donaldsc

4 hours ago, Genghis Khan said:

Most bears hate to have their ears pulled or yanked on and this is an effective way to control a bear until such time as the others in your party can make good their escape. For some reason, this technique seems to only work on male bears and is mostly ineffective on female bears so some other technique may be necessary for those bears.

Please provide a reference on this. It seems so unlikely that this is true that I did an extensive internet search on it and I could not find any reference to this way of controlling a bear.

DON

You can use Google maps to find the answer to that questions.  

To the person who asked "Would it be better/safer to take a taxi or is it okay to walk if we are careful?" - Bergen is a very safe city.

DON

Most of the people wear smart casual on formal night.  However some but not all of the people who wear normally  their baseball caps backward in the MDR turn them forward on formal night.

DON

On 5/25/2024 at 8:59 AM, mnocket said:

Sometimes people confuse the South Shetland Islands with the South Georgia Island.  South Georgia Island is often rated as even more impressive than Antarctica - the South Shetlands, not so much. I'd take the longer cruise in this case and pass on the Shetlands. 

+1.  We did a cruise that went to just the Falklands for 3 days and S Georgia for 8 days.  Not sure of the current impact of avian flu but imagine being on a beach in S Georgia with 300,000 nesting pairs of penguins on just one of the many beaches we stopped at, many many fur seals and a ton (literally and figuratively) of elephant seals.    It was far and above the most wonderful trip I have ever taken.

DON

Just make sure that you know the difference between black bears and brown bears and what to do if you are attacked by one of them.  The responses are different.  As others have told you make lots of noise while you are hiking.  If you accidentally get between a mother and her cubs all bets are off.

If you need more info check out this site - https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=livingwithbears.bearcountry

DON

10 hours ago, Ehg71 said:

My friend and I will be arriving at the Husavik port in early July. We are interested in going to the geothermal sea baths. How do we get there? I’ve seen online that we can get an admission ticket, but there does not seem to be any information as to how we actually get from the cruise port to the thermal baths themselves. Is there a regular bus that goes between the two? if so, how do we pay for this bus ticket? Is it inexpensive to take a taxi there and how does one pay for that? Is there an easy way to get back to the cruise port?  

Try Google Maps or contact them using the address on their WEB site.

DON

6 hours ago, Crusin Karen said:

First time AK cruiser. I’m researching for 9/25 on Princess. All the balconies on all the cruises are sold out. Haven’t been on Princess in years. Is OV ok?  I’m kind of bummed!!! 

Of course it is.  You just will have to go outside on a deck to sit outside and watch  the world go by instead of doing it in your own room.

On 6/1/2018 at 7:08 PM, sherryf said:

 

We booked it through Princess and it was called Underground Mine & Gold Panning. It is at the Juneau Gastineau Mill. I was not able to find a way to book it independently.

If I remember correctly we did that tour w the grandkids off one of the Princess ships.  We and they enjoyed it.  You get to go into the mine which was different from most of the gold tours where they never actually did any mining.

DON

We are doing a B2B 18 day cruise with 7 days on the 1st cruise and 11 on the 2nd.  I did a search here and people talked about a good deal for a large bag of laundry either every 7 days or or every 9 days.  How have they handled this for you on a B2B.  If all the days count I should get either 1 or 2 bags of laundry.  If each of the B2B counts as a separate cruise I will not get any laundry done at all on the 1st cruise and will have to wait until almost the end of the 2nd cruise to get my laundry done.

DON

There is one possible advantage for an on-your-own tour to a location that is not close to the ship.  That is that as long as you are back to the bus pickup on time you do not have to worry about missing the ship.

DON

On 5/29/2024 at 1:43 PM, JF - retired RRT said:

We were in a suite on Discovery a couple of years ago. I brought a print-out of the available suite benefits and was glad I did. I had to show the list to our steward to get anything that was on the list.

Even then, there were some items that we simply didn't get.

 

And the steward didn't get an extra tip.

Do I interpret your post seriously or was it a joke.  You actually showed the steward a print-out of all the suite benefits that you expected to get and because you did not get 100% of them you did not tip him.  Please tell me that you were joking.

DON

I see it as a way of NCLof trying to extort money from passengers after they madea horrible decision of parking their ship out of town in Ward Cove.  Instead of just walking off your ship into town as you can do with most of the lines you get to pay $100 to get there.

Paying $100 for "free" donuts, coffee and beer seems a bit much to me.

DON

InsureMYTrip and Trip Insurance Store are both good brokers.

DON

1 hour ago, sfaaa said:

Endicott Arm.

Not unusual at this time of the year.  The next time you do AK book a cruise pick one that goes to Glacier Bay.  You can be fairly certain of making it into GB as opposed to the other glaciers visited on AK cruises.

DON

Try the Rome2Rio site.

DON

4 hours ago, Theosprey247 said:

Can you give an example?

One example on the AK cruise tours that say that you have 2 days in Denali.  This is what actually happens.  Your train arrives in about noon on day 1.  By the time you get into your room it is probably about 2 in the afternoon.  On day 2 your train leaves shortly after 1 PM in the afternoon.  That means that you have maybe 25 hours in Denali including your sleep time.  

I can come up with other examples of cruise company misrepresentations if you wish,

DON

2 hours ago, Markanddonna said:

Once again, I am not Catholic. Celebrity SAID there was going to be a Catholic mass but got it all wrong. There was no priest. I have been on a number of past sailings with other cruise lines and they gave the priest a free cabin. I believe there is a Catholic organization based in Seattle who organizes priests for cruises. If I were Catholic, I would be very unhappy with this, considering the short of priests, but most are retired who do the cruises. All we requested was a room. My husband and I have led Sunday services twice onboard. Once, we were given the theater and another was a meeting room.

 

 

Do they offer free cabins to officiants of every religion that request them.  Again - I have absolutely no problem with providing space in the theater or in a meeting room to a member of the crew or to a passenger to do a service but I have a very big problem to providing a free cabin to an officiant.  I do wonder if an officiant from a small religion or an unpopular one would be accorded the same privileges accorded to a large religion such as catholics or a large protestant sect.  

I really think that cruise lines should just stay out of the religion business and stick to the cruising business.  It would make it much easier for them.

DON

3 hours ago, navybankerteacher said:

In my experience HAL and Cunard both have Catholic priests on board on all sailings.  

Is the priest being given free passage or paid by the cruise line so that they can perform masses on board.  If so I would find this totally unacceptable since this would mean that my cruise fare is being used to provide a religious service that I do not believe in.  This ignores the many people on board who do not believe in catholicism and whose faiths have been treated very badly in the past by the catholic church.  Except for allowing space on board for layperson passengers the cruise lines have no business supporting any religion including mine.

DON

10 hours ago, Theosprey247 said:

The best place to get information is most often the cruise line's website.  Often you'll hear what people wish were true on forums.

I would totally disagree w this.  If you try to find accurate information on the cruise company's WEB site you will often get inaccurate information and almost always promises that the cruise company wants you to believe will happen on the cruise.  

DON

10 hours ago, wolfie11 said:

I would not recommend Alaska Dream Cruises.  I was on them a few years ago and they are really old (80’s), very basic, and not well maintained.

My first AK cruise was in the ship that is named the Alaska Dream which was neat because it is a catamaran.  However it was a bunch of years ago and it is now owned by a different company (Alan Marine) that has a long history of running AK cruises so my information on the current condition of the vessel is out of date.  You might check out the internet for reviews.

DON

On 4/1/2024 at 2:55 PM, damiross said:

Or just skip the topic when you see it.  The topic may not interest you but it might interest others.

As of May 23 there are 86 posts on the topic of butter.  Hard to believe.

DON

On 5/19/2024 at 3:10 PM, mlmdaisy said:

I like Windstar for the sailing vessels.  Conversely, if Atlas yachts had sails I would like them better, but that wouldn't work very well for Antarctica.  😉

If you like sailing vessels check out Star Clipper cruises.  https://www.starclippers.com/us-dom/.  They are much more pure sailboat cruises than Windstar.

DON

7 minutes ago, Popsy_cruises said:

Thanks Don. I’ve only ever cruised round the Mediterranean and I’m referring to the main cruise lines as those are the ones I’m familiar with. We’ve been told by one person it’s better to cruise on ships with a capacity of around 2000 and another said the bigger ships are much better, hence my post. But previous comments have established, the person who’s been adamant that the small ships are better has also got a lot of their information incorrect. It’s all personal preference but I’m interested to learn about other people’s experiences. 

The people who gave you that info are not 100% wrong although I would say that looking at an AK trip they are mostly wrong.  For many trips to other places there may be something to what they say but not to AK..  There are WEB sites out there that talk about small ship AK cruises.

One more thing that I can not emphasize enough.  Large AK cruise lines are very good at writing up the tour description to make it seem as if you are getting something that is not quite what it will end up being.  Read the cruise descriptions very very carefully and come back to CC if you have any questions before booking.

DON

You need to define exactly what you mean by "big ships" and "small ships".  You can do AK on anything from a ship that holds 50 people to a ship that holds 5000 people which I call the Monstrosities of the Seas ships.  We also do not know your cruising history.  One thing that you should remember that AK cruising is different from cruising to places like the Caribbean.  If you take a Caribbean cruise the on-ship amenities can be important.  When you take an AK what is important is what is outside of the ship and the cruise itinerary.  AK itineraries can be tricky and you meed to read them very carefully.  

The biggest ship of our many AK cruises held about 2500 people and I felt that was bigger than I wished.  Our 1st AK cruise was on a ship that held 50 people and it was wonderful.  Since then we have done 2 more AK cruises on ships that less than 200 people.  They were also wonderful. 

There are 2 especially wonderful things about the small ships.  First of all their trips are sort of flexible.  If the ship is here and there is something really interesting over there the ship may be able to head over to the more interesting spot.  For example on one of our cruises there was a large pod of whales doing bubble feeding so we headed over to watch them for over an hour.  This would never happen on a large ship.  Second you will have short off ship expeditions on Zodiacs which will get you really close to to stuff that even the small ship would not get to.

My ideal ship size is less than 1000 people.  For example we have just booked a cruise to Spain, the Canaries and to northern Africa on a ship that holds 200 people.  I will admit that they are more expensive than the larger ships but I live to travel and I also can afford it.

Hope that this helps a bit.

DON

I would be willing to go on a cruise where EVERYTHING is unbundled.  That way I would only pay for what I want.  As an example on a cruise where drinks alcoholic and otherwise are included I might have 5 or 10 drinks per day including cokes, tonic water, specialty teas and a couple of glasses of wine.  On my recent 8 day cruise where I had to pay for my drinks the bar bill for my wife and I totaled about $20.  

We should have the opportunity to pay for only what we use.

DON