donaldsc

People should be served in the order they arrived and not in the order of how much of a bribe they give to the server. DON

These are 2 sites that are very useful for finding out sea distance and/or cruise times ports.com. http://ports.com/sea-route/port-of-dutch-harbor,united-states/port-of-kodiak,united-states/#/?a=0&b=4809&c=ushuaia&d=Port Lockroy, Antarctica https://www.bednblue.com/sailing-distance-calculator DON

Several posts on this thread have suggested that an Antarctica trip should include South Georgia. Although South Georgia is a wonderful place to visit (I did a Falklands and S Georgia trip where we had 10 days just on S Georgia) and will be the trip of your life but including it as part of an Antarctica trip is a major mistake. Look at a map. If you do just Antarctica you cruise due south from Ushuaia and the round trip distance from Ushuaia to Antarctica is about 1400 nm and takes about 1 1/2 days each way of sea time off your trip. Yes the southern ocean gives you the opportunity to see lots of birds and some icebergs but you are doing the cruise to be on the southern continent and the 3 days to and from time is a necessary waste of time. Now look at the map if you add South Georgia. You have to cruise east to South Georgia and then southwest to Antarctica and the 1400 nm cruise to get to your destinations becomes a 2900 nm cruise. You end up spending a much larger percentage of your trip time getting there as opposed to being there. You end up with maybe 2 or 3 days maximum on South Georgia. The island deserves more time. South Georgia or maybe South Georgia and the Falklands where you spend 2 or 3 days on the Falklands plus your time on South Georgia is only 2300 nm and be a trip by itself without visiting Antarctica. You then do another trip just to Antarctica which as I said above is only 1400 nm so you end up with enough time on Antarctica. I will add that trying to do the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica makes even less sense. True that doing the 3 places only adds a minimal distance traveled to about 3100 nm but you end up with only a minimal amount of time at each place. Too many people just don't bother to look at maps and to consider sea days when planning cruises. DON

We did the entire inside passage on our small ship 160 passenger cruise from Sitka to Vancouver on the American Queen ship Ocean Victory. It was a great cruise. DON

Looking at their site it appears that Alaska Shore Excursions is not a tour company but a tour consolidator. If I am correct, be aware that there is a major difference between a tour operator and a tour consolidator. DON

Ask yourself this question - if you paid for your Haven cabin and everyone else who booked a Haven brought a friend or so to the pool or bar what would you think. I know what I would think. DON

Word of mouth is the best way to find a good TA. In our case a friend of ours who lives to cruise recommended the one we now use. It has worked out well for us. You also have to decide for yourself what is more important for you. Many people consider the best deal or the best rebate to be most important. While this is important to us we consider the level of service and how the TA handles it when bad stuff happens and it will to be as important as price. DON

https://www.alaska.org/destination/fairbanks/museums. Fountainhead Car Museum and UA Museum are just great. Been to both of them several times. DON

Check out the art work at the Alaska Native Medical Center - https://firstamericanartmagazine.com/alaska-native-medical-center. The art work that is exhibited is wonderful. There is also a shop in the hospital that has sell art work by the native peoples that is very good and fairly priced and all the profits either go back to the artist with the hospital getting a cut. We have bought lots of stuff there. Just be aware that the craft shop has limited open hours and credit cards are not accepted although they do accept checks. DON

Did you read your cruise contract. The part about cancellations basically says that they can cancel. modify or switch the order of ports or port times for any reason whatever or even cancel the entire cruise and there is nothing that you can do about it. Sometimes they can get a good offer for a complete ship charter and cancel the entire cruise. Doesn't happen all that often although more so now than it used to be because of staffing issues. As LHT29 said on the previous post if you can't handle this uncertainty a land trip is a better alternative. DON

Inquiring or just nosy minds have to ask - why did you book such a late cruise? Can you change it? DON

The problem w inside observation areas is that they are inside. That means that you will be looking at scenery through glass that is probably dirty. Also the glass may be slightly or very tinted which creates problems with taking photographs. In addition you have difficulty moving around to get the best viewing area. You really need to plan to be outside. DON

I would assume that they have at least overflown the road past Pretty Rocks to get some idea of the condition of the road. Of course once they get the bridge completed so that they can get construction equipment past the closure I am certain there will be more maintenance issues to be dealt with. I certainly would not expect the road to be open immediately after the bridge is completed. I wonder if the cruise companies are telling their passengers that their visit to Denali right now will be severely impaired. Would you book a CruiseTour that says that they will get to visit Denali when in reality you don't get very far into the park. We all know that many of the visitors to AK are totally unaware of the issues impacting their tour. DON

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/01/13/construction-to-start-on-bridge-to-be-suspended-over-landslide-site-in-denali-national-park/. To be started in May. Planned completion date in time for the 2025 season if you really believe that it will not be delayed. I wonder what the condition of the rest of the road is? DON

You can not assume that you will have the same cabin personnel on both parts of your B2B. Tip at the end of each leg. DON

We are flying from Las Vegas to San Juan to pick up a Viking cruise in about 2 weeks. When we booked our Delta flights several months ago our options to get to the ship were Vegas-JFK- San Juan or Vegas-Atlanta-San Juan. Our options for our return home were San Juan-Minneapolis-Vegas or San Juan-Atlanta-Vegas. The layover times for going through JFK going and through Minneapolis coming home were very tight and both JFK and Minneapolis were susceptible to snowy weather issues. However the better flights through Atlanta were about $250 more expensive each so we decided to take our chances on the bad flights. Yesterday my wife suggested that we check w Delta to see if they would give us the the better Atlanta connections at the same price as our bad booked connections. To my great surprise they did so and we now have plenty of time to make our connection to San Juan (2 1/2 hours versus 1 hour) and it doesn't snow very often in Atlanta and there was no up charge to change the flights. The moral of the story is to always recheck your airline flights and if you don't like the connections you selected several months ago they might change them now. DON

What I just do not get is why so many people get overstressed if they do not get a good shopping experience on a cruise. Is shopping the only reason that they go on the ship. Seems to me that the experience of visiting interesting places should trump the need to shop any day. Although I personally am not interested in doing many of the on ship experiences even though should be more important than what merchandise the stores on board the ship carry. Now I realize that that if you have a lot of OBC your have to get rid of it somehow. I have bought 3 or 4 fairly expensive for me watches on board and my wife has also bought one or two. But if not for unused OBC the amount of money I would spend at any of the on board stores would be zero. Even wandering around shops on land is to me a waste of time. I do try to buy some local art or craft items on cruises but I never ever set foot in the large tourist oriented shop. Different strokes etc. I guess. The ships would not waste on large amounts of on board space if they did not generate a lot a revenue. DON

How expensive would a car rental be. With a car you can stop wherever you want to. Just remember that you all need passports to go into Canada. DON

Yes but the OBC has been paid for regardless of whether you use it or not. The OP did not present alternative uses of the OBC. Perhaps they didn't have anything else that they wanted on board. They just talked about the excessive prices for the stuff which was still free. I have bought 3 watches on board that were expensive to burn OBC since neither my wife or I were interested in anything else on board. DON

While the on board price for the watch and necklace might have been over priced as compared to alternative on land prices I regard anything bought on board w OBC as free so they really were not over priced. DON

If you want rain protection and body protection you might consider this sword umbrella https://www.trueswords.com/Black-Umbrella-Sword-17221 DON

I don't have a mobility problem but if I did and the money was not as issue my attitude would be that it would be better to rent the scooter and not use it much or at all instead of not renting it and wishing that you did. DON

Heidi who knows whereof he speaks said to call the cruise company and not your TA. When you call them make sure to have them send you an e-mail confirming what they say. DON

Your best bet would be to use the tour details from the broker site to try to figure out who is actually doing the tour. Then book directly with the tour company. They then don't have to split their fee with the broker site and also if there is an issue you will be dealing directly w the tour company. Broker site can be useful if they are good but they can also be horrible. DON

We have been using Allianz for years and the one time that we made a claim they treated us well. One eventual problem that you will have w Allianz is that when you reach the magic age of I believe 81 the cost of the annual plan increases significantly. On my last purchase I had to buy it earlier than I really wanted because I would have turned 81 before my cruise. DON