If you’ve been following along with our Alaska adventure, welcome to the final installment. This post covers the seven-day cruise portion of Princess Cruises’ Land & Sea Tour—what we loved, what we’d do differently, and a few tips that made the experience even better.
And if you’re planning your own Alaska trip, I hope these notes help you decide what might work best for you.
And if you’ve already taken this journey, I hope this brings you fond memories.
I need to get it written down before I totally forget all of it too!
For reference: Alaska Trip Part One and Alaska Trip Part Two
Leaving Denali
We left the Princess Denali Lodge to catch the Princess train bright and early Saturday morning. As in we boarded around 7:30 a.m.
There were about seven cars with a domed window top for fantastic viewing.
Each car had its own tour guide, bartender and meal servers. The attention by the staff was first rate.
Oh, and! The sun came out! For the entire day! So we saw Mt. McKinley, or Denali, for almost the entire day from every aspect.
We’re told only about 30% of visitors see Denali at all, and an even smaller percentage enjoy clear views for most of the day. Whether those numbers are exact or not, we definitely felt lucky.
Passengers are allowed to go outdoors and stand on the platform or travel between cars. We did stand outside for quite a long time and were rewarded with views of several moose, including a mom and calf.
The downside: The train travels between 25-35 mph. And sometimes it completely stopped. As in when there was a conductor change.
We caught sight of our ship at 7:00 p.m. 12 hours on a train – even a lovely one – is about 8 hours too long.
Princess Discovery
We boarded the train Saturday evening and joined nearly 4,000 fellow passengers aboard Discovery Princess. As in that ship holds a lot of people!
I read reports that elevators became crowded and were hard to get, so we were prepared for that. And at the end of the day, we were able to catch an elevator more than we could the last cruise we took.
Our balcony suite was at the very front of the ship on the 10th floor. The theater, restaurants and other activity centers were on the 7th floor – mid ship. The buffet where we ate all but one of our meals was on the 16th floor at the very back of the ship.
We certainly got our steps in!
Entertainment
The entertainment wasn’t Broadway-caliber, but everything we saw was enjoyable and we didn’t walk out of any programs.
The theater was large and with two shows a night, I don’t think anyone got turned away from a show.
There were two “Dress to Impress” nights where about 25% of the passengers dressed up. We were not among them.
One of those nights included a Captain’s Champagne Waterfall in the main piazza. We happened to be sitting in the area during the set-up of the champagne glass tower and it was quite impressive.
Excursion Highlights
We actually only took one paid excursion tour – Coastal Helicopters – a glacier landing in Juneau. The helicopter flight from the airport to the glacier was full of breathtaking scenery. When we landed on the glacier, the pilot gave us a tour of the area and pointed out the highlights.
This tour is pricey, but we really enjoyed it and worth the money.
Although we didn’t participate in led tours, we explored on our own and this is what worked for us:
- Glacier Bay National Park
The ship doesn’t dock at the park. Rather, a number of park rangers board the ship and give presentations which are held in the theater and simulcast through other public areas and on the in-room televisions.
We watched the main presentation in a lounge and then went to our room and enjoyed the rest of the day from the comfort of our room.
Almost everyone opted to sit out on the very cold deck and jockey for viewing spots. We had our tv on listening to the talk and watched from the balcony. In fact, we ordered room service for lunch and didn’t leave at all until the evening.
We saw sea otters, eagles, seals and glaciers galore. So much beauty!
Watching Glacier Bay from our own balcony, wrapped in blankets with hot drinks, turned out to be one of our favorite memories of the trip.
- Juneau
Our copter tour wasn’t until late morning, so we walked just a few blocks (mostly uphill!) to the state capitol and took a self-guided tour.
We were totally alone in enjoying the historic building. The facility was built as a federal building before Alaska was a state; hence, it doesn’t have a dome like most state capitols do.
- Hoonah
Hoonah’s big attraction is a zipline. John didn’t want to test out his new hip quite yet, so we opted for the nature walk and exploring the teeny, tiny town – utterly charming.
- Ketchikan
Ketchikan is a rainforest and receives 165″ of rain a year. So it was no surprise it was pouring when we disembarked. The town has about 8,000 residents and with two or three ships arriving a day, that doubles or triples the amount of people in town.
Everyone crowding the sidewalks carrying umbrellas was a little overwhelming. Quite serendipitously we stumbled upon the US Forest Service Alaska Discovery Center. What a gem!
For the price of just showing our National Parks pass, we were able to tour the museum learning about local animals, arts and history of the area.
Again, very few people were taking advantage of this hidden nugget, but I highly recommend this.
Oh, and by the way, the people who had booked excursions looked pretty wet, cold and miserable on this day.
Wrap Up & Final Thoughts
The United States holds so much stunning beauty and Alaska ranks right up there.
Looking back on the entire Land & Sea Tour, here’s my biggest takeaway:
· The land tour offers incredible scenery but involves lots of buses, trains, hotels, and packing.
· The cruise portion is wonderfully relaxing—especially with a balcony stateroom.
What we would do differently: Pack about ½ the clothes we brought. We stayed in comfy clothes while on the ship and used the laundry facilities twice.
If you’re planning an Alaska cruise and have questions, leave them in the comments or send me a message. I’d be happy to share anything we learned along the way.