JerseyGirl1007

14 hours ago, LynKev said:

I wanted to post an update that we were finally assigned our Anchorage hotel for our cruisetour.  We will be staying at the Westmark.  

The only reason I know our hotel assignment is that we asked our travel agent to change our dining time on the cruise.  When she sent us an updated booking confirmation, the hotel was listed on the itinerary page.   

When I sign into our itinerary online, it doesn't show the hotel. Our travel agent wasn't notified of our hotel assignment either, so I'm glad we received the updated confirmation. 

Thank you for that info!

Thanks to everyone for all your help!

4 hours ago, shipgeeks said:

Does your booking show your dining assignment?  There could be Early, Late, or My Time.  If you have Early or Late, the exact time will be on your ship card, along with the table number.  If you have My Time (or whatever name HAL uses), you can just show up, or you can reserve times in advance.

Our dining is listed as "Open Seating."  That's all it says.

Thank you so much!  

Total newbie to this (except for one ill-fated very short cruise where everything was handled by someone else) -- we're on HAL during an Alaskan cruise on Nieuw Amsterdam.  I've made reservations for our "special" dinner night, but do I need to make reservations for every dinner before we go?  Am I making a mistake to wait until we're on board, thinking that we just aren't going to know what we'll want until we get there?  We're pretty casual people and aren't interested in eating in the super fancy places every night.  Thank you for any help.  I tried searching the boards for this and I apologize if I overlooking the answer!

Many thanks to everyone for the very helpful advice!  I am so appreciative.

28 minutes ago, Midwest Sunseeker said:

We had a post cruise package and we were given a packet of information on our train ride right before we arrived at our hotel which had the time of our tour. Our package included some meal vouchers for use at the resort.  As I understand you need to buy (add) them to your package.   Ours was part of the package our travel agent put together for a large group.  If you look on CC you will find old posts that recommend you pay as you go, not buy vouchers, so you can walk across the street and buy cheaper meals or share the large meals offered at the resort.  I called the resort prior to leaving home and made reservations so I could use my meal vouchers at the most expensive restaurants.   As it turned out, I was not able to use all of my reserved times because of changes to tour times.  Have a great cruise. 

Thank you so much!  Really appreciate the help.

1 hour ago, LynKev said:

Hi JerseyGirl1007 -

We are doing the same thing that you are, flying in a day in advance of our cruise tour.  We are travelling in late May as well.

Our travel agent had checked with HAL regarding adding an extra night in Anchorage and was told that it would be sold as a package and was sold out for the date we needed.  She said the crazy thing is that we still haven't been assigned our hotel in Anchorage.

So rather than wait on our cruise hotel, I booked a hotel room for the extra night on our own at the Four Points Sheraton downtown. This option was less in cost than either the Westmark or Hotel Captain Cook.  I did not want to be in a position that we would have trouble finding a hotel room for the extra night, and I made sure it can be cancelled if needed.

Our agent suggested we cancel the transfer from the airport with HAL, and we will just take a taxi to our hotel.

We made our final payment on Friday, so I am hoping our Anchorage hotel assignment will show up soon in our itinerary.

Makes sense.  I suspect your TA is much more on the ball than ours appears to be!  Thank you.

1 minute ago, Mary229 said:

That doesn’t make sense.  The dates you gave indicated you were coming in the night before the tour starts, is that right?  If you are coming in earlier you can add on a night through HAL and get transfers from the airport and have the same room for two nights.  I am not a big fan of the Westmark but I am not a big fan of moving hotel to hotel either😉

No, the cruise tour starts 5/23, we're flying 5/22.  HAL provides a hotel for the night of 5/23, we need to book one for 5/22.  I agree about moving around, but I don't know what hotel HAL is putting us up in on 5/22.  I can't seem to find anything on the HAL website that lets me add a day on at the beginning.  Am I missing it?

I apologize if this has been answered, but I haven't been able to find it.  We are booked on a cruise tour starting in Anchorage with one night there, one night in Talkeetna and one night at Denali.  The cruise tour includes the TWT, but I can't figure out what day it is or if I need to book it somewhere.  Likewise, do I need to be worrying about finding something to eat during these days or is food somehow included like it is on the ship?  I'm sorry to sound so ridiculous, but I'm finding the TA we used for booking the cruise isn't very helpful and this is our first cruise ever, so I'm feeling pretty dumb right now. Thanks for any help.

6 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

If you are on the cruise tour your hotel and transfers from the airport are included in the tour package. If you are only sailing you might want to try the Hampton downtown, it is fairly new.  The Captain Cook always gets good reviews 

We're arriving a full day ahead of when our cruise tour officially begins, so we definitely need to book for one night on our own.  Our TA told us that since we're coming in a day early, we're on our own for getting from the airport to our first night hotel and from that hotel to whatever HAL has us booked into for the official first night.  Does that make sense?  I have discovered that she's not the best TA out there, having screwed up suggested flights so badly that we just booked them on our own and plan to do the same for the extra night.

On 2/4/2024 at 2:44 PM, LynKev said:

I read that HAL mainly uses the Westmark in Anchorage, but we could also possibly be assigned to a different hotel.

 

When you booked your cruisetour, when did you get the information on what hotel you would be staying at in Anchorage?  Our final payment is due at the end of February, so I'm assuming it will be after that.   I'm currently looking at flights and coming in a day earlier, so we will need to book an extra night in Anchorage if we do that.  It would be easier to not change hotels.

We're compete newbies to cruising and are in the same situation.  Our tour begins on 5/23, but we're flying in from the east coast on 5/22 and trying to figure out where to stay.