Alaska 2025 Transport, Departure Flights, CO

[yeswecan]

Hi all! My son and I are taking the Koningsdam Inside Passage out of Vancouver on May 31, 2025.  I have a ton of questions but will keep it at 3, lol. 

1. I got club orange but was not told about the comp upgrade.  I did it for the dining room and emabarkation.  Do I have to ask for an upgrade and is this a good verandah; we are VA 6076.  Is there anything else I should know about CO benfits?  (I should have come to CC first...I am getting so many tips!) 

2. We want to fly to Seattle a couple days early to explore and I am wondering the best/easiest way to get from Seattle to Vancouver on the Friday before the sailing?

3. I can get a non stop flight (this is unheard of) from Vancouver to Orlando, FL at 11 AM.  With early CO disembarkation, will I have enough time?  If it is tight, will taking my luggage save me time?

I know this is technically more than 3 questions...sorry and thanks!!

[oaktreerb]

1.  If you added Club Orange to your booking, you should have been charged for a VH stateroom + the Club Orange fee.  The VA category is your free upgrade.  Confirm with your booking agent to make sure it was billed properly.

[CruiserBruce]

You will not make the 11am flight.

[oakridger]

1 hour ago, yeswecan said:

is this a good verandah; we are VA 6076

 

@yeswecan I think it is!  It has cabins above and below and is not a connecting room so noise shouldn't be an issue.  It's fairly midship (a little bit forward) which is a position I have chosen in the past.

 

Have a great trip!

 

~Nancy

[oakridger]

1 hour ago, yeswecan said:

3. I can get a non stop flight (this is unheard of) from Vancouver to Orlando, FL at 11 AM.

 

Why not stay overnight in Vancouver (I love that city!) after the cruise then you could take the nonstop 11am flight out the next morning? 

 

~Nancy

[Crew News]

2 hours ago, yeswecan said:

Hi all! My son and I are taking the Koningsdam Inside Passage out of Vancouver on May 31, 2025.  I have a ton of questions but will keep it at 3, lol. 

1. ...(I should have come to CC first...I am getting so many tips!) 

2. We want to fly to Seattle a couple days early to explore and I am wondering the best/easiest way to get from Seattle to Vancouver on the Friday before the sailing?

3. I can get a non stop flight (this is unheard of) from Vancouver to Orlando, FL at 11 AM.  With early CO disembarkation, will I have enough time?  If it is tight, will taking my luggage save me time?

I know this is technically more than 3 questions...sorry and thanks!!

Welcome to Cruise Critic and the HAL forum.  Make sure that you join your cruise roll call.

 

1.  Feel free to ask lots of questions to help in your planning.  I will be on the same cruise two weeks before your cruise and will be posting both the daily programs as well as dining menus.

2.  Since you are staying in Seattle before the cruise, i recommend that you consider catching the Embarkation Day bus at the Seattle airport and it will drop you off at the cruise terminal. for your cruise.  There is also a bus from the Vancouver cruise terminal on Embarkation that will drop you off at the Seattle airport around 3:00 PM for a fight home   You can book the bus on the HAL website for about $79 p/p each way. 

3.  There is a chance that you could make an 11:00 AM flight but everything would have to proceed perfectly:  ship arrives at the cruise terminal on time, no medical delays for departing passengers, you are first in the taxi line (three other ships could release their passengers earlier to join the taxi queue), little traffic enroute to the airport, no line at the airline check-in counter, no line at the separate luggage turn-in lane, no line for carry-on luggage Security screening, and no line at US Immigration check-in.  Do you feel lucky?

 

Here is a link to the Koningsdam daily programs for the 2024 version of your cruise to give you an idea of what to expect:  Koningsdam Alaska 7-Day 2024 Daily Programs

 

There is a HAL dining menus link in the lower right corner of my signature.

 

Enjoy your cruise planning.

[twincheryl]

5 hours ago, oakridger said:

 

Why not stay overnight in Vancouver (I love that city!) after the cruise then you could take the nonstop 11am flight out the next morning? 

 

~Nancy

Agree… Vancouver is our favorite city to walk around… way better than Seattle, although often more expensive to fly into… but worth it.  Hotels are expensive in both ports.

[tompeter]

You also have the option of taking Amtrak from Seattle to Vancouver. There are two trains daily.

[yeswecan]

You all are amazing.  Changed up plans, thanks to your tips! 

Edited October 21 by yeswecan

[oakridger]

17 hours ago, yeswecan said:

You all are amazing.  Changed up plans, thanks to your tips! 

 

Just curious what you have decided to do instead.  It's interesting to see what creative plans people come up with after a CC chat!  Care to share?

 

Thanks,

~Nancy 

[yeswecan]

Hi Nancy! 

Absolutely!  We are still going to Seattle- I have a ton of Delta miles and I could not get good flights on Delta if going straight to Vancouver (otherwise I would have opted for Vancouver).  Was going to look at the Amtrak option, but info from Crew News was spot on, so I booked HALs shuttle between SEA to the cruise port...it is door to door on cruise day, guaranteed to get there on time (no stress), and it eliminates the need to pay for a hotel in Vancouver on Friday night ,which leaves me money in the budget for the pricier excursions we want to do!  As far as my CO upgrade, my HAL rep is not there this week...(is it me or they hard to get a hold of?), so am waiting on that but I think he got us a pretty good rate, so maybe he already figured it in? Next time, I know to book the lower grade and then buy CO for the upgrade.  Again, I am so thankful for this website and all of you fountains of information!

Julie

[CruiserBruce]

29 minutes ago, yeswecan said:

so I booked HALs shuttle between SEA to the cruise port...it is door to door on cruise day, guaranteed to get there on time 

Not possible. Nobody can make that guarantee. They can't even absolutely, contrary to popular belief, guarantee the ship can wait for you, if the bus is somehow delayed.

[yeswecan]

Hiya Bruce!  Of course you’re right- nothing is ever guaranteed. I guess I used the wrong word?  But if it is an HA offering that they are getting paid for, the cruise ship wouldn’t wait if their own shuttle had an unforeseen delay?  So are you recommending leaving Seattle earlier on Amtrak instead? Or maybe you have another constructive recommendation?  I naturally don't want to risk missing the sailing if there’s a better option.

[CruiserBruce]

16 minutes ago, yeswecan said:

Hiya Bruce!  Of course you’re right- nothing is ever guaranteed. I guess I used the wrong word?  But if it is an HA offering that they are getting paid for, the cruise ship wouldn’t wait if their own shuttle had an unforeseen delay?  So are you recommending leaving Seattle earlier on Amtrak instead? Or maybe you have another constructive recommendation?  I naturally don't want to risk missing the sailing if there’s a better option.

The point is, no one can guarantee you make the ship. Things happen. There is a famous case here where, IIRC, 42 pax on a ship's excursion couldn't  get back due to heavy rain and flooding. But, the common misconception is that the ship's excursions never miss the ship.

 

Sometimes the ship can't wait due to things like tidal conditions. In the case of the above excursion, the ship had a fixed time to transit the Panama Canal,  and absolutely couldn't miss that schedule. So the ship sailed, and the pax caught up 3 or 4 days later.

 

Stuff happens. 

[luvteaching]

Welcome to CC @yeswecan! If you go to the halfacts website you can see pictures of the cabin on the sister ship Nieuw Statendam. 

[terrydtx]

On 10/20/2024 at 10:10 PM, oaktreerb said:

1.  If you added Club Orange to your booking, you should have been charged for a VH stateroom + the Club Orange fee.  The VA category is your free upgrade.  Confirm with your booking agent to make sure it was billed properly.

The upgrade is not automatic you have to ask for it when you add CO, I know this from personal experience when I booked CO the first time, two years ago. The OP is already in a very good VA Verandah cabin and the only upgrade would be to a V category on deck 5, which is not IMO better than wat she has. The ideal way to book CO is when you book and start with a VH cabin and then upgrade to a VA, V or even a VB.

[terrydtx]

On 10/20/2024 at 8:51 PM, yeswecan said:

3. I can get a non stop flight (this is unheard of) from Vancouver to Orlando, FL at 11 AM.  With early CO disembarkation, will I have enough time?  If it is tight, will taking my luggage save me time?

I know this is technically more than 3 questions...sorry and thanks!!

If your ship arrives in Vancouver on time you should be OK, the airport is about 20-30 minute drive from the cruise port. You could take an Uber or taxi, I would not risk the HAL shuttle. In August we took an Uber from the port in Montreal to the airport. The Taxi line had over 100 passengers in line waiting while we got our Uber in about 5 minutes.

 

With Club Orange you can depart the ship anytime after departure starts. You will get special luggage tags making finding you luggage very easy, or walk off with your bags.

Edited Wednesday at 03:52 PM by terrydtx