donaldsc

This is an extremely wise answer especially your comment about luxury except that I would very slightly disagree w you. Try to do the Falklands, S. Georgia AND Antarctica just does not work in my opinion because you do not get enough time in any of the 3 places. You should have at least 3 days in the Falkland and 5 or 6 days in South Georgia to have enough time to see the places properly. On my last trip we had 3 days in the Falklands and I think 8 or 9 days in South Georgia. This means 9 days minimum and maybe even 12 days for these 2 islands. Most longer trips are say 21 or 22 days total and it is hard to find one that is longer than that because of costs so lets be optimistic and say 25 days total. You need 1 day to get from Ushuaia to the Falklands and 1 1/2 day to get from the Falklands to South Georgia so this means your trip total is almost 15 days before you even start heading for Antarctica. For a 25 day trip this will leave you only 10 days to get from South Georgia (2 days), gety back from Antarctica (1 1/2 days) and just 7 days in Antarctica. You just don't get enough time in any location. My suggestion is not to try to see all three places in 1 trip. Do Antarctica in one trip and the Falklands / South Georgia in another trip although it will be hard to find a trip that will do just these 2 islands. One more thing to add although you implied it but did not say it explicitly. You do EVER want a trip with more than 200 people on it and you really want one that has less than 100 people. This is because of the 100 people on the continent rule. If you have 100 people you can be on land for as long as you want. If you have more than 100 people you will have 100 on the continent and the rest of them waiting to do something. Hope that this helps. DON

Good point although my attitude is that if the lobster does not come from New England it isn't lobster. In addition although it is obviously not possible on board a ship is that if I did not see it swimming before they popped it into the boiling water it still isn't real lobster. I am fussy about my lobster although on my recent Viking Ocean cruise on the surf and turf dinner I had 5 or 6 of the pseudo lobsters. I compromised my principles. The fact that it was a no limit and no cost as many as you could eat dinner helped a bit. Funny story here. I come from Las Vegas which is the home of the all you can eat buffet. For a short time and many years ago one of the casinos had a surf and turf buffet which did have live maine lobster as as part of the buffet. I went several times and enjoyed it and I did not make a pig of myself. I understand that the record for lobster consumption at the buffet was more than 20 lobsters which might have been one of the reasons that the lobster buffet did not last long. DON

Is the 6 oz lobster really lobster or something else? A lobster so small is ridiculous. There are regulations in some New England states to taking small lobsters and I would bet that a lobster of this size falls under the limit. DON

I see your point. I experienced the same very warm conditions on a previous AK trip compounded by the problem that the B&Bs that we stayed in did not have air conditioning because you just don't need AC in AK - until you do. I see that you are from Florida where you don't have cold. One year I spent a week in Fairbank and points north to do aurora photography. If you really want cold try one of those trips. I took every bit of cold weather clothing that I owned and bought more and I also went through a bunch of those chemical hand warmers. Try -20 w/o the wind chill. LOL!!! Great photos though. DON

I would hope that you have a TA who handles large groups. If you do - that is their job to take care of. DON

According to a very famous British playwriter - "A Rose by any other name is still a rose" although I am slightly misquoting the text. DON

Check out Amazon Pill Packs. https://pharmacy.amazon.com/pillpack. Took me ~ 5 minutes to find them on Amazon. DON

One thing that worries me is how long are you really in Denali. I would like to know the arrival time on day 1 in Denali and the departure time on day 2. In many cases you get into Denali around 12:00 noon on day 1 and leave Denali around 2 PM on day 2. In my book this means that you really have 1 day in Denali - a short end of the day on day 1 and a short beginning of the day on day 2. This is not enough time in Denali. Another thing to consider is that first of all with that schedule you don't have enough time to get into the really good parts of Denali. Even if you theoretically had the time the only road into the park is closed at mile 43 so you can't get to the good parts anyway. IMHO going to Denali under the circumstances that I have described may not be worth doing. Is it possible for you to find a cruisetour that does not go into Denali and makes better use of your time. One final thing. You really need to look closely at the port times for all the places that you will visit. The cruise lines can be really sneaky about port times. DON

In my opinion Haines is a better port than Skagway. However this is based on being in Haines off a small ship and being the only ship in town. Not sure how it would be if Haines was hit with several larger ships although I doubt if a Genormous of the Seas type ship would dock there. I really like the place, DON

It is a Clipper Cruise tradition. DON

Totally agree but based on the luggage that is available for sale now almost everyone seems fallen for the 4 wheel stuff. My wife has a 4 wheel suitcase and I have a 2 wheel bag. I hate her bag. I will add that soft sided luggage tends to be lighter in general but hard side luggage will protect your stuff better. There is very light hard sided luggage but it tends to be pricey. I will also add that I know people who buy cheap luggage as opposed to the better more expensive stuff. They assume that all luggage breaks eventually and if the cheap stuff lasts 4 or 5 trips they just throw it away and buy new cheap stuff. There is something to be said for that philosophy. DON

Way way way too much!!! It isn't the Caribbean so it won't be hot so you don't need to change every day. You don't need special dinner clothing. Lounge clothing - is that some special type of clothing that you think that you need? Leave it home. I suspect that you are also taking more shoes than you need although you have not mentioned that. Wear your largest pair when you board the ship. Then you only need to pack 1 or maybe 2 pair of shoes. As a side note - one pair of shoes should be waterproof. It probably will not be that cold in AK and you can check weather forecasts before you leave so you are probably taking too much cold weather clothing. Also if you have down clothing they pack down wonderfully. Do you really need 2 large backpacks since you will only be using them on day trips and how much do you need on a day trip. You can even eliminate the need for a day pack if you have a photo or fisherman vest w lots of pockets. Hoe that this helps. DON

I just came off a Viking cruise. It was great and one reason was that the pool area was very pleasant - no live bands; no loud or unlistenable music; no bad movies that you couldn't pay me enough to see; also almost no loungers with unread paperback books on them. Also no trivia or art sales or jewelry events. There are many of us who like that sort of atmosphere and who do a lot of cruising. There are other reasons besides those things that I wouldn't cruise on Princess or other ships of that type, The last time we cruised Princess was when we took our 10 year old granddaughter to AK and it work for us or else I wouldn't have done that cruise. I have booked a long Japan cruise on Princess this fall because of the itinerary and I sure hope that I will nol be subjected to the c**p described above. At least if they do have that stuff this cruise is a port intensive cruise so I will be off the ship for most of the day. If that makes me an old grouch so be it. I also have to admit that when we did our recent cruise on one of the Clipper Lines sailboats the Conquest of Paradise" a 1992 song recorded by Greek composer Vangelis that they played when they raised the sails was pretty cool but they also played it ONLY when they were raising the sails and not all the time. Really cool sail setting music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ufkMTshjz8 DON

I know that we are not supposed to criticize writing style but here goes. The moderator is free to remove this post. Your post is very hard to read and I suspect that some people who might get useful information from it would say "forget it". I would suggest shorter paragraphs and double spacing between paragraphs. It would make your post much more readable. DON

A restaurant that the locals don't want to go into must be a really great place. There is one in Vegas about 14 miles from my home so I could go there anytime and see how bad it is. I looked at the menu and it did not seem any different from any of the other many locally owned Mexican places. DON

I can't help you w this problem but I do have a suggestion for anyone who asks any cruise line any question - get the answer in writing. If they will not give it to you in writing consider it a none answer. I sure hope that you sort it out. We did a bunch of cruises on Azamara before but I have not cruised w them post Covid. Sounds like the new owners are having some issues. DON

I am perhaps incorrectly that all cruise line tour sites work the same but Princess has the option of looking at detailed excursion details for every cruise including the time spent at every location. Have you looked for the same info on NCL. I will bet that it is there. DON

Excellent post!!! A lot of what you say can also apply to AK cruises although not as badly. Half day in port itineraries where you are in port from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM or from 2:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Don't even get me started at half day stays in many of the AK ports while you get from 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM in Skagway which in my opinion is the worse port on the AK port list. The saving grace for AK is that you are almost never far from the ship. The other thing that I wonder about is when people on an AK cruise who have done all of their cruising in the Caribbean get all up tight about what the entertainment and other features are on the ship. I always reply that in AK the entertainment is what is outside of your window and not what is going on aboard the ship. DON

Just relax. On our last on thus far only Viking Ocean cruise we had problems with booking the restaurants early. I called Viking directly and they made my 2 allowed bookings over the phone although not at the times that we really wanted. Once we got on board everything sorted itself out. On the days that we had prebooked we got to the restaurant when we really wanted to eat and were seated with only a short wait. It was also very easy to book additional seatings as they had a table set up outside of the buffet to make dinner reservations. We ate at Manfridies once and also at 3 of the 4 chef's table restaurants. DON

Is this conclusion based on a sample size of 1 cruise, a couple of cruises or many cruises. If the sample size is one cruise the conclusion drawn from the data is dubious. As many of the respondents have said - it depends. DON

Unless I am wrong my understanding is that if you remove the "suggested" automatic gratuity the tips you pay to individuals have to be put into the general tip pool and be split between everyone in the pool as per the formula. So what you are doing is an wasted exercise in futility. DON

I thought that TSA pre was available only when flying from a US airport. Is it also available when flying from a European airport to the US? DON

You might just get a Kindle and check out a bunch of books from your local library. I always check out a bunch of them as I don't know what I will want to read on the cruise. Lots easier than lugging heavy "real" books. DON

My question and I have not bothered to check it out is whether the cruise companies are telling customers about the road closure or do they let them find out when they get to Denali. We all know based on some of the posts on CC that some people do not bother to do any research and they believe everything that the cruise companies or other travel related companies tell them. DON

This is an interesting read. Consider this before you decide to visit Denali or take a CruiseTour that visits Denali. https://www.earthtrekkers.com/denali-road-closure-things-to-do/ DON