Millennium Alaska June 16, 2017 LONG Trip Report photos - menus - schedules

Then, we moved on up the hill where we each were able to hand feed carrots to a moose!

And just one amazing thing after another, next we fed and petted reindeer! It was so cool to feel their antlers, still covered in velvet, while they ate oats out of our hands.

Then, Steve introduced us to a pine marten. He said that at this time of year, when it is looking for a girlfriend, it can be ferocious, so he could not handle it easily. But he was still able to feed it a spoonful of Smucker's strawberry jelly! It was comical. Then, we went to the bear enclosure where we saw a Kodiak bear going for a swim and then indulging in a piece of pie.

Steve even fed the bear a honey-oatmeal mixture from a spoon!

I'm telling you, people. If you don't do anything else in Alaska, you should do this tour. It was the most amazing wildlife encounter we have ever had. You will not regret it. We were so thrilled to have a personal tour with just our family of four. But if the only way you can do it is the large group tour with the ship, then just do it.

Wow! What an amazing afternoon. I just can't say enough about it.

By way of cost comparison, it cost us almost exactly the same amount as the ship tour. We had to pay for the tour, of course, plus a rental car, and the ferry tickets. But we also got to go to the Eagle Foundation, and we weren't finished yet. And of course we had a private tour. It was a lot of work to put it together, but so worth it.

Sadly, our time at the center was over around 2pm. We had not eaten since our very early breakfast, so we headed out to the nearby joint recommended by Steve and the bus driver I had met earlier. We had delicious sandwiches at 33 Mile Roadhouse. Paul had a chipotle reindeer po' boy. And there is probably nowhere else in the world that you can get that!

Continuing on Steve's recommendation we ventured further north a few more miles, and passed into Canada. Passing through border control was easy. But the landscape was crazy!! Up to now, we had been in a rain forest -- a thickly forested, lush green landscape. But now, it suddenly changed to a dramatically different, barren space with snowcapped hills. It was a very dramatic change in the view and really wowed us. We drove only for a little while before turning back, however, because we wanted to allow more than ample time to meet our ferry back to the ship.

We went from this:

To this:

LuckyBecky - thank you SO much for this indepth review of your visit to Steve's wildlife park. We are doing a land only trip to Haines beginning 8/11/17, renting a house there on Paradise Cove, for 10 glorious nights. And I can't wait! I've had my eye on this tour, but was afraid my husband would think it was too 'zoo-like' and wouldn't be interested. I'm anxious to show him your review and photos - I think he'll quickly change his mind!

BTW - what was the per person cost of the tour itself? We will have a rental car for our 10 day stay, so transportation is not an issue? Appreciate any info you can provide.

And great review! I'm loving every detailed minute of it!

This upcoming trip will be the latest in many visits to Alaska - 2 seven day cruises, 3 fourteen day cruises, two land only trips to Denali Natl. Park and Homer (my favorite place on the planet - Hoping to retire there one day!), and one land only trip to see the Northern Lights with a stay in North Pole (just outside Fairbanks) and Denali. We've never visited Haines before, so we are so looking forward to a new adventure in the Great Land. Your review has brought back a ton of memories and has got me even more pumped for this upcoming trip. Keep up the good work! More please! :)

LuckyBecky - thank you SO much for this indepth review of your visit to Steve's wildlife park. We are doing a land only trip to Haines beginning 8/11/17, renting a house there on Paradise Cove, for 10 glorious nights. And I can't wait! I've had my eye on this tour, but was afraid my husband would think it was too 'zoo-like' and wouldn't be interested. I'm anxious to show him your review and photos - I think he'll quickly change his mind!

 

BTW - what was the per person cost of the tour itself? We will have a rental car for our 10 day stay, so transportation is not an issue? Appreciate any info you can provide.

 

And great review! I'm loving every detailed minute of it!

 

This upcoming trip will be the latest in many visits to Alaska - 2 seven day cruises, 3 fourteen day cruises, two land only trips to Denali Natl. Park and Homer (my favorite place on the planet - Hoping to retire there one day!), and one land only trip to see the Northern Lights with a stay in North Pole (just outside Fairbanks) and Denali. We've never visited Haines before, so we are so looking forward to a new adventure in the Great Land. Your review has brought back a ton of memories and has got me even more pumped for this upcoming trip. Keep up the good work! More please! :)

Thank you for your kind words! This was definitely NOT zoo-like. It was the most interactive and unique wildlife encounter I've ever had. Steve is quite a character. Some would say eccentric. But he was very fun and informative.

Another thing he did -- he had a huge old bear trap. He set the trap and then had me spring it with a stick. It was terrifying! What a cruel contraption.

Since you mention retiring in Alaska, you should talk to the lady at the American Bald Eagle Foundation in Haines. She told us that she and her husband ran a restaurant in Las Vegas for many years. After one especially late night, she and her husband had finally had enough of the rat race and they retired to Haines. Now she spends her time caring for bald eagles!

Steve charged our family of four $350 for our tour. I don't know what he would charge for 2, or if he has a minimum number of people required. You pay in the form of a "donation" to the wildlife center on his website. You need to contact him directly. He doesn't have any way to reserve the tour online. But you can easily find his contact info if you just google Kroschel Wildlife Center.

Thanks for such a great detailed review and for the excellent photos to push the narrative along. You captured some great wildlife shots!

Although I have cruised to Alaska 3 times in the past 6 years your review shows me how much I have still yet to see beyond Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway ( Cruising on Princess). On my bucket list is Alaska cruising and a land tour.

I'm looking forward to reading more!

Sorry to hear about the Photobucket issues people such as yourself are experiencing. I've always been on Flickr and like it because of the camera info that is included with each photo I take. Photobucket is barren in comparison.

Best wishes,

Norris

So I think when I left off, we had just taken a scenic drive into Canada and then headed back to Haines.

So we drove back into the US, having to stop at border patrol on the way. No problem. Arrived back in Haines late afternoon, but our ferry wasn't scheduled to leave until 7pm. So we had a quick look around the old fort area, then filled up the rental car with gas. Actually, we didn't fill it up. An old codger came out to fill the tank for us. Our kids had no idea what a "full service" gas station was. Now they know. I did not know that full service gas stations even still existed!!

Finally, we returned our rental car and walked to the pier to catch our ferry. My daughter had worried all day that we were cutting this close. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 7pm for the 45 minute trip back to Skagway. All Aboard time was 8pm. So this did not leave us much room for error. But it worked out fine. It didn't take long to walk from the ferry dock to our ship. There were some crew members from the Royal Caribbean ship parked behind us, who were in an even bigger hurry. We made it back on board with a few minutes to spare.

We had already had a 13+ hour day at this point and we weren't up to doing a long meal in the dining room, so we headed to the buffet around 8:30 or 9pm. This was the only night that we did not eat in the dining room. I also missed the nightly show for the only time this cruise. After supper we spent some time in the casino and had a couple of drinks before bed.

I was so excited to tell you about our wildlife adventure that I think I forgot to post the schedule for today. We hardly consulted it at all because we were off the ship the entire day. And this was the only drawback of our day, and a minor one: we did not get to see Skagway at all. This just means we will have to go back to see it another time!

Anyway, here is the daily schedule. I'm sorry I don't have the dining room menu for tonight.

On our drive back to Haines we made a couple of scenic stops.

Tuesday June 20 Icy Strait Point

We slept in after our long day yesterday. We had not pre-planned any excursion for this port. We had a late breakfast/early lunch and then walked off the ship.

This is a manufactured port. The daily schedule describes it thusly: "the created product is an attractive new destination expressly for cruisers that's manmade but not commercialized."

I would disagree. It is completely commercialized, with no less than 11 shops and 5 restaurants listed in their brochure. It reminded us of Disneyworld, everything perfectly created to fit the theme, complete with a little row of buildings labeled as "private residences" with manicured lawns and pretty pots of flowers on the porches.

There was a cannery museum that showed much of the equipment used in an old cannery and had a display where someone had gone to quite a lot of trouble to create a bloody scene realistically depicting the processing of the fish.

We did the short nature walk along the beach and through the forest, which was beautiful.

But in general we were not impressed with this polished, manufactured scene. It seemed very commercial and inauthentic to us. We only spent an hour or two before getting back on board. I suppose we could have walked the 1.5 miles to Hoonah and perhaps might have enjoyed that, but we just weren't too impressed by this scene.

They claim to have the world's longest zipline. We watched a group coming down and they were so far off they were just a speck in the distance that grew larger as they approached us. If ziplining is something you want to try, this would be a great place to do it.

You can also book other excursions such as whale watching or kayaking.

If we do another Alaska cruise, we will probably look for an itinerary that does not include this stop. We just weren't impressed. Others may have an entirely different experience and love this port, but it was not our cup of tea.

This is the walkway from the ship to land

Here's the schedule for today:

Great review!!! Can't say enough positive things about all your pictures and details in your trip planning and sharing your experiences with all of us.

We are still a year away, but you have given us a lot of great ideas and options to consider when we go next year. THANK YOU!!!

Thanks JBSteelerFan! Glad you are enjoying the review.

So when I left off yesterday, we had just gotten back on board from Icy Strait Point.

We split up. I went to the Gold Rush talk by historian Dan Benedict, but I'm sorry to say that I did not find him to be an engaging speaker and I slipped out early.

A little later, Paul and I went to Milos Radakovich's talk "Fire and Ice: Volcanoes and Glaciers." This was an excellent talk! Who knew geology could be so much fun? Milos is very funny and made this scientific talk both educational and fun. We didn't get to stay all the way to the end because we had planned to meet our kids at a pre-determined time, and we were sorry to have to leave early and miss the end of the talk.

We went to supper in the main dining room, as always.

Spiced duck rillettes quenelle

Boston lettuce and gorgonzola salad

Barolo braised beef short ribs

Cajun spiced drum fish

Penne primavera

I don't know if I ever posted pictures of the dining room itself. I loved these very tall windows at the back.

Here is the dessert menu for tonight:

Remember when I commented earlier about the cherries jubilee not being flambéed? Well, here they appear on the menu again but it doesn't say flambéed this time.

We loved the cheese plate, which appeared on the dessert menu every night. We ordered it several times. We thought it was enough to share. Most other desserts were relatively small portions -- enough for one but probably not quite enough to share. You could also ask for the cheese plate as an appetizer if you want.

After supper we went to the 9pm show "Boogie Wonderland." We loved all the shows. They usually lasted 45 minutes to one hour. All were high-energy fun productions. The cast is very talented.

Then we headed up to the Cosmos theater for the "Wildest 80's Music Game Show" which was great. The cruise director staff did a great job of firing up the audience and making this a fun and raucous show.

This is a shot of the grand foyer with a band playing on deck 4. I think I mentioned earlier that we were really impressed by how much live music was happening all the time on this ship. Celebrity really has Carnival beat on this count!

Here are several shots from tonight's show "Boogie Wonderland"

The audience joined in YMCA

This is Manuel leading the gameshow. He was a lot of fun!

We stayed late in the casino. We played roulette a couple of times on this cruise. Some of the dealers moved the game so fast that it took all the fun out of it. If you blinked, you missed out. I quit the game once because I didn't like having to fall all over my fellow players, trying to place my bets in the rapid-fire fashion required by the dealer. I avoided these dealers in the future, but did play the game once more with a dealer who was a little more laid back. The dealers in general were all business on this cruise. They were not friendly, there was no chit-chat, it was wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am all the time. It was like they were on a mission to take your money from you as fast as they possibly could. Not fun.

But our favorite bartender Marco was there every night doing his best to keep us upbeat! :) He never failed to immediately recognize us as we approached the bar and he kept us happy with free flowing drinks.

Wednesday June 21 Ketchikan

We had scheduled two tours today. The first was a tour of the Saxman Totem Pole Park plus Lumberjack show.

This was the only tour we booked through the cruise line. As I mentioned earlier, we generally avoid ship tours. Yes, they are convenient -- and most importantly, if something goes wrong, they will take care of you. If you are on a tour that you booked through the cruise line, and for some reason you miss the ship, they will make sure to take care of you and get you back onboard ASAP.

If you book a tour on your own with an outside company, you will be on your own if something goes wrong. But, with that said, we almost always go with independent providers outside of the ship and we have never had a problem. We get MUCH lower prices for similar experiences, and often have much smaller groups and more personal tours.

If you are going to go with outside tour operators, you MUST do your research and choose reputable providers.

So anyway, we had a tour booked through Celebrity at 10:30 that included a drive through the town, then out to the Saxman Village to see the totem poles. Our driver/guide was good.

Then we went to the lumberjack show at noon. It was touristy and hokey but still fun. It ended at 1:00 and was within steps of the ship. If you only want to see the lumberjack show, you do not need to book this through the cruise line. It is literally a five minute walk from the ship. Save your money and do it on your own.

After the show our daughter stayed in town to shop, but the rest of us got back on board to have lunch.

Here's a shot of town looking from I think deck 4 onboard.

Here are some shots from the lumberjack show

And a couple more views of the town:

Paul and I had a flightseeing tour of Misty Fjords national monument scheduled at 3pm. So, back off the boat after lunch. We bought a few souvenirs and then met up with our tour guide for the short ride to where the plane was docked. We've never been on a floatplane before so that was fun. The scenery was just amazing. Very beautiful. We used Island Wings. The owner/operator is great, very experienced and professional.

Here is a small cruise ship deep within the fjords. I think it was the only boat of any size that we saw in the fjords. Certainly a ship the size of the Millennium would not be able to access this area.

There were many waterfalls everywhere

We landed in a very remote location and just floated there for awhile. The pilot allowed us to get out and stand on the floats if we wanted.

It was so beautiful and peaceful.

There were headsets so we could communicate with the pilot and each other over the noise of the plane.

Thank you for this great review! Can't wait for the rest.

What whale watching company did you choose? The price is great!

Sorry I forgot to answer this. It was Juneau Whale Watch. They were great!

After our flightseeing tour, We got back on board around 5:30 or so.

We had made a reservation for the Tuscan Grill several weeks in advance. At the time I made the reservation, there was no mention of a cancellation penalty. This morning we received a reminder card of our reservation, which stated there would be a fee charged if the reservation was cancelled with less than 24 hours notice.

Unfortunately, they didn't give us this information until less than 24 hours. We had not forgotten our reservation, and we had mulled the idea of keeping or cancelling it, but didn’t know about this penalty fee or we would have cancelled sooner.

I thought this was another lapse in the good service that we expected from Celebrity. You are going to charge me if I cancel less than 24 hours, but you don't tell me about this policy until less than 24 hours?!

At any rate, we had been happy with the meals we had had in the dining room, so we decided to save some money and cancel anyway. And by the way, we weren’t no-shows, in which case I could understand a cancellation fee. I called before lunch to cancel dinner.

We had dinner in the main dining room again, then watched the 9pm Gold Art Duo show – fantastic!

whoever got this table had a nice view for dinner!

Here's tonight's menu:

We saw this furry passenger several times onboard. I assume he was a service animal but he did not wear a service animal vest. Tonight was evening chic and he was sporting a bow tie.

Scallops Rockefeller

Creamy salmon rillettes

More food pics

This is the New York strip from the timeless entrees menu:

Duck a L'Orange

Beef Wellington

Lobster tail

Alaskan Cod

I don't seem to have a photo of the dessert menu for tonight, but here is something yummy that we ate:

We finished out the night with the show by the Gold Art Duo. They do an acrobatic show and have been on America's Got Talent. They were good. I don't have many pictures but did take a couple of shots of the male member of the duo doing a funny, silly balloon bit.

We topped off the night with a couple of drinks in the casino, as usual.