Northbound vs southbound

Hi all - first time Alaska cruiser w DH, DD9, and DD4, looking at 2019. Thoughts on cruising northbound vs southbound? Itineraries often the same both ways just in reverse, so curious to get any thoughts on what others have liked. Thanks so much!:D

Are you going to add a land vacation? Then decide do you want the cruise to be your relaxation after the land (Southbound) or do you want to relax prior to the land portion (Northbound).

The other thing to look at - port times. I want to say that the port times going Northbound were just a little shorter than Southbound. Then again, it's been 5 years since we did our Alaska vacation/cruise and 7 years since I did my research. I could very well be remembering things incorrectly.

We did a Southbound cruise because we did a land vacation first and used the cruise to somewhat relax a little. Because we used frequent flier miles, it was also ended up being cheaper for us to fly to Anchorage and then take Amtrak to Seattle and fly home from there. Plus we were able to tack on a couple extra days in Seattle for some bonus sightseeing.

Answer with a reason might partly depend on if you are spending any time in Alaska at either end of the cruise. And if so, what time of year are you thinking of? If I was going middle of summer, I wouldn't care. But if in the really early summer, I would probably go north. And in the late fall, go south.

Cruise northbound out of Vancouver...I prefer to cruise towards Alaska rather than away from it...scenery just keeps getting better. I've done three northbound on RCI Radiance (middle and late May and early June) and one roundtrip Vancouver on Radiance (early September) which was the end of the season. Enjoy Alaska.

We will be doing our second southbound cruise in June. We like doing the active stuff first, then relaxing on the ship on the way back to Vancouver, where we'll spend another day in our favorite city before heading home.

I have done both and preferred the Northbound out of Vancouver. As Ashland said, the scenery gets better each day and I like the feel of sailing to Alaska.

Either choice, try and plan extra time before and after the cruise for additional sightseeing. There is lots to see and the cost in time and money for most people to return to the area makes it worth spending a few more days seeing the area while you are there.

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all good comments... One minor point, is that you will have a change of time by an hour - extra hour on the ship going North and lose an hour going South. I like to think that we "got" and extra hour of buffets, entertainment, and towel animals - not sure if that is actually true since they may change up the port times, etc. accordingly. But I like to think that we got a bonus !

We prefer southbound. Yes, it's a longer flight to get there but your shorter flight is at the end of the trip - when you are tired. Secondly, we've found as we get further away from Alaska your mindset gradually changes as well. You're getting closer to home vs closer to where you would want to be.

As others have asked, are you going to spend time on land also? We had a very busy land portion before the cruise portion so we cruised southbound. We planned it that way because we figured we'd be tired after the land portion. Our first day on the ship was a sea day so we could relax after the busy week on land.

Even though we live in Alaska we do Alaska cruises periodically. Gives an excuse to visit a different part of our state. We have done both north and south bound cruises, and last summer we were B2B Seward to Vancouver and then back to Seward. I really don't have any preference regarding direction. I find the scenery great whether it be either a northbound or southbound itinerary.

If you are going very early or very late in the season (May or September) and want to do things on land in Alaska, it would be better to go North in the Spring or South in the fall. Denali Shuttles don't start going into Denali until around May 20 and they don't go to Eielson until June (2017 schedule but 2018 will probably be similar). They end mid-September. Other sites may not be available if you go too early or too late. E.g. I'll be in Seward on May 17 and the road into Exit Glacier probably won't be open yet.

Other than that, I don't think it makes a big difference if the itineraries are the same. They aren't always. For example, HAL goes to Skagway one way and Haines the other. Port times were slightly different.

We went Northbound last summer in August - we started August 8 so everything was still open when we did the land part. We chose Northbound because it fit our schedule better.

This spring I'll be going Southbound - yes, the opposite of what I suggested above, but I'm doing a b2b starting with a repositioning cruise from Yokohama to Seward so Seward is just a turn-around port for me. The transient Orca pods are supposed to be in Seward around then so I'm doing an Orca Quest cruise with Major Marine. My ship will spend the next day in Kenai Fjords and I've booked a kayak excursion there so it doesn't matter that neither Major Marine nor Kenai Fjords Tours has their longer Kenai Fjords tours running that early.