Florida to Fairbanks, Vancouver to Florida

[nymaineac]

Can anyone offer suggestions for reducing the cost of airfare? We are traveling from Florida to Fairbanks the third week of July and doing a cruise tour with Princess for 4 days. We then cruise for a week, and end up in Vancouver. We fly back to Florida from there. Is it worth staying a day after the cruise to reduce airfare costs (and to explore Vancouver)? Will we be too tired to explore Vancouver? Is it better to book through the cruise line or try it on our own. It will be me and my mom. We actually live closer to Tampa, but the cruiseline booked us from Orlando and when I have looked, it seems to have better connections. (It will just be a pain to get to) Thanks for your help! :) Karen

[Sunmail]

Driving to Orlando just isn't a good option for us when the Tampa airport is so nice and convenient. We booked ourselves and are flying a few different airlines to get back and forth to Alaska from Tampa. We have 99 dollar flights to and from Seattle using Southwest on the way up and Delta on the way back. We booked a flight on Continental to get us to Anchorage from Seattle. Don't know about Fairbanks connections though. These are all late flights so we have time to get to the airports comfortably at both ends.

[Liz]

Check kayak dot com for ideas. Try "multi-city" as well as one way fares. The old days of saving money by booking a roundtrip ticket are gone. I found a decent fare there but then bought it from Frontier's website. I'm flying to Seattle for $140 inc. taxes - they had cheaper flights but I have to work the day I depart, and will take the train to Vancouver the next morning. Return flight from Anchorage was a bit more, $440, but I had a specific date and time I need to be back home at the end of the trip. You are also looking at extra cost to fly from Fairbanks, I looked at that route last year and it was about $300 more than Anchorage.

I'm with you - Orlando is just not a good option - and remember, you'll have to pay for parking, which is probably $10+ per day plus gas (vs. shuttle or taxi and no worries). And one of the last things I want to do after a great relaxing vacation is deal with the hassles of I-4!!

 

Liz

[larry the lobster]

We are doing the same thing that you are doing but 1st week of July and going from Myrtle Beach. We booked a multi-city leaving out of Raleigh to Fairbanks and then Vancouver to Raleigh. Raleigh is a 3 hour plus drive but we saved $225 per person leaving out of Raleigh instead of Myrtle Beach.I would check all of the airports within a 4 hour drive.If you have never been to Vancouver you might want to stay the night but for us it was not any cheaper.You'll also be very tired after cruise. Good luck!

[islandersx4]

No way I'd leave from Orlando...we live with an hour of Tampa. Traveling I-4, parking the car in Orlando, yuck. Is that really worth the savings?

Try Southwest to Seattle. We are then flying Alaska Air to Anchorge.

Does your cruise end in Vancouver? We are taking Amtrak from Vancouver to Seattle (late) and flying back east the next morning.

Amtrak was a very reasonable fare, $34.00 pp, 4 1/2 hour trip.

At this point in time, there really are no cheap options.

[NeilFan]

We also have a cruise tour mid-August and are flying from Minneapolis to Fairbanks, one week land tour, one week cruise, and from Vancouver to Minneapolis. I used itasoftware dot com to monitor prices and flight combinations. This is not a booking site. Since we went through a TA, when I found a fare around $700 that I was comfortable with, she booked it. Since then we have received an "upgrade" to nonstop flights which is awesome. I just looked on the ITA site and it looks like the cheapest multi-segment out of Tampa is $739. Many times these are the red-eyes, have long layovers, and use multiple airlines. I forgot to tell you that we live over 4 hours from Minneapolis, but opted to make the drive to save about $250 pp from our home town airport. My daughter lives in Minneapolis and can drop us off/pick us up and keep our car at her place.

 

All the advice on this board says not to book your return flight before 1 p.m. to allow for disembark, customs, etc. We opted to book a post-night through Holland America and got a pretty good deal. Figured that would reduce the stress and we can snoop around Vancouver for a half day. We do have to get up early the next morning though. We are going up to Fairbanks a day early, also to reduce stress, aclimate to the time change, and snoop around Fairbanks for a day. Found a pretty decent rate on the same hotel that HAL uses and booked it ourselves.

 

Good luck to you -- it's an expensive trip for sure. This is our first time to Alaska so we are pulling out the stops!!

Rene

[sbflcruiser]

The airfare cost flying in direct to Vancouver was high compared to flying into Seattle and taking the Amtrak, We are traveling North bound on our cruise, so we depart from Vancouver. Once the cruise is over we are doing an interior tour then returning from Anchorage. This turned out to be the most cost effective way to travel. My nephew is coming back to our house after the cruise, so he got a flight from Anchorage to Sarasota, FL on Delta with only one stop in Atlanta for $328.00.

[Lookingforfacts]

Princess has some tours that aren't listed in the brochure. The tours include ground transportation from SEA to Vancouver as well as a flight from SEA to ANC or FAI. Have your TA price out those tours.

[cardbucfan]

Can anyone offer suggestions for reducing the cost of airfare? We are traveling from Florida to Fairbanks the third week of July and doing a cruise tour with Princess for 4 days. We then cruise for a week, and end up in Vancouver. We fly back to Florida from there. Is it worth staying a day after the cruise to reduce airfare costs (and to explore Vancouver)? Will we be too tired to explore Vancouver? Is it better to book through the cruise line or try it on our own. It will be me and my mom. We actually live closer to Tampa, but the cruiseline booked us from Orlando and when I have looked, it seems to have better connections. (It will just be a pain to get to) Thanks for your help! :) Karen

Try Delta outbound and Northwest return. I spent a lot of time trying to get good flights for that same itinerary and the flights kept going up in price. What we ended up booking was Tampa-Dallas-Anchorage-Fairbanks on the way up (14 hour travel day-yuck!) and Vancouver-Dallas-Tampa on the way back. What I found was I could get a better price if we stayed in Vancouver 2 days (I wasn't going to try to come back the day we disembarked-I've heard bad stories about customs there). Our ship docks on Sunday and with Monday being a big business travel day, it was quite a bit more to fly that day rather than waiting until Tuesday.

 

We ended up doing the whole thing on American but only because the flight times and connections were the best for us (and DH hates Northwest). Of course, now they've changed the flight times and I'm worried about going through Anchorage with the volcano but we got an O.K. price (and for 4 people that means a lot!). You can't even find our flights anymore even if you go the American website and put in multi city. Probably because of the volcano?

 

There was only one flight available with 1 stop and it was Northwest and VERY expensive. We did Kayak and got several ideas (which is where the Delta/Northwest flight came from). I also made certain we had plenty of time with our connections and that none of those connections went through big airports at rush hour (there were options through both O'Hare and Atlanta at rush hour).

 

Good luck and have a great trip!

[vbmom87]

I would definitely recommend staying an extra day in Vancouver. Consider how much you are going to spend to get there. YOU might as well see what it has to offer. I wish we had more time there than we did. We flew in on a Friday for a Sunday cruise. There is so much to see and do in Van couver. I would definitely recommend you spend time there. You should not be that tired from your cruise. The last day is an at sea day, so you can sleep in if you want. However, the scenery is gorgeous, so don't sleep too long ;).

 

Finding airfares is a real challenge. We wanted direct flights from Detroit so we paid about $100 more than a stopover flight. We could have saved a little more by going to Seattle, but in the end we were looking for simple.

 

Keep checking your airfares. In general it is cheaper to book yourself. IF Princess has decent flight prices, call them and tell them you can't fly out of Orlando. See what they can come up with for you out of Tampa. We are going to CA this summer. For a brief time on Wednesday I found direct flights to San Diego for $170 (including all taxes). THe next day those prices were $350. Last night I found another combination for $339. Today those same flights are $428. You just never know when prices will do down.

 

As already mentioned, www.kayak.com is a good website that tracks prices. You need to choose mulit-city and see what they come up with. Southwest is not included in kayak, so you have to try them separately. YOu can also try two one-ways. It takes a lot of time, but eventually you should find something. You are at three months out, so this is a good time to be bargain hunting.

[vbmom87]

I selected some random days in July and it looks like you can fly out of and back into Tampa for the mid-700s at today's prices. Tomorrow's prices could be more or less. What kind of price is PRincess giving you out of ORlando. It would have to be a great steal before I would consider it. Convenience is worth something on a big trip like this.

 

It is a good idea to fly in a day before your tour starts. This way if there are any flight delays due to weather or mechanical issues, you have a better chance of getting there on time. Also, you will be crossing over 4 time zones. THat extra day gives you a chance to get your body adjusted to the new time zone before you start your cruisetour. Of course, you may also be able to fit in some extra sightseeing that is not included in your cruisetour.

[CandCrew]

As others have mentioned, look at doing multi-city fare. Also, before booking cruise air (through TA/cruiseline) be sure to check out the cruiseair forum for the problems with cruiseair. The cost CAN be cheaper but you very well could be at the mercy of the airlines/cruise company--this could include bizarre connections, long layovers, short layovers, long days flying, etc.