Stealthdog

I’ll look for it!

We have a couple hours before our meet up time for our tour in Juneau. Time to charge phones and go grab breakfast. Still owe some posts about Crown Grille, some of the shows, a picture outside the indoor pool spaces look for any adult only signs, and last nights narration with whale, seal, and porpoise sightings.

Ketchikan had 5 ships in port (3 Princess, 1 Holland, and 1 Regent). With a population of 14,000 people the city more than doubled in size! We did the Creek Street walk, stopped in a lot of the shops along the way, had some seafood at a grill near one of the other cruise ships, heard the hollering and cheering from the lumber jack show, and then head back to the ship. There was a long line to get back on the ship that maintained until the all aboard time (230). I got myself a mimosa to watch for pier runners from the balcony, but no luck today - everyone was too responsible. We particularly got a laugh if the “streets” that are just stairs up to a persons house. got some wonderful shots of the port on the way out. Ketchikan is a great port to view - find a spot either inside or outside to enjoy the views!

It was awesome. Gourmet donuts, dumplings, coffees, and smoothies. They had more than a dozen different donut options. Looking back into the kitchen area, they warm up donuts, dip the top into your chosen toppings, and then finish decorating it for you. The line was a little long when we got there so we had a small wait. Once you get your donut order it, it comes out quick. Dumplings (which were awesome) take about 7 minutes. IMHO Jellyfish Donuts is a cant miss event if you stop in Ketchikan. Pictured below are the strawberry cheesecake and salmon donuts.

Ketchikan was a very nice stop. I’ve heard some people don’t enjoy it, but we had a blast there. It’s a nice change from repeating the same port stops in the Caribbean. We did a private tour with Wild Wolf tours. The port makes it very easy to get to the private tours - once you leave the ship, they we will mixed in with the Princess tours and waiting for you. We ended up being the only 2 on the tour, which was great because we could personalize it however we want. We had a Rainforest Walk and Totem Park tour. We were disappointed with the rain forest part because we didn’t see any wildlife (outside of 2 Red Squirrels and 3 Slugs). The guide did his best to walk us through the different foliage, trees, and terrain to help make up for no animal sightings. We walked up to a waterfall spot (very small waterfall) and back to the entrance. The path was modified to make it flat and easy to walk on, but there are a couple of steep inclines which will make it very difficult for anyone with mobility issues to do this tour. It seems alot of locals use the park to walk their dogs the area. I got excited when I saw some animal droppings, but it wasn’t a bear, it was a dog. 😂 The totem park was a nicer part of the tour. It was helpful the tour guide was married to a Native American and has experience with the culture, history, and meanings. There are a few different tribes that were in the area and their totem styles differ by tribes. Seeing these huge totems (they are technically recreations by local native residents) and what we think they meant was really impressive. Each totem has its own meaning and story. After the Totems, our guide dropped us off at Creek Street and we slowly made our way back to the ship. I probably wouldn’t recommend this tour for anyone (would recommend the company though - Wild Wolf). The rainforest part was just a little boring and there are probably better things to do in town. Entrance to the Totem Park is $5, so you could get a ride from the port to the Park and back for much cheaper.

looks like someone beat me to the punch and posted already! Thanks!

Lol, how funny - the first thing I saw was the sign for Jellyfish Donuts. Will definitely be checking that place out!

Today is Ketchikan Day (Day 3)! We went back an hour over night so everyone should be well rested. I woke up early and was able to watch out entry into port. The port looks really quaint! We have a private tour at 9am and all aboard is 230pm. I have a little catch-up to do with some posts from yesterday - will try to get them updated after the tour.

Spoiler - I’ll give a more in-depth review tomorrow. Black and blue onion soup probably the best onion soup I’ve ever had. Same temperature issue with steaks - sent first one back because it was well done. Second was sent back because it was blood rare. Third finally reached the medium rare - medium range. It’s so weird because the server every time has been awesome and they immediately see the issue when the steak is open. It’s not their fault - it’s the kitchen. I don’t know why they are having such a hard time getting steaks cooked right. I’ll look to take the picture of staff board tomorrow when we get back on board.

One thing we are really enjoying on Princess are the talks and presentations. We went to 2 today - a presentation on whales and an overview of the ship. Both were fantastic and informative. These kinds of events often are not seen on other lines, so this is definitely something that distinguishes Princess. Specifically, a Marine Biologist gave the talk on whales, including some we will see on this trip. He will also be narrating for the ship as we go through the passes. One of the officers gave the talk on the Majestic ship. if you have free time and don’t see anything else you would rather do, make an effort to attend these.

No problem! We are getting ready for formal night and going to Crown Grill (at another modified reservation time). I’ll post reviews of Crown Grill tomorrow.

We tried the World Market for breakfast day 2 because we didn’t have enough time to sit down and order. It was a mad house and took about 20 minutes just to find 2 seats. The quality of breakfast was a little disappointing, though the setup at World Market for lunch on Day 1 looked amazing. After breakfast we went out to the Wake View Bar area outside the World Market to get some fresh juices at the juice bar. There was plenty of seating out there - so if you want to go to the buffet for breakfast, you may want to wear some warmer clothes and sit outside there. It’s much quieter and you have great views. if you have the Plus or Premium packages, use the Juice Bar - it’s included and the drinks they make are really good and fresh. I’ll take a picture and post what they have next time I go there.

Day 2 activities.

Went to the comedian Hank Denson show on Day 1. We try to go to the 2nd showing or comedian acts because the later show is sometimes more adult focused jokes. We often find comedians on ships a little dated, but Denson was really funny and worth the hour. The theater on Majestic is different from every other ship we have been on - there is no upper deck level seating - the rows continue from front all the way to back. There are still 2 entrances though - top of stairs from Deck 7 and bottom of stairs from Deck 6. After being in the theater for a couple of events now, the exit on Deck 7 gets really congested after shows end. You may want to look to leave the theater on Deck 6.

Based on Susan’s and my experience, the trick with Vancouver appears to be get to the port as early as you can. No one ever asked for our arrival time slot, so I’d recommend everyone get there as early as you can. From your description, the later you get there the more of a hot mess boarding is, especially with two ships sharing the space. 2 hours….yikes 😞 The safety video was ridiculous. We tried 4-5 times while eating lunch, and the video either crashed or sent us back to the beginning. We even tried it on our stateroom TV, and it never put a check next to our names annotating they we watched it. As long as people sign in to their muster station, that is probably good enough. We had issues with the app most of the day, and were able to access it periodically throughout the day. Weirdly it was just the app, because the internet speed has been pretty good and had no issues accessing anything else on Wi-Fi. We will give some thoughts on the Wi-Fi and app at the end of the cruise.

I think both of these questions have already been answered. Catch is open - we made our booking on board. Ive heard from people on board that they called Princess to make reservations. I recommend calling Princess to make the reservations now, and then try to adjust the times when you are on board and not happy with the reservation time. We are going Thursday night so we will report back. There were children in both the pool area and the observatory areas every time we walked through yesterday. So, not adults only.

Every time we walked through there yesterday, there were children in there. They weren’t loud or misbehaving, so I didn’t care. The Observatory looks like a great place to spend some time, particularly yesterday when it was colder and wet on deck.

Our tour guide with LandSea gave us some of the history of Guinness, the bridge, and north/west vancouver. Not as detailed as you, but makes me appreciate the tour even more. I looove Stanley Park, even more after sailing past it last night and getting to appreciate how big it is. It’s probably in my Top10 things to do/visit list, and it’s a huge draw to get us to come back to Vancouver for a longer land vacation.

Dinner in Allegro last night was a disaster. Eric got the cod, which he enjoyed. I got the French onion soup, which started the dinner of well. It wasn’t too salty like some other versions on other ships and was easy to eat. I got the short ribs and when it arrived and I cut into it, it had weird grayish-green hue in it. No big deal, I sent it back and decided to just go with the NY strip. First one came out well done, second one arrived with the restaurant manager and came out well done, with the manager apologizing after I cut into it. Third one came out well done, with the manager again apologizing after I cut it into it. I would have spent all night until they finally brought out a steak medium-rare or medium, but we didn’t want to waste any more time. Ended up getting the fettuccine Alfredo, which was pretty good. We skipped desert because the the table next to us wasn’t very happy with it. It was probably the most disappointing dinner experience we have had on a cruise ship.

Wet departure from Vancouver yesterday. Everyone was packed outside for the departure. We skipped the spa raffle to watch the departure and it was worth it. One of the nicest views for the departure with great views of the city, Stanley Park, north Vancouver, and other sites. Our favorite is still Venice, but leaving Vancouver was awesome. Only disappointment was the ship didn’t play the love boat on its horns. We went inside to watch the sailing under the bridge.

Day 1 event listings

Having more than a dozen cruises, Vancouver is probably the weirdest and most confusing port we began a cruise with. We got dropped off somewhere in the parking garage of the terminal, I lost track how many levels down we went - attendants just kept directing the driver down levels. This is the first time I’ve checked in to a cruise underground. The porters were all helpful and immediately packed luggage onto their carts and there were representatives present to help direct people where to proceed. We were sharing the embarkation with a Holland ship and sometimes we were not sure if we were proceeding in the right direction (for Princess be Holland travelers). Soon enough we were checking in with Princess and received our medallions. We then proceeded through 4-5 other points, going up and down areas and snaking through roped lines seemingly for no reason. I’m used to 1, sometimes 2 stops to board a ship, not sure why we had so many different checkpoints. I thought we were finished when we processed US customs, but I think we had a medallion checkpoint before the ship, and then another one when boarding the ship. As confusing as the constants stops and need to keep going up and down areas was, the whole thing only 30 minutes, so it was tolerable. Once on the ship (about 11am) we switched to airplane mode and got on the Wi-Fi, which was easy enough. We had a little help with the internet station and explored the ship a little. Shortly after 1200 we decided to head to Allegro for lunch. It’s a bit of an adventure because you can’t get there walking thru Deck 6. I think we went up to 7 and then down to 6 to access Allegro. We have been on a ship with a similar experience, so it wasnt to difficult to figure out. The lunch was ok (not great, not terrible). The selection and layout of the buffet at World Fresh Market looked really nice - other ships are really congested with their buffet layout. The Majestic seems to be better - I’ll check it out at a high volume time. After lunch we did the obligatory gym and spa tours. The spa seemed fairly standard. We often get a thermal suite pass on ships, but will skip it on the Majestic. For us, it was weird for the spa not to be collocated with the gym at a deck near the top of the ship. The gym seems a little small for the size of the ship. There looks to be plenty of cardio machines, but anyone looking for space for weights will be disappointed - it’s about the same size and equipment as a well equipped hotel gym. 2 things we had to take care of today we did - excursion credit and speciality dining. We received a coupon book after booking and paying for a Princess excursion. We brought the digital coupon book to the excursions deck and they applied 10% of the cost of our excursion back to us as OBC. We waited for the speciality restaurants to be staffed by someone at the front to get our dining straight. We were originally booked for the French restaurant, which has been replaced by The Catch. Princess changed our reservation at some point to Harmony. The employee at the dining station was able to change it to The Catch at a reasonable time (630). She was also able to change our Crown Grill reservation from 820 to 520. Originally she told us we had to make our own changes on the App or the digital stations around the ship. Don’t take no for an answer - of course they can help with your dining reservations.

Success! I’ll give a run down of the boarding later. It wasn’t too bad - 30 minutes from arrival to the port until we were on the ship. Was a lot of mindless standing and walking in lines without any real understanding of where we were going, but I’ll take 30 minutes! And my traditional first drink on board - mimosa!

They had some really nice rose bushes on display, but the bus drove past that area so we didn’t have an opportunity to walk through or enjoy that area. There were some interesting purple circle flowers that were nice and some other white ones I didn’t recognize. While driving through, there were some we could see from the bus, just not well.

We had a 2 night stay at the Loden Hotel on Melville Street. We booked through Fine Hotel & Resorts program through AMEX Platinum. Using the travel benefits we got $200 off each night (booked one night in 2022 and the other in 2023). It’s a fairly expensive boutique hotel, so using the perks made it affordable. When we checked in, they took care of us by putting us in the same room each night. We got really lucky with a corner room - 2 sides are all windows! We also have a $60 breakfast credit each morning with the adjourning restaurant and $125 hotel credit to spend, so we ended up having dinner at the restaurant as well to use up the credit. The restaurant is called Tableau, it’s French themed and offers breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner. it’s a really nice hotel in a great location. The staff is really friendly, they have a bottle of wine in the lobby for Happy Hour, and a nice gym that noone seems to use. A surprising perk is if you ask the front desk for a ride somewhere in the city they will take you. They dropped us off at a bakery last night and are taking us to the ship this morning. They also have spa services on site, but we didn’t check them out. The bathroom is nice - separate shower and tub. It might be the deepest tub I have ever seen. They also use Molton Brown products - a few small travel size bottles just happened to find their way into our backpack for us to bring on board to use because this will definitely be better than what Princess has in the cabin for us. I would recommend the Loden to anyone staying in Vancouver for a pre or post cruise stop, if it’s within an affordable range for you. It’s in a great location near the cruise terminal, Canada place, downtown, and Stanley park, and away from the known drug areas so it feels safe walking.