Alaska - So Much More to See Than Glaciers

As we get closer to a new Alaska cruise season, May through September, I'm seeing a lot of questions asking about excursions and itinerary choices. One of the trips I never wrote about was our cruise tour to Alaska back in 2015. To this day, if anyone asks what my favorite trip has been, the answer is Alaska. It is definitely a different experience than the fun in the sun hang out on the beach image a first time cruiser might have pictured. However, it is an itinerary that I highly recommend everyone experience in their lifetime. If feasible for your time and budget, I'd also recommend planning your trip to include a land portion like we did. You see and experience so much more than just what you can see in a 6 hour port stop on a cruise ship tour. Keep in mind also the time of year you'd want to book this trip. The earlier and the later in the season you go, it will be colder and you may see snow. We took this trip in mid to late August and the temperatures were quite comfortable with just a light jacket.

For those not familiar with the lingo, a cruise tour is a combination of land travel and traveling on the cruise ship. You can pick itineraries that do the land portion first or the cruise portion first. I personally prefer the land portion first because it means the part of your trip that is unpacking once and sleeping in the same place comes at the end and you feel a lot more settled. The fact that for us in this case meant we had free laundry (suite perk) once we boarded the Grand Princess was even better. The land portion is a lot more get up and go since you are most likely in a different town every 1-2 days so it's different hotels to unpack and repack each time. There's also the geography aspect to consider. When it comes to cruising Alaska's Inside Passage, you can choose northbound or southbound. If you chose the cruise first option, you'd either board the ship in a city like Seattle or Vancouver and then get off in Anchorage to continue on land to Fairbanks. For us, flight wise, it was easier to travel home from Vancouver and start in Fairbanks.

One of the things you'll learn from researching Alaska cruises is that Princess Cruise Lines "owns" Alaska. By that I mean that they have their own established brand in the region with their own lodges with amenities on site for travelers to stay in. With another line like Royal Caribbean or Carnival, you'd be staying at a local hotel and bussed everywhere. At this point we knew we enjoyed Princess as a cruise line in general so using them for this cruise tour was an easy decision.

The next decision was which type of cruise tour to take. Princess offers several options at differing price points because the higher the price point, the more is included and planned for you. One option is called "On Your Own" which is basically Princess providing the transportation and lodging in each city. You'd be responsible for meals and tours on your own dime and effort. Next option is known as the "Denali Explorer" which is the same as On Your Own except they include the Denali National Park nature tour. The next option is "Off the Beaten Path" which includes the riverboat ride in Fairbanks. Another option which I'm not sure I even saw they had back in 2015 is the "Canadian Rockies Cruise Tours." Unlike the others, this option starts the land portion in Calgary and all the land portions are in a different Canada city ending in Vancouver. You never actually see Alaska until the cruise. We went with the final option, and the bane of my existence in trying to spell correctly, the "Connoisseur Tour." With this option, you are paying extra for the convenience factor of included tours, included meals and as they claimed, better perks along the way.

Navigating through your many itinerary choices can be a daunting task. Here's how to narrow down your choices when searching on Princess Cruises' website. Click here for a good comparison chart for what you get under each type of tour. Then you can bring up a much simpler list of itinerary options within that tour type.

If you select "Start/End Port" from along the top choices, this is where you can choose whether you want to sort by land first options or cruise first options. Here, we sorted by land first only options and narrowed the choices even more:

Rather than a day by day account of everything we experienced like my usual blog posts, this series will feature posts highlighting the places we stayed on land, the ship, and our tours in port. And of course some food pics. You know I would never miss covering the food! Our itinerary was 8 days on land and 7 days on the cruise. We traveled from Fairbanks to Denali to McKinley, to Kenai, to Anchorage/Whittier to board the ship. Then while on the ship we visited Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan before ending in Vancouver. So come along with me as I recount all the glaciers, bears, and goodtime girls that we saw during our trip!