Alaska Cruise & Land Tour Combo for Train Lovers?

[Vagabond Knight]

We've done two 7-day Alaskan cruises previously and one of our two favorite excursions on the previous cruises was an all-day train trip from Skagway up to Carcross.  We love train travel!  We would like to book our first Alaska cruise & land tour combo for 2021, but would like a land tour that's heavily rail based.  We're drawn to the southbound 13-day southbound combo on Celebrity (11B) because three of the tour legs are by rail (and my husband would like to do the land tour before the cruise).  Are there any other cruise-tour combos by other cruise lines that anyone can recommend which include a lot of the land tour by train?

[Vagabond Knight]

Whoops, I meant Celebrity 8B.

[mapleleaves]

There are only about 6 different stops on the Alaska Railroad so you could easily book it yourself outside a cruisetour.   The popular stops are Denali, Talkeetna, Whittier and Seward.  Map attached:   https://www.alaskarailroad.com/ride-a-train/route-map

 

You could still sail with Celebrity if you need to, but then book the land separately. This would give you more flexibility of where to stop and how long to stay at each one.

 

Your options would include:

- book the rail and hotels on your own.

- book a Princess land pkg to utilize the train and access to their lodges 

 https://www.princesslodges.com/alaska-rail-tours/

 

- book a land pkg with Alaska Railroad  https://www.alaskarailroad.com/travel-planning/packages/summer-packages

 

- book a land pkg with a Alaska Tour and Travel, the company which owns the Park Connection Bus. They can book pkgs with train and or bus.

https://www.alaskacoach.com/about/alaska-train.html

[VermeulT]

The Alaska Railroad Train station in Anchorage was pretty neat.  Old, historic, and a great gift shop with lots of Alaska RR logo items.

[disneyochem]

We too are train folks--taking the Amtrak Coast Starlight from the Bay Area to Vancouver both pre- and post-cruises.  We are doing a mixture of train rides while in Alaska--connoisseur tour with Princess and DIY before that.  Cruising to Seward, then taking the train from Seward to Fairbanks with overnight stops in Anchorage and Denali (over the span of three-four days) before joining our tour in Fairbanks.  I have found that it is pretty easy to book our own rail and lodging.  Every place I have called will come and pick us up at the train depot (even our pre-Princess land tour Vrbo!).

 

We decided to do the extra train rides on our own because we didn't find a tour that would do as much train rides as we wanted to do.  This way we are on the train from Seward to Anchorage, Anchorage to Denali, and Denali to Fairbanks.  Our land tour with Princess only had rail from Denali to Anchorage.  Of course, we love the other parts of the land tour which is why we went ahead and booked it.

[Vagabond Knight]

Thanks for all the input!  We're still pondering which options would work out best for us.  We also have to consider flights (both cost and convenience).  We'd be coming in from Florida and may try to fit in a visit to southern California to see the daughter and her family while we're over on the west coast, either before or after the cruise-tour.  If afterwards, we may use train to go down there.  😁

[VermeulT]

The Coast Starlight is THE BOMB!  We took Amtrak cross-country for our honeymoon (southwest chief, coast starlight, empire builder).  The Coast Starlight was incredible.  I highly highly recommend to put it on your bucket list.

[Shazzah]

Cruise & Land Tours are great, but doing a DIY version to include the legs of the train you want is not too difficult. The other advantage of DIY is you will be on the authentic Alaska RR Cars - this was important to my Train Geek husband, but may not matter to others. 
 

Local hotels are well practiced with dealing with the Train arrivals and departures, and we found it very easy to get transport to and from our hotel, even if we weren’t part of a larger group. 
 

Have fun, however you book your trip. 

[Vagabond Knight]

We decided to book Celebrity's 13-Night Great Frontier Expedition Cruise Tour 8B for the beginning of August 2021. Celebrity just put their 2021 Alaska itineraries out this week and we were able to snag a sweet aft Concierge level cabin with a nice deep balcony.  It's a 6-day tour starting in Fairbanks, working its way down to Seward (with three rail segments), followed by a 7-day southbound cruise to Vancouver.  We may take the train down to San Clemente, CA afterwards (or San Juan Capistrano, depending upon the day, since San Clemente's schedule is more limited), possibly with an overnight on the way down.

[xlxo]

If you get to Vancouver, there are several train opportunities to explore...

• Canada Line to/from airport subway
• Expo Line to/from the suburbs
• West Coast Express to Coquitlam, returning on the Millenium Line
• $35 Amtrak train to/from Seattle
• Stanley Park has a Heritage train
• Confederation Park has a mini train running on the weekends
• Bear Creek Park has a mini train in Surrey
• Squamish offers the West Coast Heritage Park http://wcra.org/

[Vagabond Knight]

On 12/1/2019 at 2:10 PM, xlxo said:

If you get to Vancouver, there are several train opportunities to explore...

 

Thanks very much!