Alaska - Princess Land tour Tipping Questions

[DentoAlaska]

Okay...I'm bad. I think I remember reading the answers to some of my questions below but for the life of me I cannot find them. If you could share your experience and knowledge with me I would greatly appreciate it.

 

1. Does the land tour have the same guide and bus driver for the entire 7 days?

2. The recommended amount for tipping the guide is $5-$7 per day per person? Do you tip the driver the same amount?

3. At the lodges is there someone that you need to tip when your luggage arrives at your room? If so, how much is recommended?

4. For excursions...what is the recommended tip amount for the guide? If the driver is a different person than the guide do we tip them individually or do they "share" the tip money?

6. Any other tipping guidelines that I need to know about?

 

Thanks!

[Budget Queen]

the driver is less than the guide. However, if you happen to need extra service, then the amount could go up.

 

Tours- I base on the service and length. Some people seem to think, that because of the "high" prices, they don't bother tipping. I think differently and always tip. I generally tip $10/20 pp on my bus tours/boat tours/flights etc. I always tip, separate bus drivers, extra, since my husband requires extra service.

[portiemom]

Okay...I'm bad. I think I remember reading the answers to some of my questions below but for the life of me I cannot find them. If you could share your experience and knowledge with me I would greatly appreciate it.

 

1. Does the land tour have the same guide and bus driver for the entire 7 days?

2. The recommended amount for tipping the guide is $5-$7 per day per person? Do you tip the driver the same amount?

3. At the lodges is there someone that you need to tip when your luggage arrives at your room? If so, how much is recommended?

4. For excursions...what is the recommended tip amount for the guide? If the driver is a different person than the guide do we tip them individually or do they "share" the tip money?

6. Any other tipping guidelines that I need to know about?

 

Thanks!

 

I can't help you much with tipping advice, but I can tell you how the land tour works. We did not have the same driver for various legs of the trip. I don't recall there being a separate guide and driver. Actually I don't recall there being a guide except on excursions. There were different Princess reps carrying clipboards that we interacted with though.

 

The driver may or may not give commentary while driving. For example, there was one driver to take us from the airport to the Captain Cook Hotel, and he gave a running monolog of what we were passing. There was a different driver for the trip from Anchorage to the McKinley Lodge, and yet another driver from the lodge to the train. The one who drove us to the McKinley Lodge only talked to the people sitting up front and from what I could tell was just answering questions.

 

When we had an excursion, there were separate guides and driver, I believe. But they seemed to be working for the same company running the excursion.

 

Only once did we catch sight of the person from Princess who picked up or delivered our bags. The bags are placed outside your door.

[pklein9747]

This depends on what type of Princess land tour you are taking. We just returned from a Connoisseur tour and we had the same Princess tour guide for the entire time we were traveling on land. We did NOT have to tip any bus driver or excursion guide at any time on the land portion. That was all taken care of by our Princess tour guide. Princess recommends that you tip your Princess tour guide $5-7 per person per day at the end of the land tour. Our guide was so fabulous, we did a little more.

 

As for the luggage, we never even saw the people who handled our luggage. It truly just magically appeared in our rooms.

[mek]

portiemom - do you recall how they handled the bus seating for handicapped passengers? Did they have some reserved seats at the front of the buses?

[DentoAlaska]

Thank you for your guidance. Unfortunately, Princess did not offer a Connoisseur tour that included some of the areas that we wanted to visit. One of my "must sees" was Kennicott and McCarthy. The land tour we selected (LB7) seemed to have everything we hoped to see. Maybe not enough time to do everything but we felt it gave us a real taste of Alaska.

 

I will just be sure and hoard smaller bills in case we need them for additional tipping. :)

[sweetsleep]

Yes, Princess did try to reserve the front seat for handicapped people. Unfortunately one man exploited this on our trip. I saw him many times NOT using his cane but it was always magically appeared for any coach trips.

Not sure why he felt it was necessary-he never even used a camera to take photos even though he was always in the front seat.

I can't say taking photos from a moving bus every yields great photos so I could have cared less where I sat.

But for those who do have true mobility issues they did reserve the front seat.

I don't recall seeing any kind of platform to assist with wheelchairs so that could be a problem for those who are wheelchair bound.