14 Days “Journey to Alaska” w/pics

My DW did some shopping at the port, but while she shopped I took this pic of the giant drop.

Next we walked to Yale Town, it was not a small walk, but not a really long walk either, I will say long enough. Well we finally made it to the brewery.

These are the beers they had on tap.

The beers were good here not great, but good. I would however drink them over Budweiser or Bud LT. Over all I would come back again.

The winner at this brewery was...........:confused:............

Loading Bay IPA

Well after the brewery it was time to return to the ship, but chose not to walk back we got a taxi, we arrived in no time.

Customs was easy, but everyone on board had to be seen. When it was close to boarding time they called out about six names that did NOT see customs instructing them to do so. If my memory serves me correct we left about 1/2 hour late due to the fact some people had not been seen by customs. Here are some pics of our sail way from Vancouver.

Well after dinner in the steakhouse, a few more cocktails/beers, and a couple of karaoke songs it was off to the piano bar. We know like everyone else the piano bar is only as good as the piano player. Now I have seen/heard great piano players, but they need to be fun themselves. In fact, Gary Pickus was not only a great piano player, but he also made it super fun. After the first night we knew we would be spending a lot of our late nights there. Gary is a songwriter by trade, and could come up with words on the fly, he was very talented. Furthermore, the cocktail waitress that was in the piano bar was from Serbia her name was Soyna, and she wanted a song from Neil Diamond "Holly, Holy". Well Gary sort of knew the song, but did not know the song on the piano (if you know what I mean). He was like "sorry Soyna, but that was the best I could do for never playing it...LoL". Well two nights later first port day, Gary and the rest of us finally could use WiFi (not the slow/no WiFi on the ship), but good WiFi on land. Well he downloaded Holly, Holy and by that night he was playing it for Soyna, now that is talent. Gary played until around 12:30am if people were there which was most nights, however a few nights was just until 11:30-12 am. Well that was embarkation day and we were ready for bed, so good night.

 

Meet Gary;

Ok I mess things up with pics so his Gary

So for anybody that is interested in drink prices I took pics of a few of the menus w/prices. My DW and I was going back and forth on getting Cheers. When it was all said and done we opted not to get it because it was 14 days and did not think we could get our monies worth. Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner, we spent about $989 in drinks which included coffee's from the coffee bar, and bottles of Gatorade, we had a case of bottled water ordered prior to cruise. The total package was around $1,700 w/tips so yes we made the right call.

 

 

 

 

 

If you are a beer snob like me there was a few choices for you. They had one stout which was ok (had way better), and couple of IPA choices (Angel City, and Sam Adams Rebel IPA), and the always go to Sierra Nevada pale ale.

 

OK my first review and yes I've had some issue doing it, I hope you will still read. So here is more missing pics.:rolleyes:

Day #2 our first full sea day. So now we could explore the ship, and find our hot spots. There are a lot of pics of the Carnival Splendor across the internet, so I did not bother taking a lot of pics of the ship, but I got a few.

 

 

 

The Whale Tail

 

 

 

Us on our AFT balcony

 

 

Well I know this review is going slow, but I hope you are enjoying it.

Again more missing pic.

 

 

Also another good thing on the sea day brunch was the broken egg sandwhich a very close second to the corned-beef hash.

I read the broken egg sandwich is on the new port day breakfast menu. Is it also available on the brunch menu and if so are there other new items on the brunch menu?

Your review has been a fun read, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the review. We were very seriously considering this cruise. In the end someone at my work quite so it was a good thing that we didn't go since we would of been down two people at work.

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Enjoyed reading your review.

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I read the broken egg sandwich is on the new port day breakfast menu. Is it also available on the brunch menu and if so are there other new items on the brunch menu?

Your review has been a fun read, thanks for sharing.

Ok you jogged my memory, the broken egg sandwich was on the regular menu not the sea day brunch. As for what is new I can not tell you because this was my first time on board with the sea day brunch. Plus I can not remember what was on the regular breakfast menu.

Ok now where were we at............:confused:........... oh yeah we just sailed out of Vancouver. Well the rest of the night was like the others. We ended up on deck #5 AFT. We would go to the cool lounge for a little bit were I would sing a couple of songs.

Then we would head over to the El Morocco lounge for some Punch liner adult comedy.

Then yep you guessed it...the piano bar to see Gary.

Then it was off for a night cap at the casino bar to visit one of the best bartenders on the seven seas. His name was Izze, and he was from the Philippines. My wife was getting 7 and 7's until Izze was like no it's called a fourteen...LoL From there they were coming up with odd names for her drinks. For instants, she was drinking dirty martini's also in which they ended up being called the 'Dirty Izze'...LoL.

Here is Izze

Then off for a slice of pizza, or shall I say the whole pizza. Almost every night we were getting pizza and the guy would try and give up a whole pizza each. We were like no we need 1 slice each, he in return would say "come on take the whole pizza your on vacation". Then we would just take one pizza, and split for two slices each. Then it was time.....Good Night.

Day #5 another sea day. Good Morning, well this was another restful day at sea, and more of the same. We did some trivia rounds, listened to some of the entertainment, and ate a lot. Which by the way, had to be washed down with some cold beverages. I believe this night was other playlist show (I forgot which one). One thing about these shows that I thought was cool was how the video and the singers/dancers would interact with each other, great job there. Then the normal nightly routine....Good Night.

I read the broken egg sandwich is on the new port day breakfast menu. Is it also available on the brunch menu and if so are there other new items on the brunch menu?

 

Your review has been a fun read, thanks for sharing.

Nothing new on the brunch menu.

 

Meet some of the cast

 

The women on the left is my step-daughter and next to her is her husband.... :D:D

The women on the left is my step-daughter and next to her is her husband.... :D:D

Where you on this cruise? I did see her around the ship with someone that appeared to be her mom. In fact, I was in the same Mongolian Grill line one day. Well I will say that the whole cast on the ship was very talented, dancing and singing.:cool:

Great start, keep it coming

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Great start, keep it coming

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Slowly, but surely. For some reason my boss has a problem with me doing my cruise review on company time:confused:. However, I am sneaking a few post here and there.

Following

Slowly, but surely. For some reason my boss has a problem with me doing my cruise review on company time:confused:. However, I am sneaking a few post here and there.

Been there done that

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Day #6 Icy Strait Point (Hoonah) This port was a late one we did not even arrive until 2pm, so we did some stuff around the ship. Well one thing we did was hang out on the balcony, and take in some of the awesome views Alaska had to offer.

Great review and photos!

The next thing we did was head to the El Morocco lounge.......:confused:........ wait it not night time yet...LoL Well they had a cooking demo there were they had prepared a fish dish (YuK), well at least for me that is because I do not like fish/seafood. My DW on the other hand does like it so we went to watch. There was about 6 people that got to come up and taste this delicious meal just prepared by the head chef of the MDRs and the steak house head chef. I did get to talk to a couple of the people that got to try this dish and they were like it was fantastic. There were others that I just saw eating the dish like it was their last meal on the cruise, so I assumed it was pretty good all around:D. Well in the end my DW and I were glad we went because we got to met the mascot of our cruise his name was "El Tigre". My DW and I believe the reason we had a safe and great weather cruise was because of El Tigre, thanks for watching over us El Tigre. His master is one of our very own CC family, Habubabu so glad to meet both of them. Here is some of the pics we took at the cooking demo, oh and El Tigre also. If you look close at pic #2 you will see in the back ground one of the fun squad team, her name was Natalia (I believe I spelled it right), everyone say "hola Natalia". The whole fun squad team was pretty fun this time around great job to the CD Staffie and her team.

Just like all the ports we had no reason to run off the ship when we docked. So after the cooking demo we leisurely went for some lunch on the Lido deck. I'm sure since we were not rushing I stood in the long line at the Mongolian Grill, again yummy. I cannot remember if it was this day, but one of the days they had a 'Double cheese potato' soup, that was very yummy. I was like I'm full from the Mongolian grill, but I going to get a bowl of that. My wife was like it's too thin, it should be a thicker soup, I did not care that I was too full or it was too thin I got a bowl:p. Well 1/2 hour or so after they were letting people disembark the ship we decided to disembark. Again, just like the rest of the ports we had an easy time because of waiting to disembark. I was very excited about getting into town because they had a brewery there. Here is what we saw when we first disembark the ship.

Well we started to walk to the shuttles they had, which by the way was $5 round trip pp. You have to walk down this trail that led to the shuttles, not real long but long enough. The first thing we saw on the walk way were these caterpillars they were in the trees, and had these spikes looking things on them.

Next we took some pics of us with the ship in the back ground.

Here in this pic you can see the new dock they build for the cruise ships. However, from what we heard it was a much further walk now from where they tendered in. Also, along this trail they had camp fires w/chairs around them (wish I would have gotten a pic). It was like a camp fire site, walk about 100 ft then another I guess there was about 4-5 of them down this trail. Then you get to the spot were you get the shuttle here is what we saw there.

Well we got our $5 wrist bands and was heading to the brewery in town woo hoo. Well let me back up this part of the story. About 300 days before our cruise Carnival changed our itinerary. One great change was we were scheduled for Hubbard Glacier, but now we were headed for Glacier Bay National Park:cool:. The other changes were just times and days for certain ports. Well back to my review, Icy Strait Point was one of the changes. I cannot remember the day we were suppose to come here, but it was not this day. So here is were I started to cry:loudcry:, we got all the way into town when we discovered the brewery was not open:eek:. In fact, there was a lot of stuff not opened because Icy Strait Point must not have gotten the message, or at least that's what the locals were telling us. So we settled for the local bar, not the same, but they had Alaskan brewery beer so all was good. After we got there, and I saw they had Icy Bay IPA I wiped the tears from my face and proceed to drink. The name of the bar was the Office, it was small but if we lived there we would quickly become regulars. Here are some more pics from there.

In this port they had one grocery store, and our tour guide said the store's motto was "if we do not have what you are looking for then, you do not need it"...LoL I thought that was funny. Well not too much else about this port it was not the best port I had been to. I told my wife though you watch the next time we come through here they will have a Tanzanite International...LoL. Oh well so long Hoonah, I hope to post more over the weekend, ciao for now.