I just have to say I just found this thread and read through all five pages and it's SO helpful.
I thought I was an early planner but you've got me beat. We are doing the same Princess itinerary as you but we're doing it a few weeks after you. I booked the cruise in December and hadn't thought much about it, but now that I'm getting closer to booking time for airfare I started trying to decide how I want to do the land portion in Alaska before the cruise.
We knew we didn't want to do one of the cruise line land tours because they seem expensive for what you get and we also like to have some autonomy over how our days look. Prior to finding this thread my plan was to fly into Fairbanks and take the Denali Star all the way to Anchorage stopping in Denali for 2 nights and Talkeetna for a night along the way. This thread has me second guessing my entire plan and now I may be back to square one.
What I do know for sure is that we will probably fly in Monday or Tuesday for a cruise that leaves on Saturday. Talkeetna is a must for me because I want to do the flightseeing out of Talkeetna that includes the glacier landing. This thread also has me intrigued by the Matanuska Glacier hike and the Kenai Fjords day trip so I need to look into them a bit more. Maybe I'll fly into Anchorage instead of Fairbanks and I'll only go as far north as Talkeetna and just cut Denali out. I was really excited about the train ride from Denali to Talkeetna, but I think if I take the train from Anchorage to Whittier I'll get a lot of the same experience.
If anyone has any tips on anything I might be missing my ears are open. I'll come back to this thread in a few more days when I iron out exactly what I want to do. We still have about two weeks before we need to start booking airfare so plenty of time to change my mind 100x 😉