Latest Alaska Experience

[darnoc23]

Hi All,

Just got back from the Discovery Princess Inside Passage Cruise.  Bottom line, was one of the best cruises I had.  I didn't even feel the boat at all. Here's what we did, which may help some of the future cruisers:

Embarkation - There was a LONG line in Seattle and cruisers that stated they waited over 2 hours was probably correct.  However, for us it took us less than 30 minutes.  Here's what happened, we stood in line with the others and asked a rep if there's a separate line for platinum/elite.  We were told we had to wait in line.  Another rep was walking around and told us we didn't have to wait in line since we had our medallions and checked in already.  So we were told to go inside.  The next line was for folks to pickup their medallion and wait in line for the escalator to go to security.  The elevator was empty so we tried it and bypassed the line.  Security line took the longest and went by pretty quick.  I'd say 15 minutes.  After security is another check in to show your vaccination, covid test, and passports.  That line was pretty long also but there was a separate line for elite members.  We went to that line, and someone stopped us and said we had to go to the long line and just because our medaillion is colored platinum doesn't mean we were platinum/elite members (huh?).  So we waited in line like the rest and someone noticed our medallions and told us to go to the elite/platinum line.  Once we were checked in, we were onboard the ship in 5 minutes.  So, if you're an elite/platinum there are separate lines although there was inconsistency with the reps.  Also, make sure you checkin online and preorder your medallions.

 

Ketchikan - It's a very small city so there wasn't really much to do.  We took the duck tour which was great for the kids, but since it was a small city there really wasn't much to tour around.  Creek street was nice to watch the salmons and see some seals enjoying them.  

 

Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier - The scenic cruise was beyond spectacular.  However, for those expecting to go close to the glacier, you would need to take a separate excursion.  The last time we were at an Alaskan cruise, we went close to the glacier which was a great experience.  We were disappointed that we didn't get to see it up close, but we were fortunate to at least see it from afar.  From what we heard, the last cruise changed courses due to weather.

 

Juneau - We decided to try touring on our own. I rented a car through Turo which is a car sharing company.  The car was cheaper than renting through a car company and much cheaper than purchasing a tour from Princess.  We were able to mimic a Princess tour by going to the salmon hatchery, Mendenhall Gardens, Steep Creek, Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls.  We were able to take our time on the hikes and watch the bears at Steep Creek.  It was a full schedule and wish we had more time in Juneau.  Didn't get to try Tracys Crab which was recommended by the locals.

 

Skagway - We had rented a car through Avis to drive up to Emerald Lake.  Unfortunately, there was an issue with our passports so we left late.  Avis was kind enough to cancel our booking with no charge.  Luckily, we found Frontier Excursions and they had a tour to drive up to the summit (not crossing the canadian border though).  It was a 3 hour tour and covered much of the places we flagged in Murray's guide.  Only thing was that we didn't see any bears but lots of beautiful waterfalls.  Based on Murray's guide, mile 25 from the Canada side is the best for bear viewing.

 

Victoria - It's interesting that we only had 7pm - 11:45pm in Victoria, but we made the best of it.  We walked around downtown and took a horse carriage ride from Tally Ho.  Most shops start closing at 8pm so if you want to do some shopping, do that first.  We also took a pedi cab to downtown and learned an important lesson. Ask for the canadian price!  We were quoted $70 but forgot the quote was canadian dollars so we paid $70USD.  It was $50 canadian after conversion, 10 minute ride.  The taxis is only $10 port to downtown.  25 minute walk from the port to downtown.  

 

Disembarkation - If you have a chance to do the Princess checkin (I forget the term) do it. Princess offers to take your luggage and checkin for you.  The next time you see your luggage is in the baggage claim on your destination.  This allowed us to take a small taxi to the airport instead of waiting for a taxi van when we arrived in Seattle. 

 

Seattle Security - The line is LONG so do get there 2 hours prior to your flight.  However, their system is pretty efficient, so despite the long line we were constantly moving.

 

Transportation - Surprisingly taxi's are much cheaper in Seattle than Uber.  Uber was much cleaner however.  The taxis we took had to clean the front with all the trash they had piled up (maybe that's why we got covid). Taxi to/from airport to downtown was $55 flat.  Calling for a taxi in downtown took much longer so we decided to use uber.

 

Buffet - Buffet is self serving now. There's someone at the entry way to ask you to wash or alchol your hand at entry, but from my observation some folks bypass it. There's been several instances where I saw folks eating while waiting in line then licking their fingers and touching the serving spoons (gross!).  Forget Covid, Norovirus!  So once you get your food, I recommend washing your hands again before eating. 

 

Hotel - We stayed at the Moore Hotel. It's rated as a two star hotel, no air condition, but we loved it!  Location, couldn't ask for anything better.  5 minutes from Pikes Market, 5 minutes to take the monorail to get to the Space Needle.  Wifi was good to get some work in. It was HOT in Seattle when we went, but the fans they provided in the hotel were sufficient.  All of the workers that we met at the hotel were very friendly.  The room we got was a joining room.  One room was already huge so as my kids would say we had a suite for the perfect price point. 

 

Enclave - We LOVE the enclave.  We usually get the couples price at $220, but when we checked in embarkation day they only had the singles at $149 each.  HOWEVER, we met some couples who said they got the couples price at embarkation day.  I don't know how it works, if its commision based but would hurt to try if another representative didn't give you the couples price.  Although there's set reservations for sea days, it wasn't enforced, so our cruise I believe was close to full capacity and the enclave got pretty crowded.  We started going closer to dinner time which was less crowded.

 

Room - We went for the cheaper route going to the back of the ship right accross the laundry at the 15th floor.  For Alaskan cruises, this was perfect!  We usually get midship, since there's less rocking for kids as they tend to get seasick.  For Alaska, maybe it's because we're in the inside passage at less speed, we did not feel the boat at all!  We were iify on getting a room across the laundry, but it was actually a benefit.  You do not hear any noise from the laundry and even the laundry doors of passengers coming and going.  The laundry is FREE!!  If we knew that I would've packed lighter. The 15th floor was perfect, one floor to the buffet, two floors to the gym, 3 floors to the kids club. 🙂

Hope this helps someone and let me know if there's any questions. 

[Pluto_fan]

Thanks for your review!  Glad to hear you had such a good trip.

[D. B.]

The Laundry is Not "FREE!!" you paid for it as part of your Cruise price.

 If it makes you feel better to think of it as Free then Go with that..........

Reminds of my sister-in-law. Oh, Look they have Free Ice Cream!

[LovetheSea]

Thanks so much for the review! We are headed that way Sunday on the Discovery.

[SiliconCruiser]

1 hour ago, darnoc23 said:

The laundry is FREE!!

Were the token machines broken, or have they been removed?

[RNRcruisers]

Sounds like a great trip! My daughter and I did a float plane excursion in Ketchikan and it was fabulous! Expensive but I highly recommend for next time 😀

 

[Tiggerontheseas]

32 minutes ago, D. B. said:

The Laundry is Not "FREE!!" you paid for it as part of your Cruise price.

 If it makes you feel better to think of it as Free then Go with that..........

Reminds of my sister-in-law. Oh, Look they have Free Ice Cream!

 

Free.  Complimentary. Included. No extra charge.  It's all the same to me.  Semantics, we all knew what was meant. 🙂

[hpeabody]

1 hour ago, darnoc23 said:

Disembarkation - If you have a chance to do the Princess checkin (I forget the term) do it. Princess offers to take your luggage and checkin for you.  The next time you see your luggage is in the baggage claim on your destination.  This allowed us to take a small taxi to the airport instead of waiting for a taxi van when we arrived in Seattle. 

 

🙂

 

This service is courtesy of the Port Of Seattle, not Princess provided and is called Port Valet  I used it, but I had signed up in advance based on postings here.  Good thing I did or I would never have known about it on the ship.  Nothing on the ship but the regular disembarkation paper. Maybe it was on the wake show, but I actually never turned it on this cruise.  Port Valet could not have been better.   I was also on the same cruise and enjoyed it.  I was lucky and had a great day from Skagway going into the Yukon, including Emerald Lake.  Sorry you missed it.

[darnoc23]

8 hours ago, SiliconCruiser said:

Were the token machines broken, or have they been removed?

There were no token machines.  Detergent and dryer fabric were all free also.  They're just on the shelf for you to use. 

[SiliconCruiser]

4 minutes ago, darnoc23 said:

There were no token machines.  Detergent and dryer fabric were all free also.  They're just on the shelf for you to use. 

Wow, I would be curious if this is a change in policy.  Maybe they figured out that the cost of maintaining the token machines exceeded the amount of revenue that it was receiving.  Would be pleased to hear from others of their experiences.

 

[tetleytea]

On the Caribbean Princess, in the Caribbean, this year, the laundry token machines were either broken or simply didn't give out tokens.  Quick visit to guest services, and we got all the tokens we wanted for free. Bigger problem was finding an open washer/dryer.  We figured out if you do laundry on Day 1, the laundry room is wide open.  But who wants to do laundry on Day 1?  People on a back-to-back, that's who! 

[SiliconCruiser]

1 hour ago, tetleytea said:

On the Caribbean Princess, in the Caribbean, this year, the laundry token machines were either broken or simply didn't give out tokens.  Quick visit to guest services, and we got all the tokens we wanted for free. Bigger problem was finding an open washer/dryer.  We figured out if you do laundry on Day 1, the laundry room is wide open.  But who wants to do laundry on Day 1?  People on a back-to-back, that's who! 

When you're on a couple of B2B 7 days, it would be great timing.

[catskier]

Thank you for your review. I look forward to my trip in September. A question 
about boarding. I am confused why there would be long lines. You can sign up to your desired arrival time. If you fill out all the information on the app you move from the blue lane to the green lane. Does that not happen? Everyone shows up whenever? Did you go early or late? Looks like they may have switched our Skagway for Stika. 

[tetleytea]

Pretty much, everybody shows up whenever.  But also the cruise lines have really tight schedules they go by, too, and those embarkation times have nothing to do with it.  On Caribbean, we were facing a tropical storm, and that pretty much threw everyone's plans to the wind. 

[Sunwanabe]

Great review. We were on same cruise mid July. Overall, wonderful trip. Embarkation process bit confusing, but it went smoothly. Line long but kept us moving. Arrived about 10:40 and on board in about 30 minutes. 

[azbirdmom]

Just out of curiosity did you get there between noon and 1?  I've read about a lot of issues with long lines for those who arrived then.  For our mid-July cruise we got there before 10:30 and were onboard before 11 with minimal time spent in lines.  And I haven't seen any reports of anyone who arrived before noon experiencing long lines which is why I was curious if your experience fit the later arrival pattern.

[darnoc23]

On 8/11/2022 at 5:03 AM, catskier said:

Thank you for your review. I look forward to my trip in September. A question 
about boarding. I am confused why there would be long lines. You can sign up to your desired arrival time. If you fill out all the information on the app you move from the blue lane to the green lane. Does that not happen? Everyone shows up whenever? Did you go early or late? Looks like they may have switched our Skagway for Stika. 

I think everyone shows up regardless of there arrival time as well as the 12pm - 1pm window being prime.  I was suprised that a lot of people did not even fill out the online check in as well as the amount of people waiting to pickup their medallions.  If you're able to, I would check in outside those prime hours.  

[darnoc23]

On 8/11/2022 at 8:53 AM, azbirdmom said:

Just out of curiosity did you get there between noon and 1?  I've read about a lot of issues with long lines for those who arrived then.  For our mid-July cruise we got there before 10:30 and were onboard before 11 with minimal time spent in lines.  And I haven't seen any reports of anyone who arrived before noon experiencing long lines which is why I was curious if your experience fit the later arrival pattern.

That's a good point and noted on my response to catskier.  If I recall on my online check-in we were only given time slot choices between 12pm -2pm. Checkin earlier would be the best bet.    

[darnoc23]

One thing I forgot to mention also was that you would use a  tender in Skagway due to the falling rock hazard on the original port.  Unless you have a princess excursion or platinum/elite member you would need to get a ticket and wait for them to call your number.  We returned late, close to all aboard time and the line to tender back to the ship was long.  It was efficient, about 45 minutes but there is a wait time and I take it it's because everyone was coming back close to boarding time. 

[fellswoop]

Regarding platinum/elite at  check-in you mentioned...If only one out of three in your party is platinum/elite,  can the  whole group get priority boarding? I was thinking this was the case in the past.

[darnoc23]

4 hours ago, fellswoop said:

Regarding platinum/elite at  check-in you mentioned...If only one out of three in your party is platinum/elite,  can the  whole group get priority boarding? I was thinking this was the case in the past.

That's correct, everyone in your party can join you. 

[Cruisercl]

I have a question, when your cruise was cruising through the 'arms', did you have a naturalist/ranger giving commentary and info about the area etc.?

When we were on Princess to Alaska, pre-pandemic, albeit a few years ago there was one speaking and showing us things on the shore etc. It added so much to the cruise!

Any help is appreciated! 😎