oaktreerb

Thanks for your report. I hope HAL will get this Alaska season going with some good entertainment in the showroom. I would guess that “The Origin Story”, Holland America through the years, was shown in the main showroom. There should have been some musical productions. Sitka and Ketchikan are good ports because they have plenty of places to visit around the port. Juneau is a good place for getting out of town to go whale watching!

Another beautiful day in Juneau!

Snow City Cafe is close to the Captain Cook for breakfast or lunch and very popular (you may have to wait). Glacier Brewhouse is also nearby. You can make reservations for a table or walk in if you are ok eating at the bar. Check out places to eat on Trip Advisor. There are lots of places within walking distance. We loved staying at the Captain Cook!

Those Mariner points for land tours helped us to get to 5*. If you are in a suite (double points) on the cruise portion you get double points for the entire cruise tour!

Great camera views. Interesting how the ships enter the Franklin dock stern first and swing the aft in. So far the weather in April has been pretty nice for the early arriving ships.

Do you remember the name of your rail car? Did you have a guide and a bar tender and a dining car? That does not sound like our experience unless for some reason you were not on a HAL rail car. Maybe the rail car was an older Princess rail car. HAL and Princess work together in Alaska and some of the older Princess rail cars are not very nice. We were in one between Anchorage and Seward a few years ago. I would not have wanted to travel to Denali in that rail car!

Did you take the Holland America or Princess rail cars? Seats are assigned and they are very comfy with lots of room between seats. Because of the dome viewing there is no overhead storage. The HAL busses are also very nice. We’ve been traveling in Alaska and the Yukon with HAL since 2005. The least comfortable seats were when we were put on the Princess rail car but otherwise the experience was pretty much the same as HAL.

@maggiev We have taken the train as part of a HAL cruisetour several times, most recently 2022. Your train seating will be assigned. When you begin the land part of your journey before you board the train you will receive a packet of information with your seating assignment. It’s all comfy and it is all scenic dome windows. You’ll have a guide for narration and a bar tender for drinks. You will be invited to the dining car for a very nice breakfast or lunch.

Just ask the TA for the HAL Booking Confirmation.

We enjoy the King Salmon in the Pinnacle. I find it exceptional.

The idea would be to fly into Fairbanks, bus to Denali, train to Anchorage, train or bus to Whittier to join the ship. Yes, it would be too far for someone who starts their itinerary in Anchorage as it would require backtracking and a waste of travel rime.

The line will probably start alongside the building by the drop off area. We dropped our luggage with the luggage handlers and got in line. It moves inside the building. Have your boarding pass that says “priority” and show it when someone is telling you where to go. The line snaked through the inside area until we saw a “cut off” for priority boarding. There are a lot of people with priority boarding. You will take the cut off and go through security and check in and be directed to the “seating area for priority boarding”. This was in January/February and the ship didn’t start embarking until close to noon. President’s Club were boarded first and then the rest of us in priority boarding.

If you have paid for Club Orange or if you are in a Neptune Suite on a ship that does not have a CO dining room you will have a separate priority entry line to the main dining room. I don’t know if you will get a special CO menu (you should) but if you don’t see the CO entree listed, just ask your server what the CO entree is. Even when eating in a CO dining room on the Koningsdam the servers sometimes had to tell us what the special was.

Neptune Suites also receive Club Orange dining perks. When boarding the ship with priority status you sometimes have to politely remind port staff that you have priority boarding. If you print your boarding pass you can easily show the “priority” designation when you ask if you are in the correct line.

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