Which would you pick: Celebrity, Princess, or HAL

We are tentatively planning a small group cruise for a friend's birthday in June of 2019. We will have two parties of two adults, and one party of four (with 2 children, then 9 and 13). First cruise for the kids. We live in Oregon. Preference would be roundtrip from Vancouver, though Seattle is also an option. Preference is the week of June 15, which is right after kids get out of school, though we could go later in the summer (my guess is it gets more expensive in July and August?).

 

I've sailed both Celebrity and HAL before and had good experiences with both; I preferred the food on HAL but my Celebrity cruise was a charger (Blues Cruise) and so the food was secondary to some extent. It looks like a balcony on any of these lines will run us about 6 grand. I've heard Princess is the ideal ship to Alaska; unfortunately, their itinerary at this time is one way (better for ports, I'm sure, but more expensive when you add in flights).

 

Ships are:

HAL Noordam (I've been on this ship and loved the size)

Celebrity Eclipse

Royal or Golden Princess (depending on whether we do North or Southbound)

 

So, those of you who've done Alaska before, especially with a mixed-age group (two of our friends are in their 60s); which would you choose?

We took an HAL 2 week tour,7 days land ,7 days sea.It was excellent .Our tour guide on a tour in Denali was a college Professor from the University of Oregon .

We took an HAL 2 week tour,7 days land ,7 days sea.It was excellent .Our tour guide on a tour in Denali was a college Professor from the University of Oregon .

Ha! That would be awesome since we live in Eugene :)

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So a Naturalist that points out whales and bears while sailing is not of interest?

 

 

We would prefer to enjoy the quiet and look for animals with our own eyes. We saw whales that way occasionally and enjoyed it (we also went whale watching in ISP and loved it). We didn't go to any of the "shopping" lectures. There were lectures from a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman that my mom went to and enjoyed. We had a naturalist aboard when we visited Hubbard Glacier. We had a great guide in Skagway that chatted about the history, land, etc. on the way to Emerald Lake in the Yukon, and a very chatty driver from Seward to Anchorage. We had 3 young kids with us too. It was enough for us.