Beyond the Sea

We did our first Alaska cruise in June and it was on Brilliance. I picked the cruise because of all the opportunities to see different glaciers and the itinerary lived up to my expectations and so much more. I don't think we will be back on Royal but I would do the itinerary again in a heartbeat. I initially priced out airfare through the airlines but Royal's Air2Sea had fantastic pricing and the convenience of only paying at final payment was also a plus. We ended up flying from Ottawa to Vancouver for under $850 roundtrip for the two of us.

The juggler was the only show we saw and we are so glad that we didn’t miss him. Very funny guy! How was the rest of the weather for the week? Wasn’t Tracy Arm beautiful?

I had read some comments on different cruises about the coffee machines in the Diamond lounge as I was hoping to be able to use them on the cruise. It was available during the entire cruise and was very easy to use. I normally added an extra shot is espresso. I did notice that there was also a pitcher of orange juice in the lounge most if not all morning.

I had read online to try to get the 2nd row on the first floor but they were taken when we got there. We sat in the back row on the first floor and it was fine. You can stand up and also move around during the tour. To do it again I might consider the side seats on the 2nd floor just for the eagle part of the tour. That part is a goosebump experience! The seats on the 2nd floor are behind the life preserver shown below:

Do you have the Royal app installed on your smart phone? If so, the entire week of menus are available under Dining, Main dining and the dining room. I had the curry the first night and it was tasty. Their French onion soup was also good. Looking at the days we ate at the specialty restaurants, the dining room looked to have some good options.

I don’t think you need to be there at the start but if the ship can get close to the glacier you probably want to be at the front as it nears it. Looking at the time stamps on my photos, it seems we were able to start seeing the glacier in the distance around 7:30.

We had a balcony cabin and had started watching Tracy Arm from the balcony. Definitely go to the front of the ship to watch the cruise through Tracy Arm. You will miss the impact of the fjord without the complete view. Bring binoculars if you have them. There were tons of seals on the ice.

Tracy Arm and the glacier were beautiful and the weather was perfect. We did traditional dining and the specialty restaurants. We couldn’t figure out how the dining worked as it seems they mixed my time seatings with the traditional dining tables. We ate at 5 (too early but the late dining is too late for us) and at that time the dining room was never busy. We only saw lines when the dining room opened. if you are stopping Ketchikan, we did the Bering Sea fishermen tour and we were surprised by how much we enjoyed it. There is a particular stop with bald eagles that was probably one of the highlights of our vacation. Have a great cruise!

We have not seen the roof of the solarium open at all during this trip. The screen is at the outdoor pool and there isn’t any chance of watching it from within the solarium.

We are nearing the end of our 7 day cruise and I wanted to provide a few comments on our experience. I booked the cruise in the Fall of last year and picked it for all the opportunities to see different glaciers - surely to goodness we would be able to see at least one out of the 3 options. We also booked the Hubbard Glacier tour just in case the ship couldn’t get that close. We couldn’t have asked for better weather - the early mornings may have started out foggy but the fog did clear and we had beautiful days for touring. We packed rain gear but never needed it or required our “puffer” jackets. A fleece with a shell was the most we needed on deck. The cruise down Tracy Arm was beautiful and we got quite close to the North Sawyer Glacier. The tour to Hubbard was shortened due to mechanical problems with the tour boat but we were compensated. We were able to get so much closer than Brilliance. I’m not sure if Brilliance is restricted on how close it can sail or if it is judged by the ice flow (there was a lot of ice in the water) but we felt the cost of the tour was worth it. The view was incredible and we did see some small calfing. We took a private whale watching tour in Juneau and the shuttle to the tour stopped for a photo op of Mendenhall Glacier in the distance. We didn’t have enough port time to do both a whale watching tour and trip to the Glacier. I’m extremely happy with my choice in the cruise itinerary and would repeat it again without hesitation. Would I repeat with Royal? No. I knew going in that there would likely be many families but thinking that the school term would not yet be done in some areas hoped we wouldn’t be overwhelmed by children. There are over 500 children on the ship and we have struggled to find somewhere to escape the noise. The Solarium is open to children multiple times a day so they can use the pool and they are in most of the bars due to the different scheduled activities. Royal really needs to offer some quiet areas during the day. I would prefer not to have to escape to my room. The other issue is the food and alcohol. I know food is subjective but we have cruised on several lines and have been cruising for almost 20 years and the food isn’t very good for the most part. The dining room food at breakfast and dinner was being served cold to lukewarm even with made to order eggs. We did talk to the maitre d after a couple of days and did see an improvement. We haven’t found a lot of choices in the Windjammer at lunch. We are using the Diamond coupons for drinks and seem to be struggling to use them with the limited mixed drink choices and the quality of the drinks. I will say that the staff have been very friendly especially the guys at Lattitudes. Everyone always smiles and says hello. If anyone has questions, fire away. This is my opinion and I respect that others may have a completely different experience.

Thanks for pointing that out about the dates. I hadn't even noticed that it was an option to change the date once the flights showed up. Much easier now than having to keep bothering my agent for options.

We're going to try Air2Sea for an Alaskan cruise this spring. We're flying out of Ottawa to Vancouver return. The price when we booked was about $500 less than booking directly with Air Canada. The flights are in Canadian $ but I've been told the seat reservations are charged in US $ and it looks to be the case when I try to reserve the seats. I haven't booked the seats yet as I'm not convinced that our flights won't change before final payment. It's happened already with a non-stop flight to YVR changed to a connecting flight. I booked the cruise through a travel agent and unfortunately she has to provide the pricing since we are flying to YVR a couple days before the cruise. I can only see the pricing for flights on the page for the actual day the cruise departs.