Medevac1971

In 2008, my wife and I did the cruisetour after our 7-day cruise on Celebrity Millennium. As I remembered, the whole land tour was all planned out for us and there were very few opportunities for optional excursions. It was correctly said that the only extras that we had to pay for were our meals (which were very expensive). In 2013, we went back to Alaska with another couple. We rented a motorhome for 12 days and did our own land tour. It was wonderful, doing it that way, and we saw so much more. We rented the motorhome in Anchorage and drove northbound up to Fairbanks, making stops in Talkeetna and Denali. Going southbound, we made stops in Wasilla, Seward, and Homer, before returning the motorhome in Anchorage. From there, we boarded the Sapphire Princess for the 7-day cruise down to Vancouver. It takes a lot of planning, but we saw so much more, plus if we saw something interesting, we could just pull over and not have to unload/load a 50+ passenger bus. Our whole trip was for 3 weeks, but if you don't have that much time to devote to the vacation, then your only option is to go with the cruisetour.

My wife and I just returned from a B2B (14 days) on Regal Princess. We were supposed to get "The Medallion", but got letters before we left that said our stateroom was not located in the Medallion test area. We used the normal card for everything, as usual, but there were people that did have the medallion. I overheard some talking that the medallion would not open their door. The cruise card now has a chip inside of it, so you just need to wave it above a device in the shops to make your purchases. Because of the chip, we were told that they can not punch a hole in the card anymore. Just so you know. The best thing we encountered was the new WiFi. Because we are "Platinum", we had unlimited WiFi access for the full 14 days, at No Charge, and it worked much better than the old system. I was told that a good portion of the corporate IT dept was onboard, trying to work out the bugs, which seem to be many.

Where did you park that was away from the Port Everglades garage and that was 1/2 the price of the garage? For short cruises, the garage is the place, but on longer cruises (we are going on another 20 cruise in Nov), it costs $300 just to park in the garage. On one of our 20 day cruises, we stayed the night before at a Fairfield Inn and took their shuttle. It came out cheaper that way. I have checked the same hotel for this cruise, and the price has gone from $105 per night to $249 per night, plus the shuttle costs both ways.