7/2 Alaska Showcase

[lovecruzin]

41 minutes ago, dhall711 said:

It's not that the dock worker dropped the fence, it's that they couldn't get that particular section of the fence that was lined up with the ship's entry door to come out of it's placements.  So they had to move the ship up a few feet in order to get the door aligned with a different section.  We watched them work at it for a long time before finally giving up.  It was actually quite comical.

 

We did the wine tour in Nanaimo and is was very pleasant.  It was pretty far outside of the town town and took about 45 mins to get there.  The reds were awful IMHO but we actually brought back several bottles of the pinot grigio.

 

All in all it was a good voyage but we were extremely disappointed in the overall itinerary.  The overnight in Seattle was perplexing and pointless, the AK ports were the exact same ports as all the other mega ships (as evidenced by the thousands of people descending on these tiny towns all at once), no glaciers anywhere (why not spend the extra day going into Glacier Bay for example?).  It seemed the 10 days could have been easily condensed into 7 and not have missed anything.  While it was still nice it was not worth the premium price.

 

Highlights were chihuly gardens and Nanaimo and the whale watching excursion we took in Juneau (saw rare humpback bubble net feeding).  Other than that we were less than impressed for the money spent.  Just our opinion. 

 

We were quite amused/entertained by the forklift operator! 

 

The itinerary planners must not know much about Alaska and did not do their due diligence. I think the cruises would have sold much better with more thought given to the stops. We could not go to glacier Bay as only Princess and HAL have a permit to go there but there are other glaciers..

 

We tend to do Alaska every other year and only jumped on this cruise because we got a great deal and Azamara has all but stopped cruising in N America. For those where this was a once in a lifetime experience, I feel quite bad.

 

 

 

 

[dhall711]

Here's a picture I took at the dock in Sitka with the Quest sitting next to the Eclipse.  Pretty striking the difference in size, no?

 

 

[Redtravel]

1 hour ago, dhall711 said:

Here's a picture I took at the dock in Sitka with the Quest sitting next to the Eclipse.  Pretty striking the difference in size, no?

 

 

Not only did it block my beautiful view, I had to wait in a very long line with guests on the Eclipse to get the shuttle to Sitka.  So much for the joys of being on a small ship.

[Mackdogmolly]

6 hours ago, lovecruzin said:

 

We were quite amused/entertained by the forklift operator! 

 

The itinerary planners must not know much about Alaska and did not do their due diligence. I think the cruises would have sold much better with more thought given to the stops. We could not go to glacier Bay as only Princess and HAL have a permit to go there but there are other glaciers..

 

We tend to do Alaska every other year and only jumped on this cruise because we got a great deal and Azamara has all but stopped cruising in N America. For those where this was a once in a lifetime experience, I feel quite bad.

 

 

 

 

It was probably once in a lifetime experience for us, but we still had a good time 😊

[lovecruzin]

15 hours ago, Mackdogmolly said:

It was probably once in a lifetime experience for us, but we still had a good time 😊

 

I have been following your thread and know you really enjoyed yourselves! I didn't mean to imply otherwise. There were some folks on the cruise who assumed we would go to a glacier and were disappointed/surprised. 

 

On our first Alaska cruise we slept thru the 5:30am arrival at Tracy Arm. I didn’t realize what we had missed until we went back to Alaska and saw the majesty of calving and watching the Captain navigate to get us as close as possible. For me that is one of the most memorable experiences of an Alaska cruise.

[Mackdogmolly]

19 minutes ago, lovecruzin said:

 

I have been following your thread and know you really enjoyed yourselves! I didn't mean to imply otherwise. There were some folks on the cruise who assumed we would go to a glacier and were disappointed/surprised. 

 

On our first Alaska cruise we slept thru the 5:30am arrival at Tracy Arm. I didn’t realize what we had missed until we went back to Alaska and saw the majesty of calving and watching the Captain navigate to get us as close as possible. For me that is one of the most memorable experiences of an Alaska cruise.

Well, truth be told, we assumed that the Mendenhall Glacier tour would take us much closer to the actual glacier and 1. there wasn’t really time to hike to it and 2. Even if there had been, DH is experiencing some (hopefully temporary) mobility challenges that would have made the hike impossible. We did just love the onboard experience so much though, and that White Pass Railway trip was unforgettable.

[lovecruzin]

The onboard experience made up for any deficiencies in the itinerary!

We will have to do the White Pass next time, we have been to the Yukon but haven’t done the train.

Thanks again for starting this thread and posting your experience!

[Redtravel]

We did the  train ride several years ago. It is a gorgeous trip. We had a clear sunny day. However, with the forest fires near Skagway, the train trip would not be a good choice. 

[Mackdogmolly]

3 hours ago, Redtravel said:

We did the  train ride several years ago. It is a gorgeous trip. We had a clear sunny day. However, with the forest fires near Skagway, the train trip would not be a good choice. 

Don’t know if it’s getting worse ( the fires *were* mostly in the Yukon, I believe), but on our ride, it was still gorgeous.