Alaska Cruise
 

Hi,

I am planning to go on a Alaska cruise with my family, total of 6.
Does anyone have a recommendation on which is the best cruise to?
Could anyone share me their experience on the Alaska cruise line?

Thanks.

There is no "best", just which might best suit your priorities - budget, itinerary, size, amenities, etc. I've done Alaska on Holland America and Princess (on the delightfully small Pacific Princess - our favorite!)

I prefer glaciers to ports so a day sailing in Glacier Bay is an important priority to me. They limit how many ships can get permits to sail there, so not all do - check!.

Sailing round trip from Seattle is usually cheapest for flights (for Americans, at least) but since most Alaska cruises are 7 days, you lose ports or scenic sailing if you start as far south as Seattle. One way cruises (usually Anchorage to Vancouver or reverse) tend to have more time in port & scenic sailing.

I really don't like people, so would not go on a large ship (and to me, anything more than 1500 people is too large;)) But the smaller ships are rare and therefore more expensive.

What the large ships offer are a lot more onboard amenities - entertainment, kids clubs, extra specialty dining venues. These are not things I care about, but given the rest of the cruise landscape, my husband and I are clearly in the minority:p

Alaska is gorgeous - I've been 3 times and cannot wait to visit again! For us, a land trip combined with a cruise is the best of both worlds - we were spoiled last time as we had family living outside Fairbanks - we visited, drove from Fairbanks to Anchorage and boarded our cruise there - had a fantastic 2 week trip, saw lots of wildlife etc (there are many packages offered by cruise lines if you do not feel able to plan a land trip on your own - but it's pretty easy! And usually cheaper to DIY)

I took Princess 7 days one way from Vancouver to Whittier and enjoyed the experience; just the right amount of time in ports along the way.

Sorry, yes, when I say "Anchorage" - there's no port there - so you'll go to Whittier or to Seward or...An actual port.

It was clear to me, but good to remind people who haven't done a cruise there. Transfers to/from either Whittier or Seward are pretty easy from ANC, several bus/shuttle lines do it. There's also a train to Whittier, I believe.

And sometimes Cruise Line websites are clear about where the actual port is, and sometimes they aren't....

When we did Princess, we opted for the cruise line bus from Anchorage to Whittier - there were beluga whales in Turnagain Arm so the buses were kind enough (and we had enough time before the tunnel closed to let the train through) to stop and let us take photos of the whales.

Thanks so much for your detailed explanation.

I am looking at Princess and Celebrity cruise at the moment. Since I have a big group over here, I am considering of taking the suite rooms. However I notice, Princess offer a smaller and lesser Suite perks than Celebrity. From the brief research that I have done, Celebrity looks more prestigious and of course the price are steeper too. The itinerary looks pretty similar for both. Will need to work out the budget for the whole trip (including land tour) and see which one suits better for us.

Holland America is a great line for Alaska
 

Hello,
I have done two cruises in Alaska with Holland America - both were very good.

One was 14 days round-trip Seattle, stopping at some less-frequented ports like Sitka, Kodiak, and Homer. And it did stop in downtown Anchorage - contrary to previous posts there is a cruise port there. It was great to walk into town and do some sightseeing.

Homer was my favorite port - some of the crab boats from the Deadliest Catch tv show are in Homer. I went sea kayaking and it was really special.

Our 7-day itinerary was Ketchikan, Juneau and Haines, which is a quiet, rugged town near Skagway.
I really like that Holland goes to ports that are less crowded and less touristy.
Give Holland America a look for sure!

You first need to decide if you want a round trip (i.e. return) cruise or one that goes one way, with you flying in the other direction. The vast majority of these itineraries (both the round trip and one way cruises) are for seven days/nights.

Round trip cruises are offered with Seattle and Vancouver as their start/end points. These cruises only visit southeast Alaska, the long "panhandle" that stretches roughly from Skagway south to Ketchikan. The Seattle departures travel to the west of Vancouver Island, on open ocean, thus reducing the time one can see the lovely "Inside Passage" between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and also exposing the ships to potentially rough waters offshore. The Vancouver departures travel east of Vancouver Island, mainly on protected waters, and are thus more scenic and smoother.

The one-way cruises all depart or arrive in Vancouver, due to US maritime law. The Alaska terminus is either the town of Seward or the village of Whittier, both of which are connected to Anchorage by rail and road. If you choose the one-way option, most people find it desirable to extend their trips by several days (ideally a week or more) in order to visit southcentral and interior Alaska before or following the cruise. Destinations such as Denali National Park, the Kenai Peninsula, etc., can only be reached using one-way cruises.

Most cruisers will tell you that the specific itinerary is far more important than the choice of ships or cruise line. Most of the lines visit the same ports (and in fact some of the small ports of call are rather overwhelmed by several huge ships calling on the same day) but some itineraries will include, for example, Glacier Bay - a stunning scenic area - while others don't include it. (Access is limited to only a few visits a week.)

The message boards at Cruise Critic offer a vast amount of information and opinions about Alaska cruises, ports of call, and departure cities, as well as plenty of comparisons between cruise lines and accommodations. It's a good place to start your research.

You have just given me another options to look into!
Appreciate your sharing of experience :)

We've only done one Alaska cruise on Celebrity Millennium a few years back, return out of Vancouver.
While Millennium was adequate (and did the trick to get us to sail on Celebrity for additional cruises), personally I like a larger ship with more areas to explore, more specialty restaurants, etc. Having sailed only RCI previously at that point, we thought the service and food on X was a step up.

If we allocated more time to this trip, I think we would have enjoyed a one way cruise and explored Alaska a bit more.

Best experience for us was sailing the Inside Passage. I'd recommend picking a cruise that sailed through the inside passage instead of the west side of Vancouver Island.
The glaciers were cool too but with the activities we did you couldn't get too close (compared to say, the Columbia Icefields in Jasper).

Being from Vancouver and having done trips around the Pacific Northwest, the towns we visited and excursions we did on the cruise didn't really blow us away, though we do like walking around town. Fav excursion: Probably the White Pass train ride.

I stand corrected. I have still never seen a cruise that embarks or disembarks there (in general, HAL uses Seward) but things do change over time, esp in the travel industry^

The cruise we did on Pacific Princess was wonderful because we were able to get into glaciers within Glacier Bay that larger ships could not access. I would really love to do a 14 day Alaska cruise on Pacific or Ocean Princess, but that is looking highly unlikely as Princess continues to unload the lovely R class ships. We can switch to something like Silversea or Oceania for the size (and pay a ton more) but we would lose the long history Princess has in the area....

I forgot that on FT you can recommend other places to check out - I've been a Cruise Critic member for many many years. There is a great deal of cruising information there, but they are very strict about the sorts of things you can discuss....It can also be difficult to get cross-cruiseline comparisons - people like what they like - but there are articles that can help you get an idea of the personality of different lines to see which might be a good fit for your group.

Celebrity itineraries may not include Glacier Bay. IIRC, only Princess and Holland America offer them. Holland America also tends caters to a near-geriatric crowd so there's less "youthful" entertainment than Princess which tends to be middle age (FWIW).

Transfers between Seward/Whittier and Anchorage are also horribly expensive (somewhere in the region of $80 pp).

Holland America and Princess quite frequently offer reduced rates (as much as taxes and fees only) for the 3rd and 4th passengers occupying a cabin. Holland America is also reducing sailings out of Vancouver (had as many as 4 ships this season - 2 weekly R/Ts out of Vancouver and 2 plying Vancouver-Seward on opposite rotations), but is putting a big ship (Nieuw Amsterdam) next season so may be harder to get good fares.

If you might be susceptible to sea sickness, cruises from Seattle nearly always go around the ocean side of Vancouver Island instead of travelling up the sheltered inside passage which is more interesting (too bad the passage is usually at night - was at a location where I could see the ships loitering around on the inbound to Vancouver and steaming fast or slow depending on the tide at Campbell River).

Transfers with local tour bus companies are in the $25-30 range from ANC.

Not terribly surprising to see some reduction in the number of sailings for Alaska. This last summer I was able to get some really nice low fares for obstructed oceanview cabins - and on the Pacific Princess at that. Ended up doing a back to back which gave us a chance to do a few different things in the ports, and ended up renting a car for the whittier turnaround day.

To me, Glacier Bay is a definite must. Although even the smaller ships aren't typically going to anything by the two main glaciers that are done by cruise ships these days. On the trip into GB on the second leg of our trip we ended up closer to Marjerie than I've ever seen, I was amazed (and for that matter, so was our naturalist).

On the southbound leg, after leaving Juneau, during the time period we were going through Stephen's Passage, the whale turnout was absolutely incredible. Made up for the SB leg leaving Juneau early. I think we had about 3 solid hours of whale sightings, and they weren't just way out in the distance, a large number of them were surfacing close to the ship.

Even for Princess I thought the age group on this cruise was younger than normal, I'd suspect HAL also runs younger. I thought the small ship might cancel out the 1st time cruiser thing you get in Alaska a lot, but it turned out not to. Both ways we only had about 150 repeat passengers on Princess. SB ended up being #3 on the most traveled list at 164 days, so you know things were thin on the repeat cruisers.

Personally, with Princess I'd recommend the Island or Coral for Alaska, although what the experience will be like after they modify those ships is going to be hard to tell, that's probably the second most disappointing thing Princess is doing besides getting rid of the R ships.