June 2nd 2017 - Radiance 7 night Northbound Alaska Cruise Review!

[Rewind]

I've got a couple more days to go - quite a few pictures in Denali. I should be able to finish up the review tomorrow.

[molsonschooner]

Wow, excellent review. The amount of walking you did tired me out. We also used Misty Bay for whale watching, we were on a smaller boat, just 7 people, including the driver. It was an awesome experience seeing the whales. We did the train ride in Skagway also, but we rode the train both ways. Looking forward to the rest of your trip.

[PCWalton1]

WOW, what a terrific review. Thank you so much for taking the time to post. We had that cabin on our Hawaii cruise in 2016, great location.

[Rewind]

Sunday June 11 - Denali Shuttle

 

Woke up early so we could get to breakfast at 7:30am. Talked with some nice folks, got the lowdown, Terry cooks some great food, and headed to the park at 8:30am. We picked up a couple of sandwiches from the gas station and drove to the park. During this time, there is road construction between Healy and the park and smack dab in the middle of this construction this particular morning was a moose. He didn't quite like the look of our car so he ran away from us when we approached. So we were going slow to not panic the moose, but the moose was trotting along looking for where he could get off the road. The moose did exit the road before any oncoming traffic got in his way and we continued on. We got to the parking lot at the W.A.C. right before 9:00am.

 

We parked the car and just as we were walking towards the building and not more than 10 feet, there was a moose in the bushes between the two parking areas. We hadn't seen it right away so when it raised it's head, we were maybe 10 feet from it (and not a place you want to be). We bee-lined into the middle of the parking lot and went around and luckily the moose didn't seem to care. What was more startling was when we could look back at the moose, we saw that she had a calf with her. I think we ended up being very lucky.

 

Just as we entered the building, they started lining up for our 9:15am Wonder Lake shuttle. We got the first seats directly behind the driver and they were great. It was really nice seeing out the front especially when just after we pulled out there was another moose and two calves walking in the road.

 

The shuttle isn't as in depth as the tour, but they stop anytime wildlife is spotted and do have some narration as to what is happening in the park and what some areas are. We pulled into our first rest stop / scenic overlook and off in the distance we could see a couple of wolves and a bear.

 

As we continued on in that direction, we did see the bear and he was eating the remains of a caribou, but no wolves were around. (We found out the next day that there is a wolf den in that area and that they had killed the caribou and the bear came in after to run off the wolves).

Further along we saw some sheep on a hill, then saw a few sheep in the river bed (which is not a good place for them to be)

stopped at another rest stop, saw some hare,

 

and…

[Rewind]

Sunday cont.

 

Caribou:

 

Herd of Caribou:

 

...and then headed to the Eielson Visitor Center (restrooms with running water). Standing in front of the visitor center:

 

They have a big window that has heigh markers on the floor. If you stand on one that represents your height, you can see an etching on the glass that shows how high Denali is if you could actually see it.

 

And we also found out that Denali is only visible about 30% of the time, the rest it is normally cloud covered. Denali should be on the right-ish side of this picture.

[Rewind]

Sunday cont.

 

Moving on, it was time for our last stop at Wonder Lake. The mosquitos are in abundance but we were there early in the season and these were male mosquitos and they normally don't bite. With all the hundreds of mosquitos, I think I did end up with a single bite.

 

Then it was time to turn back. One thing to note is that shuttles leave a few seats open when heading out and will stop to pick up anyone who wants a ride. While it looks like a school bus, they have individual seats with seatbelts.

 

We did the same route as there is only one road and after our second stop at Eielson, we came upon a ranger and an off duty dispatch who were hiking. They said they think that there were bear ahead (they said they could smell them) so they hopped on it was a good thing they did. About a mile later we saw a momma bear and two cubs (one year old) playing about 100 feet off the road. Here is mom with one of her kids:

 

We dropped the ranger and dispatcher off at our next stop as we headed back to the start. Ground squirrels were everywhere:

 

As we approached the bridge that we crossed about 10 hours previously, we saw the bear with the caribou still sitting in the river bank and was very content. He even rolled over on his back and was scratching his stomach.

 

Then a bit later, just as we were getting back to the W.A.C., the moose and her two calves from the morning were just about where we had left them.

 

We then got back into our rental car, drove to the Dome Home to change quickly and headed out to dinner. We ate at 49th State Brewing, had great meat lovers mac n cheese which we realized afterwards that we could have split, back to the Dome Home, and passed out for the night.

[Rewind]

Monday June 12 - Talkeetna / Anchorage

 

We woke up at a reasonable time and got ready for breakfast. This morning there were a couple moose in the backyard of the Denali Dome Home (although they do put out a few salt licks to attract them for their guests).

 

Got on the road by 8:30am and headed back to Denali park to check out the Visitor Center and Murie Education Center. We talked to a nice lady at the education center who told us about the bear eating the caribou we had seen yesterday. After our brief talk, it was time for us to head out.

 

We drove south with a quick stop at the Denali Viewpoint South location to stretch our legs. We couldn't see anything still but we found out that at that location, the next Western road was in Russia.

 

As we had lots of time to kill today, we took a detour over to Talkeetna and visited the Ranger station. This is where expeditions for the mountain check in. We watched the 17 minute video, read some hiking information and then out to find lunch. We picked the Denali Brewing Company and had some very tasty sandwiches. After a brief walk around the town (you can see it all in an hour or two tops) we got back on the road to Anchorage.

 

As we still had time to waste, we headed for the Ulu Factory - it's nothing more than a gift shop where you can look through windows to see the Ulu making process. The lighting inside the shop seems dark but somehow it's still hard to see through the glass into the factory section. It didn't take us more than five minutes there, so we headed to the Anchorage REI (I think I forgot to mention that my wife works there part time).

 

Now we were down to 6 hours before our flight so we saw the new Wonder Woman movie. The movie was good and stuck to the origin story fairly well, but it seems to parallel the Captain America story line quite a lot.

 

We thought it might be a good idea to eat before our long day of travel so we tried to grab pizza at Moose's Tooth Pizzeria. With a 45 minute wait, we thought that it might be cutting it a bit closer than we would like so instead we went to Spenard Roadhouse where the food was pretty tasty.

 

Finally it was time to get gas, drop the rental car off, and sit in the airport for a while.

[Rewind]

Tuesday June 13 - Flights Home

 

Apparently Alaska's main flights to the lower 48 are almost all Red Eyes as if they left anytime during the normal day, it would be night by the time you arrive. They figure it is better to leave at night and arrive in the day.

 

We flew on United on the way back home (it was booked before their bad press and we would have changed if we could). For our first leg, we were on a 737-800 that had no leg room. NONE. I'm 6'6" and every inch counts. I tried my normal tricks of putting my knees behind the armrests of the seat in from of me, crossing my lower legs, bending them back under my seat. None of it mattered, my knees were jammed into some part of the seat in front of me. What made it even worse was the seat pocket had a support rod across the top which hit the fleshy parts of my knee in just that perfect torture device type of way. I tried to get some rest as I was really tired, but at best I got thirty minutes on a five hour flight. It was agony.

 

We connected in O'Hare. When we landed I turned my phone on and got a text message from United with a gate change notification (our departing gate wasn't assigned when our boarding passes were printed out in Anchorage). We were arriving at gate B8 and were departing from gate F21 and had about 10 minutes before boarding started. While we are no slouches, that is one heck of a hike in a very short time with what are surprisingly narrow walking areas for that many people. We made it to the gate about two minutes before they opened the doors so luckily we could grab a snack from the stand directly across from the gate.

 

The shorter flight to Columbus was on an Embraer 175 and had a much newer seat design. I think they were spaced the same but due to newer and lighter materials, we had tons of leg space. My knees could sit strait out and I wasn't rubbing on the seat in front of me. It was pure heaven after the last 5 hours. So of course I figure I will catch a quick nap... by the time they get up in the air and do beverage service, they are making their approach into Columbus.

 

We got picked up by the wife's mother, dropped off at home, and then headed out to pick up the dog from his hotel stay.

[Rewind]

Closing Thoughts -

 

We had an amazing trip and it seems both short and long. We just got back earlier this week and yet it feels like Seattle was forever ago. We were planning to do a couple different things in Vancouver but our delayed train took the steam out of our plans. The next time we are there, I think Stanley park is on the top of our list.

 

The cruise itself was great and Radiance is in fairly nice shape. I saw a report that just two weeks before our cruise the ship scored a perfect 100 on it’s inspection. We did notice the furniture in the Champagne Bar is well worn and even some of the edging on cabinets was coming off, but those are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

 

We also did discover that Radiance is a bit small for our tastes. We like to wander around in our down time and the ship just didn’t have enough for us. The views to the water are great, but the only real areas you see that is in the Champagne or Schooner bars (and we don’t drink that much). This was our first cruise with a balcony and while it was nice to have, we didn’t end up using it very often. We will probably stick with cheaper cabins in the future so we can spend it on more frequent cruises.

 

The few things that got to us was that the cruise didn’t feel “special” - the dining room menus we have seen multiple times in the past few years, the 70’s theme night is the same (I’m fairly sure the song order is identical across the fleet), and even the Lumberjack contest in place of the Men’s sexy leg contest is the same older gentlemen dancing in front of younger ladies for a t-shirt. It just felt like every other Royal cruise we had been on previously and nothing made it stand out from the others. I also have an annoyance with the Diamond lounge now taking half of the Viking Crown, but that’s another topic.

 

One specific item that did upset us was we tried to use our platinum BOGO drink offer on a $9 alcoholic drink and a $3 soda. They said they couldn't give us the soda for free as it was a different drink type. They would gladly give us another $9 alcoholic drink, but the $3 soda was out of the question. While it did make us miffed, it was not worth arguing over $3.

 

Out of all the port stops, Icy Strait was the most authentic. I cried a bit each time I saw a Del Sol and Cariloha in each of the other Alaskan ports. And the Diamonds International sign on an old rundown hotel on the outskirts of Skagway just about made us laugh.

 

I had a request for the cost breakdown of our trip so others can plan / save up. Luckily I was keeping a running track as I made reservations (and so I could make sense of them, they are in chronological order). All prices are totals for two adults.

 

Flight from Columbus to Seattle - Southwest: $532

Seattle Hotel (3 nights) - Holiday Inn Express: $449

Train from Seattle to Vancouver - Amtrak: $64

Vancouver Hotel (1 night) - Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront: $176

Cruise - Hump Balcony: $2684

Ketchikan Car Rental - First City: $96 (includes waiver)

Juneau Car Rental - Juneau Car Rental: $60 (no waiver)

Skagway White Pass rail and bike excursion: $438

Train from Seward to Anchorage - Alaska Railroad: $414 (goldstar service)

Anchorage Hotel (1 night) - Comfort Inn Ship Creek: $144

Anchorage Car Rental - Alamo: $150 (no waiver)

Denali Hotel (2 nights) - Denali Dome Home: $460

Denali Park Shuttle - $114

Flight from Anchorage to Columbus, OH - United: $540

 

Grand total - $6,320

 

This does not include restaurants, souvenirs, etc. Add in a lunch and dinner cost to each night of hotel stays and a few dollars in gas per day of a rental car and you should get a pretty good estimate.

 

 

Overall we loved our time in Alaska and there is much we want to see more of. We might try to do something more land based in a few years so we can really spend some time to take it all in.

 

Please feel free to ask questions. Like everyone, I love to talk about my vacations. :D

[Rewind]

OH, almost forgot.

 

Just about everywhere we went, I would have a moderate cell signal. I use Google Fi which rides on T-Mobile and Sprint (whatever has the stronger signal). However, I did not have a data signal just about anywhere. My wife has AT&T and she had data in just about every port stop.

 

Because I was not sure what I would have before we got there, I downloaded a couple of offline map utilities so I could compare them. I used HERE WeGo and Maps.Me; I had used HERE before but had read a lot of people using Maps.Me so I wanted to see what worked better. While I think the user interface on HERE is a little more polished, Maps.Me has more functionality. The biggest one is that you can export a map file from Google Maps and import it into Maps.Me. So all of my bookmarked places were now little pins in Maps.Me and I could find were I was going even without data coverage.

 

And this even came in handy while we were hiking around Exit glacier. There is NO cell service there at all on any carrier and we forgot to grab a trail map. I opened Maps.Me and even though I didn't have it bookmarked, I clicked on the "center on me" button and it showed the trails we were on. Very handy to figure out where we were going.

 

The one thing you do need to remember is that you do need to download the maps of the areas you will be in before you leave on your trip. I downloaded Seattle, Vancouver, and Alaska.

 

It was also fun to use it while on the ship. We could see where we were in relation to our port stops, how far we had to go, and what we might be seeing out the side of the ship / on shore.

Edited June 17, 2017 by Rewind

[britty1]

Thanks for a great review and pictures. Thank you for taking the time to review the radiance cruise and your land trip.

[little britain]

Thanks for the prices: did you book at a specific time to get the Alamo car hire so cheaply? I'm seeing $300 for 4 days at the mo.

Also Ship Creek is $220 now!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Kristal Blade]

Thanks Rewind,

A lovely review. Hope Cruisecritic awards you a prize for it.

We're on Radiance over Christmas so interested to see your comments re menu and furnishings.

Loved the photos, I have a Sony camera like yours and it takes some great pics. It is especially good in low light conditions. Hope you rescued your videos ok.

Thanks again, Libby

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[Cruisingthesuitelife]

Brilliant review, thank you again for taking the time to do it.

[Rewind]

Thanks for the prices: did you book at a specific time to get the Alamo car hire so cheaply? I'm seeing $300 for 4 days at the mo.

Also Ship Creek is $220 now!

 

I did book Alamo early through a big members-only wholesale club's travel website. Actually I booked our cruise through them too. I had thought about a one way rental from Anchorage to Fairbanks to add another city on our trip, but then we would have seen nothing in Anchorage (we barely did anyway) and the car rental would have almost tripled.

 

All three hotels (not the B&B) were booked through a site where you can select the amount you want to pay... but that they also have quick deals that don't list the hotel name until after you book. I've gotten really good and figuring out which hotel they are by comparing location, amenities, and initial price so even thought they don't list the hotel name, I'm 95% sure which hotel I'm getting before I book it.

[TheCalicoCat]

Closing Thoughts -

Cruise - Hump Balcony: $2684

. :D

 

Since you shared, did this include taxes, fees, & TIPS?

[Rewind]

Since you shared, did this include taxes, fees, & TIPS?

 

Yes and no.

 

$2684 was what we paid with our CC which includes taxes and fees, but did not include gratuities.

We did however get $215 in on-board credit from our TA which we used to pay gratuities. We still had a bit left over which almost covered our minimal bar bill (I think there were maybe three drinks total all week).

[cheflauraleh]

Thank you for the review! We will be on Celebrity in August but it's the same itinerary so this was great to read!

[TheCalicoCat]

Yes and no.

 

$2684 was what we paid with our CC which includes taxes and fees, but did not include gratuities.

We did however get $215 in on-board credit from our TA which we used to pay gratuities. We still had a bit left over which almost covered our minimal bar bill (I think there were maybe three drinks total all week).

 

Thanks. It's not apples to apples, but we are paying $5,174 (including unlimited beverages) in July for 14-nights.

[Kowale]

Great review. Particularly poignant for me, as I am taking the Radiance and following the exact itinerary (sans visiting your friends in Seattle) on June 1st, 2018. We even live in Columbus and will be flying in/out of the same airport, so it's eerie how close our trips are. I could think of a ton of questions.

[Rewind]

Feel free to ask away - as I said, I love to talk about my vacations. :D

 

I guess the only thing that would differ is flying into Vancouver directly, but they do have a Metro system that connects the airport to the downtown area so that should be fairly similar. Vancouver seemed like a really cool place and we wish we had more time there, but that two hour delay we had from Amtrak deflated our plans more than we thought it would. It was nice to walk around at our own pace and relax though.

[jimbri]

Wonderful review - photos are great!

[Rewind]

I finally got around to it - here is a short 20 second clip of the Hubbard Glacier calving. We were sitting on our balcony and I had my camera on the rail for stability and was waiting for something to happen.

5NQ6wXZ8_N8

[Leslaf]

Thanks for your great review! We are on Radiance of the Seas Aug 18-25 for the Southbound trip from Seward to Vancouver.

 

Eight days before the cruise we fly into Fairbanks and are taking the Alaska train along the way doing various tours. From Fairbanks we stop at Denali for a couple of days, then on to Anchorage, an overnight in Girdwood and then on to Seward. Also staying at Comfort Inn in Ship Creek (have to be careful when saying that)!

 

Can't wait to get on this trip and I intend to have my camera ready at all times because you just never know what you'll see!

[Robinhill]

Closing Thoughts -

 

We had an amazing trip and it seems both short and long. We just got back earlier this week and yet it feels like Seattle was forever ago. We were planning to do a couple different things in Vancouver but our delayed train took the steam out of our plans. The next time we are there, I think Stanley park is on the top of our list.

 

The cruise itself was great and Radiance is in fairly nice shape. I saw a report that just two weeks before our cruise the ship scored a perfect 100 on it’s inspection. We did notice the furniture in the Champagne Bar is well worn and even some of the edging on cabinets was coming off, but those are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

 

We also did discover that Radiance is a bit small for our tastes. We like to wander around in our down time and the ship just didn’t have enough for us. The views to the water are great, but the only real areas you see that is in the Champagne or Schooner bars (and we don’t drink that much). This was our first cruise with a balcony and while it was nice to have, we didn’t end up using it very often. We will probably stick with cheaper cabins in the future so we can spend it on more frequent cruises.

 

The few things that got to us was that the cruise didn’t feel “special” - the dining room menus we have seen multiple times in the past few years, the 70’s theme night is the same (I’m fairly sure the song order is identical across the fleet), and even the Lumberjack contest in place of the Men’s sexy leg contest is the same older gentlemen dancing in front of younger ladies for a t-shirt. It just felt like every other Royal cruise we had been on previously and nothing made it stand out from the others. I also have an annoyance with the Diamond lounge now taking half of the Viking Crown, but that’s another topic.

 

One specific item that did upset us was we tried to use our platinum BOGO drink offer on a $9 alcoholic drink and a $3 soda. They said they couldn't give us the soda for free as it was a different drink type. They would gladly give us another $9 alcoholic drink, but the $3 soda was out of the question. While it did make us miffed, it was not worth arguing over $3.

 

Out of all the port stops, Icy Strait was the most authentic. I cried a bit each time I saw a Del Sol and Cariloha in each of the other Alaskan ports. And the Diamonds International sign on an old rundown hotel on the outskirts of Skagway just about made us laugh.

 

I had a request for the cost breakdown of our trip so others can plan / save up. Luckily I was keeping a running track as I made reservations (and so I could make sense of them, they are in chronological order). All prices are totals for two adults.

 

Flight from Columbus to Seattle - Southwest: $532

Seattle Hotel (3 nights) - Holiday Inn Express: $449

Train from Seattle to Vancouver - Amtrak: $64

Vancouver Hotel (1 night) - Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront: $176

Cruise - Hump Balcony: $2684

Ketchikan Car Rental - First City: $96 (includes waiver)

Juneau Car Rental - Juneau Car Rental: $60 (no waiver)

Skagway White Pass rail and bike excursion: $438

Train from Seward to Anchorage - Alaska Railroad: $414 (goldstar service)

Anchorage Hotel (1 night) - Comfort Inn Ship Creek: $144

Anchorage Car Rental - Alamo: $150 (no waiver)

Denali Hotel (2 nights) - Denali Dome Home: $460

Denali Park Shuttle - $114

Flight from Anchorage to Columbus, OH - United: $540

 

Grand total - $6,320

 

This does not include restaurants, souvenirs, etc. Add in a lunch and dinner cost to each night of hotel stays and a few dollars in gas per day of a rental car and you should get a pretty good estimate.

 

 

Overall we loved our time in Alaska and there is much we want to see more of. We might try to do something more land based in a few years so we can really spend some time to take it all in.

 

Please feel free to ask questions. Like everyone, I love to talk about my vacations. :D

 

 

Rewind- if you dont mind me asking- how did you get a room at Comfort Inn Ships Creek for $144. Everytime i check pricing it is like $219 per night. Did you go through a special booking site?