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Early Anniversary Cruise

Vikingstaff

Vikingstaff

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Our wife and I decided to take a cruise for our 25th anniversary. Technically our anniversary isn’t until the end of July. However, we wanted to do a June Alaskan cruise, so we will be celebrating it a month early this year. :D

Vancouver, British Columbia to Whittier, Alaska. We have a few spectacular excursions pre-arranged! We are very excited as this is our first cruise, AND our first time to the Pacific Northwest. :)

We sail on the Island Princess, pictured below:

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The Bennington will simply have to wait until we return later in June. :eek:
 
from one Captain to another...he should let ya drive the boat! Do they use 303 on that bucket??? Is it a "G Series" helm?? Lifting strakes?? So, if he switches to a SS prop.....Alaska is the bomb! Gorgeous. I have a good friend who charters out of Homer, Alaska. Salmon fishing, bear hunts, you name it.
 
Jeff, at first I was thinking you'd be taking a cruise on your Benny around HL. LOL!
 
Have a great time! We've done 40+, but never Alaska.
 
Enjoy. I've been watching a lot of Alaska State Troopers lately. Watch out for the drunk locals and moose poachers!
 
Anxious to hear your review on this as my wife wants to do the Alaska cruise as well. Is the cruise only water only or do you have a land tour before or after as well?
 
Link said:
Anxious to hear your review on this as my wife wants to do the Alaska cruise as well. Is the cruise only water only or do you have a land tour before or after as well?
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We stuck with the base trip: water cruise only, and then going a bit all in on some of the daily excursion options on stops. I will let you know what we thought about the cruise destination/excursions, and the cruise line/ship afterwards. Only caveat will be it is our first cruise, so no baseline of comparison for us.
 
We’ve only done one cruise and it was Alaska. Water only - no extra trip before or after (would have liked to do that too). Did lots of shore trips at the ports - helicopter trips to glaciers, float plane, panning for gold, canoe trips etc. Our trip went north to south though and I would go the opposite way like yours if we did again. Seemed to be more ports north and more water traveling in the south. Loved the trip!!
 
Vikingstaff said:
We stuck with the base trip: water cruise only, and then going a bit all in on some of the daily excursion options on stops. I will let you know what we thought about the cruise destination/excursions, and the cruise line/ship afterwards. Only caveat will be it is our first cruise, so no baseline of comparison for us.
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I was perusing some old threads and came across this. Was just wondering how you and your wife liked the trip. Alaska was our family's very first cruise many years ago when my adult kids were kids. This cruise got us hooked on cruising and have since been all over the world from Australia to the Mediterranean.......
 
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I totally forgot to come back to this thread. Oops! We really enjoyed our Alaskan cruise this past June. It was a superb 25th Anniversary trip!

Best Aspects of this AMAZING Cruise:
(1) We really enjoyed our ship, “The Island Princess”. It was a good size for us for our first cruise, and had plenty of entertainment, shopping, and food options (as I am sure all ships do).
(2) The BEST part of the trip was absolutely the sights and stops along coastal Alaska. I cannot rave enough about how worthwhile this trip was for us. It lived up to EVERY expectation we had. The only thing we wish we would have been able to do differently is spend more time on this trip. If not for other summer activities we had planned, I would have really enjoyed doing some longer term land trips at the end of the cruise. For anyone considering an Alaskan cruise, any excursions and day trips you add on will be totally worth it. I am hoping to do a big overland trip to Alaska in my early retirement based on this trip. I could see spending about 6 weeks and taking a meandering trip through Canada and into Alaska in the next decade.
(3) Highlights: Taking float planes into the interior on two stops - just WOW, visiting a glacier on land, and then seeing numerous ones in the fjords, inland train trip to kayak a mountain lake in Canada - again, awesome, a forest hike and cook out in an isolated lodge next to a glacier - awe inspiring, all the waterfalls and glaciers we could see during the cruise, and finally we met some really great people along the way on this trip.
(4) Although I don’t get into shows like my wife, she really enjoyed the on-ship entertainment and festivities. I did some with her, and she allowed me to sit a few out. However, she absolutely loved them.

Drawback for Me:
(1) I get nauseous on rough seas when on large bodies of water. This is why we had not taken a cruise before. We had two evenings where the ship was pitching due to large storms further out to sea. Those two evenings really hit me hard, and put a damper on what would have been two fancy evenings out on the ship and a play. Probably enough for me to not really take a cruise again, but my wife would in a heartbeat.
 
We love cruising. We leave Dec 2nd for 14 days in the Caribbean. Look into the patches you wear behind the ear for sea sickness. I see many people with them although we don't wear them.
 
cwag911 said:
We love cruising. We leave Dec 2nd for 14 days in the Caribbean. Look into the patches you wear behind the ear for sea sickness. I see many people with them although we don't wear them.
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Carl already back in the saddle! Which port?
 
lakeliving said:
Carl already back in the saddle! Which port?
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Tampa. We go through the Panama Canal to the center and turn around, Columbia, Costa Rica, Aruba, Curacao, Cozumel and Montego Bay.
 
We did an Alaskan Cruise with a land/rail tour to Denali tacked on at the end for our 25th anniversary several years ago. We have been blessed to be able to travel the world and the trip to Alaska is easily in my top three trips ever. We plan to return there in the near future.
 
cwag911 said:
Tampa. We go through the Panama Canal to the center and turn around, Columbia, Costa Rica, Aruba, Curacao, Cozumel and Montego Bay.
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Enjoy. Next time you are on my side of the state let me know.
 
Ditto on the Alaskan cruise. Did the inside passage out of Seattle and it was one of the top vacations I've ever had. The beauty of the place is hard to describe. Every excursion was awesome too. I did a 7 day trip and can't wait to go back and do a longer one.
 
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