Alaska bound, which cruise?

[gigguy]

We are considering an Alaska cruise this summer. Any suggestions?

 

Round trip out of Seattle or Vancouver or a one way from Vancouver to Skagway or vice versa?

 

Any info the the members would be great.

[GMoney]

I'm a big fan of Radiance's open jaw itinerary (Vancouver > Seward or vice versa), as opposed to a RT on Serenade out of Vancouver or on Rhapsody out of Seattle. The Radiance itinerary offers great ports, plenty of port time, and a good glacier pitstop.

 

Seward is then a great place to start a land tour, if you have the opportunity.

 

RCI's AK offerings are limited; HAL and Princess have more options. Be sure to check those.

 

For more info, post on the AK board. Lots of helpful people there.

[alansfreed]

Our decision for our Alaska cruise was made based on the fact that we were driving to Seattle. RCL didn't have a round-trip cruise, so we went with Norwegian (Pearl) so that we would end up back in Seattle where our car was.

 

If we had been flying, I would imagine we would have chosen to go from south to north (like Seattle or Vancouver to Anchorage for example). That way, we would have been building up to the most exciting part of the trip, rather than seeing the exciting parts of Alaska first and making our way back to the arguably less-exciting Seattle/Vancouver (no offense to those areas!).

[gigguy]

I'm a big fan of Radiance's open jaw itinerary (Vancouver > Seward or vice versa), as opposed to a RT on Serenade out of Vancouver or on Rhapsody out of Seattle. The Radiance itinerary offers great ports, plenty of port time, and a good glacier pitstop.

 

Seward is then a great place to start a land tour, if you have the opportunity.

 

RCI's AK offerings are limited; HAL and Princess have more options. Be sure to check those.

 

For more info, post on the AK board. Lots of helpful people there.

 

Thank you, I will move this to the AK boards.

[GMoney]

Thank you, I will move this to the AK boards.

 

It's fine to post here; you will just get varying points of view on the AK board. :)

[wrp96]

I agree with Patrick, if you want to stick to RCCL, for 2009 itineraries at least, the Radiance north or southbound cruises would be the best option. Well, that is unless you can do one of the 14 night Ultimate Alaska cruises.

 

With Alaska itinerary is everything. HAL especially has some of the best Alaska itineraries out there. Princess has great one way itineraries (their round trip itineraries are as weak, or weaker than RCCL's, other than their 14 night roundtrip sailing). NCL Pearl also has a really nice Alaska itinerary.