Princess CruiseTour vs. Independent Toursaver Booking

[esquire20]

Hello everyone, this is a question for all you Alaska veterans, I have read countless threads, and thru the thoughtfulness of all your threads, I have been able to decide Princess Cruises, Diamond, SB early June, starting in Fairbanks. I know all the tours I want to do. The burning qestion is, has anyone calculated the savings for booking the cruisetour with Princess which is about $2000.00 pp vs booking cruise only, about $700.00pp and then booking all land, lodging and transportation using the Toursaver coupon book, bearing in mind that I would like to do this in 2012, Thank you all in advance for your help, Leslie

[greatam]

Even without using any toursaver coupons, you can usually book a car for about $100 per day out of ANC, $200 per night for lodging. Food you will pay for with or without a cruise tour but with no transportation on the cruise tour, you are generally "forced" to eat close to or in the hotels booked by the cruise line. IF you drive yourself, add in $300 for gas.

 

You can easily take the shuttle bus into Denali at a significant savings over the "tour". MUCH cheaper and basically the same transport, primarily without the fancy video camera and the "boxed lunch".

 

You posted limited info (like which cruisetour-how many days-where are you going), so it is hard to give definitive info. But figure you are paying $1300 per person for probably 4-5 days on land. $2600 figures out to about $650 per day (4 day trip which is about the norm).

 

With careful planning, booking things early and using the toursaver, you should be able to get the price down to about $3-400 per day. And the real biggie-you can do as you please, stay where you want and SEE what you want. Nothing worse to me than getting stuck doing something like the riverboat in Fairbanks when you would MUCH rather be driving to Chena Hot Springs (just an example-don't blast me because you LOVED the riverboat). It's your vacation-if you can handle the planning and logistics, go for it.

[mapleleaves]

As grandam said, a self guided tour will be cheaper, if for no other reason than you eliminated the middleman. Since you have the cruise tour details, you're the only one who can do a price comparison.

Booking in advance will bring significant savings in lodging and car rental. By July of this year most rental sites will allow reservations for next June. I reserved an economy car for $150 A WEEK last summer by booking that way! It's always cheaper to get a RT rental so I would suggest a minimum 6-7 day land trip to drive Anch-Denali-Fair-Anc. Driving up there is easy since the hwys are mostly 2 lane roads. If you want to take the train, you can book directly on the Alaska Railroad web site.

You can easily find lodging for under $175 per nite on average. (The Princess lodges were offering a 30% discount recently and there are plenty of options nearby in Healy many including b'fast.)

Tour Saver and Northern Lights both provide good savings. Depends on what activities you want to include.

[esquire20]

Thank you for your response.Your right I forgot to mention, that it was a 5day land package, 1 day fairbanks, 2 in Danali, 2 in Mt. mckinley, all of which are offerd in the book together with rail transport, I am not sure if the bus trasport is included in the lodging. Thanks again

[greatam]

Thank you for your response.Your right I forgot to mention, that it was a 5day land package, 1 day fairbanks, 2 in Danali, 2 in Mt. mckinley, all of which are offerd in the book together with rail transport, I am not sure if the bus trasport is included in the lodging. Thanks again

 

On most of these cruisetours, Fairbanks is the day of arrival, so you may not see much. AND the two days at Mt McKinley are really a waste, IMHO. UNLESS the mountain is out (only about 30% of the people ever see the mountain in all its glory), you are essentially "captured in Princessland". The closest town is an hour bus ride away but you only get the ride in and the ride out for free. If you want to go to "town" the second day, you have to pay for transport. The McKinley Princess is very nice (much nicer than the Denali Princess, IMHO) but you are 100 miles from Denali. NOT much to do unless you are into hiking or just sitting around and vegging out.

 

The McKinley Princess was built as a "holding area" for Princess cruise tours. Having the hotel is the only way Princess can turn the amount of people they do over daily AND make the train/bus connections work for all.

 

Please take another look at doing this yourself-either driving or booking your own train/bus transportation.

[esquire20]

Thanks for the info.

[mapleleaves]

if you look at the map on the Princess web site, you'll see that the McKinley Princess is near Denali State Park at milepost 130, not the famous Denali National Park at milepost 250.

It's a beautiful area but very isolated. Talkeetna is the closest town so you're dependent on the Princess shuttle to get you around. (See if the shuttle is included in your tour price.) Talkeetna is a cute little town to wander around; you;ll find a little shopping and some activities, several vendors offer flightseeing here.

http://www.princesslodges.com/mckinley_lodge_directions.htm