First Alaskan Cruise! Yeah! Help!

[Weluvdisny]

We're looking at going at the end of June/beginning of July 2009.

Any info you can give me will be appreciated!

[bbangel]

My stepmother has been on several Holland America ones (I think those are the ones whose ships are all 'dam)
She prefered them to the one she took on Princess.
Don't forget to consider spending time in the city you depart from (likely Vancouver or Seattle) If you are in Vancouver we could meet for coffee/shopping!

[spring]

I went on a repositioning cruise from LA to Vancouver, including the inside passage of Alaska. In Alaska, we stopped in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway, then cruised the Hubbard Glacier. Our trip was on the Celebrity Summit May 2007. Ask whatever you want and I'll try to help!:sunshine: Oh, and by the way, it was an AWESOME trip!

[StitchandPooh'smom]

We did an Alaskan cruise last summer on Holland America. It was a great trip, but it really depends on your group which ship is right for you. We took our girls (7 and 4 at the time), and there was not much on board for them to do. The kids' clubs were mainly deserted (even though it was July), the pools were small and uninteresting, and I didn't like the way the kids' clubs were set up (No pagers for older kids, so DD7 would have had to sign herself in and out and arrange to meet us somewhere. I was not comfortable with that, and they would not do a pager unless she dropped into the 3-5 group, which SHE was not comfortable with.) The counselor explaining the setup in the clubs to all the parents made a comment saying "You need to pick your kids up by noon so we can eat lunch. If you are late, we just lock them in." She was obviously kidding, but DD4 burst into tears and not one counselor came over to see her. She refused to go into the kids' clubs after that. It was definitely NOT Disney.)

It sounds like I am complaining (and I was disappointed with the setup - not enough research on my part despite trying hard), but we had a great trip and the girls had lots of fun with their older cousins who also went.

My tips:

Cruise Critic will tell you to choose the itinerary, not the ship. This is what I did, and I think it is sound advice IF you are not traveling with small kids. My kids would have much preferred the ship with the water slide (Carnival?) that seemed to follow us to every port.

Figure out what you want to see. Some ships go to Glacier Bay, some to Hubbard Glacier, some to Icy Strait Point. Some ships have naturalists on board, some pick one up for a trip to Glacier Bay. Cruise critic has a wealth of knowledge.

You can cruise roundtrip from Seattle (which we did), from Vancouver, or start in Vancouver or Seattle and end in Alaska (or vice versa). There are occasional cruises from San Francisco, which add sea days but also increase the chances of rough seas. You can add a land portion, which was too much for us in terms of time and stamina with the kids, but it would have been fun.

Excursions can be super-expensive, like helicopter rides to glaciers for a few hundred dollars per person, or inexpensive, like a $6 bus ride to Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau (well worth it!). You can spend as much on excursions as you can on the cruise, or you can pick one once-in-a-lifetime excursion and budget the rest.

If you go to Juneau, check out whale watching with Captain Larry. It was awesome! We saw whales bubblenet feeding and were able to get in close since the boat only holds 30-40 people. There is another group that has smaller boats that hold 6 people (Harv and Marv, I think), but we had eight in our group. The whlae watching excursions through the cruise lines are typically on boats that hold 100+ people.

Oh, and don't wait to book! Since cruise season is just a few summer months, it fills up months in advance (especially balcony cabins).

Hope this helps! You may have already picked your ship since I see your OP is a few months old - if so, just disregard most of this!