HAL Alaska cruisetour

[annalaska]

Four of us are planning a CruiseTour with HAL to Alaska. However, I'm concerned about the long bus (deluxe motor coach) portions of the land tour. We are thinking about an 11 day northbound tour which only contains 3 days on a ship followed by land tours to Tombstone, Whitehorse, etc. One day has us going from Whitehorse to Dawson City on the Klondike Highway by bus. Looks like that is about an eight hour trip. Has anyone taken these long trips by bus? How comfortable is this trip? I don't know if they will stop along the way but I'm concerned about bathroom breaks and just moving around. Hate to think about riding on a bus for 8 hours straight. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Yukon]

Whitehorse to Dawson is the same regardless of how you go - it's 350 miles of scenic but not spectacular country. But, HAL cruisetours are infamous for their long, long days and early wakeups. Stops for coffees, lunch and photos are fairly frequent, though, and I don't find it a particularly long day (that's even after having done it far more times than I could count). Many companies offer Yukon-Alaska cruisetours - Jerry van Dyke, Maupintour and Collette in particular do a much better job of it than HAL/Princess. Have a look at the itineraries offered by the companies listed at http://www.explorenorth.com/tours-motorcoach.html to see if any work for you.

 

Murray

[Host Caroline]

I agree w/ Murray that if you do not want to tour independently you should consider some of these other companies also including Globus. One thing I don't like about HAL tours is that many of them feature only a 3-4 day cruise.