back for more the rest of the time on the ship!  I had read that some people think the buffet is small and limited on the Coral.  I thought it was fine - lots of choices of decent buffet food.  I'm not a big fan of buffets, but it makes eating quickly easy so I do it on a cruise at least sometimes, but never for dinner.  We never ate at the grill, the International Cafe, the specialty restaurants or room service, although I thought we would do some of those things at least once!

 

The foods I can remember that were really good - beef tenderloin on the first formal night, lobster and risotto on the second formal night, goat cheese souffle, crab quiche, a fruit salad they made with lime juice and coconut, the chocolate journeys desserts that were on the menu on formal nights, the warm chocolate chip cookies on the buffet, the smoked salmon on the buffet for lox and bagels at breakfast. I didn't take menu pics or anything like that, but I'm sure someone else has put them up! Just know that overall I thought the food was decent. It's not 5 star dining, but I didn't go into it thinking that's what I was getting.  The service was always good and faster than I remember from some cruises in the past.  We brought a bottle of wine with us to dinner every night that we had carried on board, and they opened and served it very professionally for us.  It was well worth the $15 corkage to be able to have it served at dinner and to carry it into other venues which we did once or twice.

 

Some other general impressions of the ship activities - for one thing everyone was right - this is very different from a Caribbean cruise.  This cruise is not at all about the activities, it's about Alaska and all the beautiful scenery and wildlife.  For us it wasn't about staying up really late drinking and listening to music like we do on some cruises because we were getting up early every day to see the sights.  We didn't do many of the activities in the Patter, just a few.  We played trivia a few times and went to the evening shows most nights.  The two comedians on board were very funny, we enjoyed them a lot!  We only saw two of the three production shows.  The Bayou show was much better than Secret Silk.  We attended all 3 nights of the Voice of the Ocean and thought it was fun.  A nice twist on Karaoke.  We caught part of the marriage game show, and it was pretty funny.  We never used the pools or the spa, didn't play in the casino, and never used the game room or library.  We spent this week outside or by a window watching the beauty go by!

 

It was our first cruise on Princess, and we really liked it!  The Coral Princess is a nice ship and she's in good shape.  Our room was very nice and the bed was comfortable.  The outside viewing areas and the view from the buffet are outstanding for this itinerary.  I highly recommend her for an Alaskan cruise!

 

WiFi - the Coral now has medallion net.  We purchased two of the $59.99 packages that gave us each unlimited access for one device at a time. The WiFi worked great for us most of the week.  We had one morning when it didn't work, but we were off the ship early for an excursion anyway and it worked that afternoon.  We didn't use it for streaming anything but it was quick for uploading pictures to social media and general surfing, email, downloads, etc.

Edited July 3, 2019 by ErLee

[ErLee]

Now for the day to day....

 

The scenery at Sail Away was beautiful!  I had no idea how much better it was going to get!!

 

 

 

 

We spent the sail away on our balcony with a glass of wine....it was perfect!  

[ErLee]

June 13th - Sea Day

 

We woke up to fog and cool temps, but as the morning progressed things improved, and by afternoon the sun was shining brightly. It was chilly and windy on deck, so we spent much of it up in the buffet by a window as we sailed up the Canadian inside passage. While sitting by the window we saw some lovely dolphins jumping in unison alongside the ship and a little seal popping his head up!  We were excited at the wildlife sightings yet to come! I walked the promenade in the afternoon to enjoy the sun, but the wind was brisk so I only  managed to get in 1 mile.  I enjoyed the view of the wake when I came around the rear, and it made me wonder if I might like to try an aft balcony some time.  I know they're very popular with some cruisers! 

 

 

When the sun was finally setting at 10:30pm, I put to use my cruise-critic-gained knowledge of the "secret" forward viewing deck on Caribe.  This tip was one of the main reasons that I picked a forward minisuite on Caribe, and I was not disappointed!  I went through the "emergency exit" marked doorway and out onto the deck where I stood all by myself in complete silence and took in the beauty of a sunset at sea.  It was a moment of utter perfection!

 

 

As I turned to go back in, I looked up at the bridge and got a friendly wave from an officer up there ☺️

 

Edited July 3, 2019 by ErLee

[Paul Bradley]

Not sure if it's just me, but I can't see the photos in your last couple of posts. 

[ErLee]

6 hours ago, Paul Bradley said:

Not sure if it's just me, but I can't see the photos in your last couple of posts. 

 

Hmmm...are they not showing up at all or is there anyone that can see them?

Edited July 3, 2019 by ErLee

[sbt518]

47 minutes ago, ErLee said:

 

Hmmm...are they not showing up at all or is there anyone that can see them?

 

I can’t see them either. 

[cruises42]

I can't see them either.

 

[ErLee]

Can't seem to delete or edit those photos to try a different way of attaching them, so I'm going to repost the first one to see if it works.  Can someone tell me if the pics show up this time?  It's so strange since it was working fine in the earlier ones!

 

The scenery at Sail Away was beautiful!  I had no idea how much better it was going to get!!

 

 

 

 

We spent the sail away on our balcony with a glass of wine....it was perfect!

Edited July 4, 2019 by ErLee

[cruisinskier]

We see the photos now!!!  Thanks for sharing and I look forward to following along!

[ErLee]

June 13th - Sea Day

 

We woke up to fog and cool temps, but as the morning progressed things improved, and by afternoon the sun was shining brightly. It was chilly and windy on deck, so we spent much of it up in the buffet by a window as we sailed up the Canadian inside passage. While sitting by the window we saw some lovely dolphins jumping in unison alongside the ship and a little seal popping his head up!  We were excited at the wildlife sightings yet to come! I walked the promenade in the afternoon to enjoy the sun, but the wind was brisk so I only  managed to get in 1 mile.  I enjoyed the view of the wake when I came around the rear, and it made me wonder if I might like to try an aft balcony some time.  I know they're very popular with some cruisers! 

 

When the sun was finally setting at 10:30pm, I put to use my cruise-critic-gained knowledge of the "secret" forward viewing deck on Caribe.  This tip was one of the main reasons that I picked a forward minisuite on Caribe, and I was not disappointed!  I went through the "emergency exit" marked doorway and out onto the deck where I stood all by myself in complete silence and took in the beauty of a sunset at sea.  It was a moment of utter perfection!

 

 

As I turned to go back in, I looked up at the bridge and got a friendly wave from an officer up there 😊

[masterdrago]

Beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing. CC is a really busy server at times. I think that sometimes attaching the file directly to the post has issues, so probably nothing you did wrong. I've started trying to use image links from a hosting service like Shutterfly, PhotoBucket, Imgur or Dropbox. It just seems to work more reliably but is a little more work on your/my part. By doing that, you can also use a bit higher resolution image.

[phabric]

Enjoyed see your cruise pictures.

[phabric]

Did they have anybody from the National Forrest talk?

[Paul Bradley]

We were on the Mariner that week - we were in the same ports as the Coral for a lot of the cruise...! 

Edited July 5, 2019 by Paul Bradley

[ErLee]

On 7/5/2019 at 10:57 AM, Paul Bradley said:

We were on the Mariner that week - we were in the same ports as the Coral for a lot of the cruise...! 

I remember seeing the Mariner in Port - I hope you enjoyed your trip as much as we did!

[ErLee]

June 14th - Ketchikan

 

We woke up early Friday AM, went out on our balcony to see what we could see of Ketchikan, and right off to the left I saw the Island Wings offices and workers getting the planes ready for the day. Very exciting because we had a flight booked with Michelle at 9am! I watched the 7am flights load up and taxi away for takeoff on the other side of the ship.  It was a beautiful day, and we were so excited!

 

 

After breakfast we got off the ship and walked to the meeting point in town. If we had thought this through better, we would have just walked over to Island Wings, as some people did, because it was about the same distance walk, but we had already said we would be at the meeting place so that's where we went, down by the Liquid Sunshine gauge. We met the driver and rode back over to the dock only to find out that Michelle had had a problem with the starter on her plane on her first run of the morning and wasn't able to take us up at 9. She rebooked us and the other two couples on a noon flight with Adam. We were a little disappointed, but understood that these things happen, and certainly didn't want to get stuck somewhere with a plane that wouldn't start!

 

We decided to go walk around the shops over on Creek Street to pass the time, although probably we should have gotten back on the ship for a while because we had more time than we needed. 

 

There were some interesting things in some of the shops, but we didn't buy much as it was our first stop and we were going to have to carry it around with us. As it got a little later into the morning it started to get very crowded there, so if you're planning on shopping in Ketchikan, maybe earlier in the day is better depending on what other ships are in port. Just as we were leaving to go back to Island Wings, the Westerdam had arrived and all her passengers were flowing down the gangplank. 

 

We went back to Island Wings, and were soon on board Adam's plane. It was Adam and six passengers total. I cannot begin to tell you how beautiful the flight was! Adam was engaging, an expert pilot, and enjoyable to talk to and listen to. He answered all of our questions and provided information about what we were seeing as we flew along. The flight was completely smooth, no turbulence whatsoever and not scary in the least to me! He made a beautiful smooth landing in a gorgeous lake high in the mountains. We were able to get out of the plane and walk around and take pictures there for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then we re boarded for the flight back. 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't recommend this excursion highly enough! I booked with Island Wings way back in the fall of 2018, and they were communicative and easy to work with all along. 

 

Despite hearing all about the unfortunate incidents with the float planes in the beginning of the season, we decided that we were going to go forward with our booking and would not let fear keep us from an amazing experience. I'm so happy we made that decision. It could not have been a more perfect day, and I would not have wanted to miss it for anything!

 

 

 

[ErLee]

On 7/4/2019 at 9:22 AM, phabric said:

Did they have anybody from the National Forrest talk?

 

On Glacier Bay day, a park ranger boarded the ship and broadcast commentary throughout the ship as we sailed through the glaciers. There were also other naturalist talks that I saw listed in the daily schedule, but we never made it to any of them. We were mostly outside looking at the scenery all the time that we were on the ship.

[ErLee]

June 15th - Juneau

 

On Saturday we woke up in Juneau to overcast skies and a forecast for a rainy afternoon. Undeterred, we packed up our rain gear and binoculars and headed off the ship as soon as they let us. I had rented a car for the morning from Avis up the street. My husband is awaiting knee surgery, so I had him wait while I made the half-mile walk up the hill to get the car. It worked out smoothly, and as I drove back down the street I was able to just pick him up right across from the ship. 

 

The rental process from Avis was quick and easy, and it felt good to be on our own for a few hours able to do whatever we wanted to. We had a whale watch booked for the afternoon at 3, but I wanted to make the most of the six hours we had until then, and renting the car wasn't that much more than paying for the bus to the glacier. 

 

Although I had carefully mapped out a sensible order to do the things we wanted to do based on proximity, we decided to head for Mendenhall first to try to beat some of the crowds there. I'm glad we did because we had no problem driving up there and parking in the little parking lot. We paid our $5 each at a little machine there by the parking lot and then took the path down to Nugget Falls. it was a bit slow going with my husband's knee, but it was definitely doable and not at all strenuous. Completely worth the effort for the view of the falls and the glacier! 

 

Rather than walking back on the same path, I recommend that you take the little side path that takes you along the edge of the water. It is much more scenic than the marked path to the falls, and you get a great and uncrowded look at the glacier across the water. We enjoyed watching the Arctic terns swooping around defending their territory from the crows. There were a lot of pretty wildflowers everywhere. After you walk back around the water, there's a place where you can merge back into the main path. It's not marked down there, but it's also very easy to find and you can't get lost! You can see the visitor center up above and just have to keep heading in that direction. 

 

 

After we left the glacier, we decided against Glacier gardens and instead drove up to the National Shrine of St Therese.  It is a beautiful and peaceful setting with outstanding views and no crowds in sight!

 

 

 

We had a lot of fun watching the little marmots feeding along the shore of the lake.

 

 

Next we drove out to Eagle Beach. This was another beautiful and uncrowded location, but apparently I didn't take any pictures! Despite the name, we only saw one eagle sitting on the beach, but the view is very pretty. We watched a seal swimming around there off the shore.

 

After Eagle Beach we drove back towards town to visit the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery.  Even though the salmon were not running when we were there so we couldn't watch them on the salmon ladder, it was still a very interesting and inexpensive stop to learn about the life cycle of the salmon and how the hatchery works.  I did not know the difference between a salmon farm and a salmon hatchery, but now I do! We saw their tank where there were over a million salmon hatchlings that would one day be released back into the open water to live their lives before returning to this spot to spawn. It's a fascinating process, and I highly recommend this quick stop if you're interested.

 

Next, we went to a little dive called The Sandbar for lunch. It's in an out-of-the-way industrial area, but near the marina where we were to meet for our whale watch, and highly rated on TripAdvisor for their fish and chips. The ratings were well deserved! The place is nothing to look at inside or out, but they are hand cutting and hand battering halibut for their fish and chips and it was worth every bit of the $20 they charge for a plate! 

 

By now it was raining as we drove to Andrews Marina to meet up with Jayleen from Jayleen's Alaska for our whale watch. She had gone to pick up our traveling companions who were joining us for the whale watch. This is another excursion that I booked in the fall of 2018. The four of us boarded her boat, and headed out to look for whales. And boy did we find them!

 

We spent the first 30 minutes or so heading out to an area where Jayleen said we should be able to find some humpbacks. I used this time to get to know her and learned all about what it was like to grow up on the island there off the grid. She's a lovely young woman, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time with her. 

 

We passed some sea lions hanging out on a buoy along the way and then got to the place where she thought the whales would be. We started to see some action, and she told us that we had found one of the resident mothers, Flame, and her six month old calf, Bunsen. She was explaining to us that while sometimes people do witness a humpback breaching, it is not common behavior for an adult humpback in Alaska, because it takes a lot of energy and they are not up there to burn excess energy, but rather to feed and put on lots of weight. Lucky for us, Bunsen was in the mood to play, and as a typical youngster, wasn't worried about whether he was burning too much energy 😂. We were lucky enough to follow him around for about 45 minutes while he breached repeatedly - at least 10 or more times. I was standing out on the back of her boat in the rain, enthralled and not even trying to take any pictures. Getting a good shot at a breach with a phone on a small, rocking vessel in the rain is barely worth even trying, and I decided I would rather just live in the moment and enjoy what we were lucky enough to witness. The good news is Jayleen was doing her best with her good camera to capture some shots, which she posted on Facebook the next day so I was able to download them and save them to my trip photos. 

 

 

 

 

Once he even waved a flipper at us!

 

 

We spent the rest of our time following around several other adult humpbacks and another mom and calf and saw a good many backs and tails, but nothing could compare to the show that Bunsen put on for us!  It was unforgettable!

 

I am a person that likes to books my excursions independently, because I like the personal experience that you get, and this whale watch was case in point. It was just the four of us plus Jayleen witnessing this spectacular event together with no jockeying for position or fighting for a view. She was willing to take us wherever we wanted to go and look for whatever we wanted to look for. She told us that that morning she had some photographers on board that were determined to look for orcas, so they spent their morning going all over the place looking for them without success, but she was willing to do what they wanted her to do. Once again I wholeheartedly recommend Jayleen for your whale watch in Juneau! 

 

After the whale watch we drove back towards town and stopped off to see the beautiful sculpture of a breaching humpback that is along the river there. It is well worth the stop, even in the rain!

 

 

I returnedthe rental car and walked back to the ship without incident, satisfied with the choices we had made for a fantastic day in Juneau!  We didn't really see any of the downtown area, but our day away from the crowds and off the beaten path was just what we needed!

[ErLee]

 After two weeks of not being able to logon to cruisecritic, I finally fix the problem and I’m ready to continue the review....

 

June 16 - Skagway

 

For Skagway we had booked the Bennett scenic journey directly with Chilkoot Charters.  We chose the van up and train back option so that we could start a little bit later in the morning,  which my husband certainly appreciated since it allowed him to sleep in an extra hour!  It turned out to be a good choice because the day started out foggy and overcast, but later turned into another absolutely beautiful day.

 

We were picked up near the ship by our driver, Mike, and started off with a little drive through Skagway where he told us the history and showed us around the town a little bit. He mentioned one thing that we kept in mind for the end of the day, which I’ll get to later.   

 

We were in a van of 21 people, and we appreciated the smaller group as it made for faster on and off when we made our stops for sightseeing and pictures.  We got seats on the right side of the van as we had been told to do for the trip up into the Yukon, probably a tip I got here on Cruise critic.  We later were also able to get seats on the right side of the train for the trip back. Those are certainly the seats you want!  

 

What I liked about Mike was that he didn’t just make the typical stops that everyone makes, he threw in a few stops along the way that were just beautiful sites that he knew about where there weren’t three buses sitting there also trying to take pictures. He was very personable and told us interesting facts and history about the area all along the time that we were with him.  Here’s one place we pulled down a little dirt road right down by where someone was camping just to take pictures of this lovely lake.

 

 

To everyone’s excitement, at one point we saw a black bear right by the side of the road and stopped to watch as it walked along beside our van and then crossed the road right behind us....our first bear sighting of the trip!

 

 

We were nearing the town where we were to meet the train, and he said he didn’t know if we were still going to have time to go up to Emerald Lake, but everyone on the van really wanted to get there so we opted for less time in the town so we could see it, and I sure am glad we did - it was gorgeous!

 

 

And as a bonus, if we hadn’t driven up there we would not have had the chance to see this on the way back!

 

 

 Our second bear sighting of the trip! This time it was a mama bear and her two cubs, one of whom is in this picture, the other one was off playing a little further away. Once again they were fairly close to the side of the road and in clear view, so we were able to spend a little time taking pictures while they foraged. 

 

We then pulled into town for a short break and tried the ice cream which was supposed to be so delicious, but was really only average in our opinion.  We boarded the train for our trip to Bennett and then all the way back down into Skagway.  

 

Bennett, BC is an abandoned historic town at the end of the Chilkoot Trail that was used by the gold miners as they made their way to the gold fields in the Yukon. It sits on the shore of beautiful Bennett Lake is only accessible by the train or on foot. We walked around the old buildings there, read about the history, and then hiked up to the top of the trail and were rewarded with this view!

 

 

 From there we were on the train for maybe four hours riding back down to Skagway,  and this was an afternoon that I wished never had to end. The weather was kind of chilly, so no one in our car was much interested in standing out on the platform in between the cars, which meant I had it mainly to myself.  I spent the entire time riding down through those mountains outside on the platform taking pictures and experiencing the beauty of the area without the barrier of a window.  It’s an experience that I will never forget and can’t adequately describe; it was thrilling, it was exhilarating, it was a glorious solitude that refreshed my soul. The noise of the train and the chill of the wind did nothing to diminish my complete immersion in the moment - on the contrary it probably enhanced it!  The scenery on that trip was indescribably beautiful.  I took photo after photo with my camera and thousands more in my mind that will be etched in my memory forever. All I can say is, if you ever find yourself on that train, get up and go outside and stand on the platform!!  Here are just a few of the pictures from that day.

 

 

 

 

 

 And here’s a fun one of the Canadian US border!

 

 

We got back to Skagway around 4 PM and had a couple more hours before we had to be back on the ship. Remembering Mike’s tip, we went to the Skagway Brewing company to try the spruce tip beer. It’s only made there, and it has a fun history in that it was supposedly brewed originally to keep the scurvy away for the gold miners. It had been discovered that the abundant spruce growing in the area was an excellent source of vitamin C and people were drinking tea made out of it. Some enterprising soul realize that beer would be a lot more fun to drink than tea, and hence the birth of the spruce tip beer!  What is the story is exactly accurate or not, we drank and enjoyed the beer and have the T-shirts to prove it 😁

 

To those considering what to do when they’re in Skagway, I know a seven or eight hour excursion on a van and/or train seems like a really long trip, but I can not recommend this trip highly enough! I think you can tell from my description it was one of my favorite days of the entire trip,  and that’s saying a lot because it was one great day after another on this trip!

Edited July 28, 2019 by ErLee

[cruises42]

Great pictures! What kind of camera did you use?

[ErLee]

4 minutes ago, cruises42 said:

Great pictures! What kind of camera did you use?

 

Actually after agonizing over whether to try to learn how to use a fancy camera before our trip and deciding not to do it, I ended up taking all my pictures with my Android phone!  I’m pleased with how they turned out!

[cruises42]

3 minutes ago, ErLee said:

 

Actually after agonizing over whether to try to learn how to use a fancy camera before our trip and deciding not to do it, I ended up taking all my pictures with my Android phone!  I’m pleased with how they turned out!

Wow, they are great! You zoomed in for some, right? My phone has awful zoom.