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TRIP REPORT: Northbound Alaska on Radiance of the Seas 8/24/18


Mountaineer0313
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First of all, let me preface this by saying this was by far the best vacation of my entire life. If you are on the fence about Alaska, just do it! My husband, who is totally against vacations and spending money said more than once that it was worth every dollar spent.

Now, onto the review. I'll do this in segments, as it will probably be long and full of pictures (assuming I know how to do that).

Travelers: Myself, Elizabeth, 36 years old, and my husband Luke, who is 32. We live in Morgantown, WV (Let's Go Mountaineers!) with our 6 dogs and 7 cats on 2.5 acres in the country. We are not beach people, nor are we "people" people ( I work in retail and we own our own lawncare business and customers are extremely exhausting sometimes). I chose Alaska because we both very much like beautiful scenery and cool weather, and I knew that if I tried to get my husband to the beach, that would be a big, fat NO.

I booked over a year ago, and spent countless hours on this board and online in general researching what we should do and where we should go. I'll give a brief overview of our itinerary and what we did in each port before I get on to the nuts and bolts of it.

Thursday, Aug. 23rd- Arrived in Vancouver. Stayed at the Days Inn Downtown.

Friday, Aug. 24th- Vancouver and sail away

Saturday, Aug. 25th- Sea day

Sunday, Aug. 26th- Ketchikan. Did the Wilderness Exploration and Crab Feast. Highly recommended.

Monday, Aug. 27th- Icy strait Point. We just walked around, took the shuttle into town and walked back to the port..

Tuesday, Aug. 28th- Juneau. We did whale watching with Jaylee's Alaska. Highly recommended.

Wednesday, Aug. 29th- Skagway. Rented a car and drove into the Yukon Territory. HIGHLY recommended.

Thursday, August 30th- Sea day

Friday. August 31st- disembark in Seward, drove the Seward highway to the Alyeska hotel in Girdwood, where we stayed til Sunday.

Saturday, Sept. 1st- drove to Whittier and then to Hope, where we met a friend of ours who lives in Wasilla but was fishing the Kenai river that week.

Sunday, Sept. 2nd- drove to Anchorage and flight home at 8 pm.

 

Day 1- Arrival in Vancouver.

We flew out of Pittsburgh at 6 am, with an arrival in Vancouver at 10 am Vancouver time. Customs was kind of long, however we soon got our luggage and immediately found a cab who took us to our hotel. We stayed at the Days Inn Downtown Vancouver. I chose this hotel because of location and price. It was the cheapest downtown hotel I found. From reading through threads here, some said that the Days Inn was a little far away from the cruise port, however, it wasn't. It was about 2 blocks downhill. There were plenty of restaurants and shopping in the area. hotel room was small, but for 1 night, it was perfectly adequate. We had lunch a little cafe and walked around. We had dinner at the Butcher and Bullock, which was attached to our hotel. The hotel gave us a card for 20% off our meal, however we totally forgot to use it. But the thought was nice :)

After dinner we were totally ready for bed, since we got up at about 2 am, so we watched some TV and went to sleep.

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Day 2- Vancouver and Sail Away.

This morning, we got up super early and walked to Gastown because I wanted to see the steam clock. I will say, from two people who dislike big cities, we really enjoyed Vancouver. It was clean and safe and had so much to do. I would've liked to have had an extra day here.

We packed up our stuff and headed to Canada Place at about 11. We walked with our luggage, and it was very easy to get there. You get to the pier, drop off your luggage, and then get in line to check in and get your Sea Pass cards. After that you are sent to security and customs and we were on the ship by about 12:30. We went to the Windjammer and had lunch and went to make our main dining room reservations and our 3 night dining package reservations and it was announced that rooms were ready at 1, so we went to find our room. Bags were already there so I unpacked and we sat on the balcony for a little while until our muster drill.I can only post 6 pictures apparently at a time, so I'll just post some pictures from Vancouver and sail away on the next few posts.

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Day 3-Sea Day

I didn't take any pictures on this day. We pretty much just hung out on deck, ate our weight in food, and explored the ship. I will say that reading some reviews of the Radiance before our cruise made me think she would be old and outdated, but I didn't find this the case at all. She's a gorgeous ship, a great size, and I couldn't find anything to complain about.

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Day 3-Sea Day

I didn't take any pictures on this day. We pretty much just hung out on deck, ate our weight in food, and explored the ship. I will say that reading some reviews of the Radiance before our cruise made me think she would be old and outdated, but I didn't find this the case at all. She's a gorgeous ship, a great size, and I couldn't find anything to complain about.

Thanks for posting thoughts about the ship. We had heard same as you. Good to hear your take
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Day 4 we were in Ketchikan. We docked at about 5 am, and since my husband and I were still on East coast time, we were up and out on deck by about 5:15. We took pictures, got some breakfast in Windjammer, and headed off the ship. Despite Ketchikan being the rainfall capital of Alaska, we had nothing but gorgeous blue skies and sunshine all day long.

This day, we had the Wilderness Exploration and Crab Feast with catchccrabs.com. We met our bus at the statue near the Ketchikan sign. It took about 1/2 hour to ride out to George Inlet Lodge. From there, you walk down about 70 steps (yes, you have to walk back up them at the end), and get on your boat. The scenery is beautiful, we saw eagles and watched them pull in crab pots and then they take you back to the Lodge for the all you can eat Dungeness crabs. And when I say "all you can eat", I really mean it. We were stuffed, and it was really spectacular crab. They have beer and wine available for purchase, and the best cheesecake with blueberry topping for dessert. I highly recommend this excursion, even if you just do the crab feast. Well worth it.

 

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Thank you for the review. We are going on the Radiance of the Seas next June. We are also staying at Days inn in Vancouver. I love reading reviews.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

 

I love reviews also. Days Inn is a good choice, IMO.

Sorry the review is taking so long. Uploading the pics to Photobucket on my sorry excuse for internet is proving challenging. But I’ll get it done [emoji16]

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

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I’ve been reading your review with great interest. We have an Alaskan cruise booked for May 2019. Really enjoying your pics ! We are fellow Mountaineers, I live in WV Northern Panhandle about 1 1/2 hrs from Morgantown. Thank you for your input !

 

My grandma was born and raised in St. Clairsville and my grandfather lived summers in Wheeling and winters in Clearwater beach, FL after he retired from the coal mines.

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A few edits to my previous posts since I can't edit the actual posts. On embarkation night, we ate in the main dining room. The food was okay, service was okay, nothing impressive at all. I bought the 3 night specialty dining package a while ago, so our plan was to eat at Chops twice and Giovanni's, and the rest in the main dining room, however we ended up eating at Windjammer every night that we didn't eat specialty. The food was fine and I liked being able to go in my comfy clothes. We usually went and sat outside at the back of the ship.

Our first sea day, we ate at Chops. Chops is fantastic, the steak was phenomenal, the service was outstanding, and I'm glad we chose to eat here twice. My husband said next time to get the 7 night specialty dining package and just eat at Chops every night, and he was totally serious.

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Day 5 was Icy Strait Point. I didn't book any excursions for this port. We were up early and watched the ship pull into port from the balcony, got showered and dressed and headed up to the Windjammer. After breakfast we got off the ship to look around. It was dreary that day, but no rain, which was perfect.

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We looked around the shops some, and watched the zipliners come down.

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While we waited for the shuttle into town, we stopped at the Salvation Army donut stand for mini donuts and coffee, which were soooo good. We took the shuttle into town and walked around there for a bit.

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Thanks! I bought a Nikon D3400 specifically for the cruise, as I felt that only having my iphone would do a great disservice to the scenery. And I was totally right.

 

Ha, I bought my Nikon AFTER our Alaska cruise because I was disappointed in our pictures! We got some good ones, but overall I was a little bummed. I'm sure we'll go again though and then I'll be ready!

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We took the shuttle to Hoonah but decided to walk back to the port, and it was a nice easy walk. We should've walked both ways. We stopped at the bar in Hoonah for lunch but they were so crowded with cruisers that I think they lost our order, so we ate once we were back at the port. We took another walk around the shops and then headed back to the ship.

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Day 6 was Juneau. We docked at 7 am and we had whale watching booked with Jayleen's Alaska. We had ordered room service breakfast and we had to meet Jayleen at the parking garage at 8 am. This was the one and only day we had rain on our whole trip, but I didn't let that get me down, because I was going to see whales!!

Jayleen picked us up promptly at 8 and we headed to the harbor. Jayleen is such a great woman, born and raised in Juneau on Shelter Island. Her dad was the original owner of Harv and Marvs, however he sold it before Jayleen was old enough to take over, so she started her own company after she graduated college. I'm so so jealous that she gets to spend her summers on her boat in Auke Bay, getting paid to find whales!

Despite the rain, we had a wonderful time. We saw humpbacks, sea lions and eagles. We were the only ones on her tour this morning, so we had Jayleens complete and utter attention the whole time. I'm glad we went with a small boat, as we saw the bigger boats out also and it looked absolutely horrible for the people having to push their way to the front and take turns seeing the whales.

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