donaldsc

You have left off some very important information in your question. Most important and a critical piece of information is what are your port times. Some cruises have horrible port times. Also what are the dates of your 2 cruises? My answer is that I would not take either of the cruises. The big problem with both of them is that neither goes to Glacier Bay. That is probably because those lines do not have Glacier Bay permits. Also the inside passage is pretty but I would not base a choice of AK cruise ship on going through the inside passage. What you see or maybe don't see is more important than traversing the inside passage. Radiance does include Hubbard which is a great glacier that you can get fairly close to but you might not get into Hubbard at all because of ice and then you have no glacier at all. The same problem with glaciers exists for Quantum with the added issue that Dawes while a neat glacier is not as neat as either Glacier Bay or Hubbard. Since you are obviously open to doing a one way cruise I would try to find one that does Glacier Bay and then either Hubbard or Dawes with Hubbard being my 2nd cruise glacier. Hope this helps. DON

That is obvious but the OP did not mention budget as a parameter that he was considering. DON

To the OP - you were treated exactly like someone w Covid should have been treated. DON

Viking was doing that for a while. You could not leave your cabin until the results of your daily test came back. DON

How big is "small". If you are used to traveling on one of the Monstrsities of the Seas class ships a ship with 2000 might be considered small. For us, we consider anything over 1000 to be overly large. You need to define your parameters. DON

There aren't that many cruise lines out there in whatever type of cruise line you are looking for. Just Google them and find out for yourself. It would not take you all that long. BTW - when you find out post if on CC so that other people can benefit from your research. DON

If it comes to it you have 9 days between Sept 12 - 22nd. The distance between the 2 cities is 2164 miles. The road is paved and is an easy drive. That is only 240 miles per day which will even give you some time to a a little bit of sightseeing. DON

What is realistic - absolutely nothing except the name of the ship. It was a TV show and what part of any TV show is ever realistic. DON

Here is the thing. Most people who see n drinks per day assume that the n drinks will all be alcoholic. This is not true. When we have a package we do have some wine, perhaps a beer and I do like my bloody mary with my breakfast. However I also like tonic water during the day and maybe a diet coke. Most of my n drinks are not alcoholic. DON

What I just don't get is that people complain about the cruise ship tours but then they continue to do them instead of going to the effort of finding good private tours. Finding private tours can be a good bit of work but IMHO it almost almost always pays off. DON

A lot of it depends upon whether you are going to only look at your pictures on your computer or maybe your TV or are you going to do actual prints. A photo that may look good on your computer screen will not look as good as an 11x14 print. Also it is a lot easier to edit jpegs on your computer than to deal with files from your phone. I try to get one good 11x14 or larger print from every cruise that I can hang on the wall. DON

I have done several Azamara cruises before they the new owners came on board and we liked them very much. It now seems as if the new back office is incapable or running the cruise line. My question to those who have sailed on Azamara recently is how is the cruising experience once you get on board. DON

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You can be a luddite and never use the medallion for anything but opening your room. You can even request one of the old fashioned key cards for that if you ask. The can give you the medallion but they can't force you to use it. DON

Quick question. How long does it usually take you to eat lunch? DON

I also did not have a problem w smokers on my recent Star Clipper cruise. DON

We are going to be in Japan on a cruise and I have loaded 3 translation aps on my phone to make my life easier. They are SayHi, Google Translate and Translator. I have no idea if any of them are any good and which is better as I don't read or understand Japanese. Are any of them asny good and which will be best. Are thee any others that I should look it. DON

I used them occasionally a while back. Have not used them in a while. My information may well be out of date. DON

Have you tried https://www.seatguru.com/. DON

I am sure that the place has a WEB site. Log onto it and get their phone number and call them. Or else they may have a contact form to get in touch w them directly. DON

I am sure that you already know about these but you can buy a cane with a seat built in. DON

Our cabin was lower down so we had to do the stairs a lot. They do have several cabins available on the deck level that would eliminate most of the stair climbing. DON

No big deal. You can get them when you board. Unless you are worried that someone else will take your medallions and use them to charge stuff on the ship I would not worry. DON

Bottom line is that land tour extensions are always such a major ripoff that you can't possibly imagine it. Cruise lines should be ashamed of themselves for charging so much for land excursions. As an example consider the cost of booking a hotel room. When was the last time you ever booked a hotel room where they charged you by the number of people occupying the room - in other words if there were 2 of you in the room you paid twice as much for the room as compared to what you would pay for one person in the room. Yet that is exactly what cruise companies do when they charge for the excursion by the person and not by the room. You can also be sure that the cruise companies do not pay the rack rate for your room. Also if I were a betting person I would bet that your land excursion says that you get breakfast included. They don't bother to tell you that in many European hotels breakfast is already included w the room cost. I would also bet that the extension may include lunch or perhaps not but almost certainly not include dinner. On the ship you get 3 meals plus as much as many between meal snacks that are not included in the land extension. Cruise land extensions are for the people who don't want to be bothered to do a bit of work to find their own hotel rooms or are afraid to go off by themselves in a city. Save yourself a whole lot of money and don't book the land excursion. DON

How about hiding ducks? DON