Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on the Majestic Princess (Maybe with few pictures added)...

[harryfat1]

Keep walking as the nice sign tells you that you are almost half way there.  This must be for the kids on the cruise – are we there yet?

 

 

 

 

 

OK, at around the half way point – they had a bench for people to sit and have a water break.

 

 

[harryfat1]

Here's Google map to show where we are - docked at Wilderness Landing, walked passed ISP shopping complex and making our way to the town of Hoonah

 

 

View from the bench rest area

 

 

 

There's a post that tells people to look into the wall by the water for a picture that was supposed to have been from the 1750's era.

 

 

It's pretty faint but it's at the end of the arrow:

 

 

 

 

More people following up to Hoonah

 

[harryfat1]

So you will notice that the road fits nicely between the two rock section?  That’s because they blasted open the area to connect the road to ISP.

 

 

 

 

Remembered how I said the path was about 1/2 paved?  Well, the paved part ended here at the edge of Hoonah.  The rest is unpaved walk way and regular sidewalks as you get closer to the town.

 

 

Yeah, not much paved road on this side. 

 

 

 

You see the dude underneath the boat doing welding work

 

 

 

Gas station

 

 

Yeah, $6.15 per gallon of gas

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Probably not the office you have back home:

 

 

 

Grocery store:

 

 

$8.50 for a loaf of bread and $9.29 for a can of Campbell soup.  So next time you complain about your grocery bill, think about the folks at Hoonah…

 

 

[Essiesmom]

At those prices, a bread making machine might be a good investment…EM

[harryfat1]

7 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

At those prices, a bread making machine might be a good investment…EM

Definitely. We were on the Juneau shuttle bus and the driver said the folks from neighboring small towns come to Juneau’s Costco to load up on supplies after they get their annual Alaska oil dividend money. 

 

Looks like they just announced the amount for 2022 at over $3K/pp:

 

https://www.denver7.com/news/national/alaska-to-give-each-resident-over-3-200-from-oil-producers#:~:text=Officials%20in%20Alaska%20recently%20announced,intend%20to%20remain%20in%20Alaska.

 

Guess the people can load up on the 50-pound flour from Costco to make their own bread

[harryfat1]

Welcome to town of Hoonah.  Per wiki, it has population of less than a 1,000.

 

 

 

That’s a lot of birds

 

 

 

Full disclosure here. As with all my trip reports, all the pictures you see are taken by our family but I didn’t take all the pictures that I have uploaded.  Some are from my wife and the boys. 

 

You can tell my wife's photos as she like to add foreground to her pictures which I typically find it distracting so I shoot around it but just to point out the difference in style. 

 

 

 

First totem pole (won’t be the last) of this cruise.  You also see where we are on the map from the start of the walk

 

 

 

 

Beginning to see shops as we are near town center

 

 

 

[wowzz]

11 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Welcome to town of Hoonah.  Per wiki, it has population of less than a 1,000.

 

 

 

That’s a lot of birds

 

 

 

Full disclosure here. As with all my trip reports, all the pictures you see are taken by our family but I didn’t take all the pictures that I have uploaded.  Some are from my wife and the boys. 

 

You can tell my wife's photos as she like to add foreground to her pictures which I typically find it distracting so I shoot around it but just to point out the difference in style. 

 

 

 

First totem pole (won’t be the last) of this cruise.  You also see where we are on the map from the start of the walk

 

 

 

 

Beginning to see shops as we are near town center

 

 

 

Have to say, from the photos,  I think I would have stayed on the ship !

[harryfat1]

15 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Have to say, from the photos,  I think I would have stayed on the ship !

Haha, yeah, Hoonah isn't the most exciting Cruise port out there. Think most people would be happy just staying at ISP and not leave the compound.  

 

At least we walked to Hoonah for free (and got some good for exercise for the day to burn off all the buffet desserts).  Some people paid $5/pp round trip to ride the shuttle to town from ISP.  That I don't think it was worthwhile.

 

We always want to venture out from the "sanitized" cruise ports to see more of the local town.

 

We visited the Caribbean port of Falmouth in Jamaica build for Cruise Passengers awhile back. Very clean inside the gated compounds (sanitized).  Outside was less so

 

 

 

 

Security guard and gated fences separating the other world

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Public rest rooms are always needed at tourist areas as we made it to the city hall

 

 

 

More totems

 

 

 

Credit Union

 

 

Dude carving a new totem pole

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

More shops

 

 

High school – it was 63 degrees so not really cold by most definition for Alaska

 

 

If you can’t walk the 1.5 mile each way to see the town, they sell a round trip shuttle bus for $5/pp that takes you into town

 

 

The end of the trail

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is where many of the tour excursions starts/ends as you see lots of people from the cruise ships there:

 

 

You will see the time slots and cost for the various activities.  Yeah, tours are not cheap but when you are paying $9 for a loaf of bread, you must charge the tourists extra

 

 

[harryfat1]

After walking around a bit, that was about it for the town of Hoonah.  Personally, I  don’t think it’s worth $5/pp for the shuttle ride into town as part of the shuttle ride takes you to a parking lot as the driver explains whatever background there is about the town.

 

The tour bus stops at the parking lot before driving off

 

 

We did the walk as we had nothing else to do in town as we prefer sightseeing excursions and ISP/Hoonah doesn’t provide that like Skagway does.  But if you prefer whale watching/zip lines than you would like this stop more.

 

All righty then, time for the 1.5-mile return trip back to the cruise port.

 

Walking back

 

 

 

At least this part is more scenic

 

 

 

Taking a break at the half way point bench again

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

On the way back, guess what we saw?  Whales!!!

 

Actually, to be technically correct, we heard them first as they are pretty loud.

 

Yeah, no need to spend $$$ to see them as they were just outside the shoreline.

 

We got dang lucky at the right place at the right time.

 

I posted some of the picture and video earlier so this is a repeat in a sense. Not the best quality as these are cell phone zooms but considering how much you paid for CC membership...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whale watching boats following them

 

 

Here's the video:

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

We waited for awhile at the sea walk area to see if the whales were coming back and they moved on so only got distant pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walked back inside the ISP compound. NO security to check your ID to see if you are a legit cruiser. Guess this ain't Jamaica with gated fences...

 

Never made it to the tribal dance.  The 8:30 show is for the HAL ship that is docking at 6 PM.  RCI Radiance is leaving by 3.

 

 

Line for mini donuts.  Per some YouTubers, these are supposed to be pretty good.  But Cheapo Dad not paying for any food when I get already paid for food back on the ship so it was an easy pass to keep moving.

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by harryfat1

[harryfat1]

So we are back at the shops/museum and we walked around some more inside the other parts of the shops we didn’t see earlier as we paid another visit to the uncle in prison.

 

 

 

 

Museum part of the building telling you about the salmon and the canning process

 

 

 

 

 

But the place is more shopping complex than a museum

 

 

 

No, kids, Grandma does NOT love you enough to buy you a $130 jacket from her Alaska cruise (yeah, no typo, there’s a 1 in front of it).  You are getting a $8 t-shirt instead at a later port…

 

 

[harryfat1]

Few more pictures of ISP shops/museum before heading out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the oyster shack station. Not for cheapo dad.  Keep on walking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

As it was 1:35 already, time to go back to the ship and eat the food I already paid for.  So hop on the free gondola ride to get back to our side of the cruise port

 

 

 

The old Samsung phone doesn’t have wide angle lens so we couldn’t take a picture of the entire ship but my son’s iPhone can so you get a better wide angle view here:

 

 

 

 

 

[Mittens101]

16 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

On the way back, guess what we saw?  Whales!!!

 

Actually, to be technically correct, we heard them first as they are pretty loud.

 

Yeah, no need to spend $$$ to see them as they were just outside the shoreline.

 

We got dang lucky at the right place at the right time.

 

I posted some of the picture and video earlier so this is a repeat in a sense. Not the best quality as these are cell phone zooms but considering how much you paid for CC membership...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whale watching boats following them

 

 

Here's the video:

 

 

 

 

Incredible thank you for sharing 

[wowzz]

Seems to me that the whale sighting (for free!) is the highlight of the cruise so far! 

Tell me it gets better! 

[harryfat1]

4 hours ago, Mittens101 said:

Incredible thank you for sharing 

You are welcome.

 

We just got really lucky to be at the right place at the right time. If we had been at Hoonah another few minutes longer, we would have missed the whales.

 

Also happy that the new CC upload format allows large video uploads.  The 30 second video was over 200 mb in size.  No way I could upload such large file under the old format.

 

I never thought one could see whales from standing at the shoreline. I thought they were out more in the open waters.  Maybe because ISP area has less ship activities compared to other ports, the whales are willing to come closer.

[harryfat1]

3 hours ago, wowzz said:

Seems to me that the whale sighting (for free!) is the highlight of the cruise so far! 

Tell me it gets better! 

Haha, I thought the highlight was the seeing the exciting town of Hoonah and finding out it costs $8 for bread?

 

Yeah, the whales were probably the highlight of the cruise. 

 

Sorry to say it’s not going to get any better.  The rest of the trip report is just going to be downhill from now on with me complaining about the ship’s lack of entertainment and YouTube songs that nobody likes.  

 

Maybe I need to stop writing at this point and leave on a high note…🤪

[CruzeQueen2]

On 9/23/2022 at 10:18 PM, harryfat1 said:

Keep walking as the nice sign tells you that you are almost half way there.  This must be for the kids on the cruise – are we there yet?

 

 

 

 

 

OK, at around the half way point – they had a bench for people to sit and have a water break.

 

 

Beautiful vistas!  I rode the shuttle. Loved the area..

[CruzeQueen2]

3 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Haha, I thought the highlight was the seeing the exciting town of Hoonah and finding out it costs $8 for bread?

 

Yeah, the whales were probably the highlight of the cruise. 

 

Sorry to say it’s not going to get any better.  The rest of the trip report is just going to be downhill from now on with me complaining about the ship’s lack of entertainment and YouTube songs that nobody likes.  

 

Maybe I need to stop writing at this point and leave on a high note…🤪

Good plan!

[harryfat1]

(Note: On a 7 day cruise, technically somewhere in day 4 is the halfway point.  For the sake of argument, we will assume the whale event was the half way point as that's the highlight of the cruise and also meant we are around the half way point of the trip report).

 

One last view of the Radiance as by time we come out again, she would be gone by 3 PM.

 

 

 

Dropped our backpacks off at the cabin.  Looked like they finally fixed the door problem in the boys' cabin.  Later on that afternoon, Princess would call and leave a VM on their cabin's phone to ask if everything was working properly.  So it was a good service process to follow up and see if everything was working after the repair.

 

This is the "red gondola" that costs $49/pp to go to the top of the mountain to walk around that area.  It's free if you do the $150 zip line.  Neither of which interests my wallet so this is the only view we have

 

 

 

After a quick stop at the cabin, it was time for a late 2 PM lunch at the buffet.

 

Here's the elevator sign in English and Chinese showing folks what's on each deck

 

 

View of ISP from up top

 

 

I was surprised I only took one picture of my lunch. Must have been tired/hungry from all the walking and ate the food without taking pictures of it.

 

 

Ordering drinks from buffet with the staff takes more work as they first have to write it down on piece of paper and then they come back with their phone/tablet to confirm your order as they check on your medallion to see if you are legit? Anyway, our lunch drinks showed up.

 

 

 

 

Saw a group of people lined up right outside of the ship to board the excursion boat so I assumed it’s another whale watching excursion

 

[harryfat1]

Walked past the sky walk for some reason I can’t remember.  But not sure I want these cabins.  They may be wider than ours but not much privacy as people from skywalk can easily see into their balcony/cabins.

 

 

Oh, after looking at the pictures, I remembered we wanted to pictures of the “other side” of ISP as the starboard side is facing the cruise terminal but didn't know what the other side looked like

 

 

 

 

More people by the pool and hot tub.  Guess some people not into checking out their surroundings.

 

 

 

Naw, the port side is boring.  I prefer our side more