Here are my thoughts on a trip to Alaska I planned with my parents and siblings (5 adults 30-40 and 2 in their 60’s). For a number of reasons I decided to plan to the land portion of our trip and not book a cruise tour. We wanted to squeeze a lot in and didn’t have unlimited time. Our land tour portion was 5 days followed by a 7 day cruise. There were a few things that my family members expressed an interest in doing and I could not find a tour package that included everything in a reasonable amount of time. People wanted to take a train to Denali and fish in the Kenai Peninsula area. Alaska is enormous and planning can be daunting. I read extensively on cruise critic and trip advisor. Since reading others’ reviews and posts helped me figure things out I thought I would post my thoughts. This is lengthy and I don’t really care if anyone reads the whole thing, but I included a lot of details that might be useful for someone in the situation I was in trying to figure out what to book.
We flew into Anchorage from LA on a red eye and then after hanging out at the airport to kill a little time we took a couple cabs to the train station. I think all the tour packages I saw had you fly in the night before and stay over in Anchorage which would have added another day onto out trip. We took the Gold Star Class train to Denali. I think everyone really enjoyed this. The views were beautiful and although we couldn’t see Mt Denali due to clouds, we did see moose and salmon from the train. The Gold star class is a bit pricey (much like everything else in Alaska) but it was very nice to have the beautiful view through the glass dome and have meals included. I walked around the train a bit and I think you can still have a great view if you book the adventure class seats so I wouldn’t stress it if you don’t feel like splurging.
We stayed at the Grande Denali lodge which also was very pricey this time of year but was nice. They required full payment at the time of booking and it seemed that most hotels were booked up by about 6 months out. The Grande Denali Lodge is up a hill so it is not walking distance from the “downtown” Denali area but there are frequent shuttles from the hotel. The Princess lodge is in a better location and I would have booked that if it was available. The hotel shuttle picked us up from the train station. Checking in and out was very easy. The night we arrived in Denali we took the hotel shuttle into town and strolled around then ate dinner at Karsten's Public House at the McKinley lodge. I think everyone in the group thought the food was good.
The next day we took the Kantishna wilderness tour of Denali. I spent a while trying to sort out which tour to take. There are shuttle buses and tours. I think for first timers like us a tour was the right choice. If you like more control of things or want to save money the shuttle buses are another option where you hop on and hop off where you want. There are several tours of varying lengths. The Kantisha Wilderness tour and the Denali backcountry adventure are the 2 tour options that take you all the way into the park ~92 miles and take 12-13 hours. I couldn’t find much online to distinguish one over the other and ended up booking the the Kantisha tour. There are several shorter tours if that seems too long. Everyone was very happy with the tour. There was a fair bit of rain but for the most part it didn’t interfere with things. It was cloudy in the Mt. Denali area so we did not see the mountain, but we pretty much saw everything else. I don’t want to brag, I think we got VERY lucky and it doesn’t seem like you can go in expecting this but we saw 3 moose, 13 bears, several caribou, Dall sheep, a fox, and a wolf. One of the bears walked right by our bus which is not typical. Our tour guide was Krista and she was really great. A 12 hour tour sounds like a grueling day but there were multiple stops along the way. Lunch at the Kantishna road house was fine - minestrone soup and turkey wraps. There were snack breaks midway along the way in each direction - cookies on the way out and apples and oranges on the way back. Not a bad idea to bring a bottle of water. After the tour we had dinner at Prospector’s Pizza. There was a long wait, but everyone in the crowd enjoyed the food. I had also heard about the Salmon bake restaurant online quite a bit. We didn’t end up going there because a bunch of shuttle bus drivers told us it was over-rated and over priced.
The next morning we took a park connection bus right from our hotel to the anchorage airport where we picked up a rental car to drive to Seward. I will pause here to answer a few questions:
Why not take the train back? Well, the train takes a couple hours longer and doesn’t leave until noon. The bus allowed us to get to anchorage much earlier.
Why not just rent a car in Anchorage in the first place and drive back and forth to Denali? Well, my parents had their hearts set on a train ride (we did end up taking a train in skagway during the cruise, but this was different).
How bout flying into fairbanks rather then a back and forth from Anchorage to Denali? There are no direct flights from LA to fairbanks so that would have required an overnight in Fairbanks.
Why not just continue on the park connection bus all the way to Seward? Well, if we did that we would have to take a bus or train back to Anchorage to get to our Cruise out of Whittier which would have cost a lot more and take a lot more time. There doesn’t seem to be any transportation directly between Seward and Whittier.
And why not just cruise right out of Seward? We booked a Princess cruise. They cruise out of Whittier.
We drove from Anchorage down to Seward. Also very scenic. Along the way we stopped for lunch at Chair 5 Restaurant in Girdwood. We just found it randomly on our phones. The food was good. We stopped at Exit Glacier just before we got to Seward. In hindsight this was the least impressive glacier of the trip but it was the first one and the most accessible. It was a nice, reasonably easy hike from the visitors center to the glacier.
We stayed at the Hotel Seward which was worked out well for us. It was near several restaurants. Apparently not all rooms in the hotel have their own bathrooms though we made a point to book ones that did. Also this time of year just about everything is booked up in this area so we fortunately booked way in advance. This hotel didn’t require payment or a deposit up front. We had dinner at Thorns restaurant about a block from the hotel which was also good.
The following day we were up early yet again. This time for an all day fishing trip with Alaska Northern Outfitters. I read about every fishing charter company in Seward. We were very pleased with this company. We booked a full day fishing trip: half day halibut, half day salmon. Most of us were beginners though a couple in the our group had some fishing experience. I think this was one of the bigger fishing boats among the companies I looked at. There were probably about 20 people on the trip as well as 3 crew. It sounded like things had been very hit or miss lately with fishing in the area. On the way out we stopped to watch a small humpback whale that was jumping out of the water. It breached about a dozen times. At our first fishing stop we caught rockfish. This wasn’t really advertised but I guess these fish were so easy to catch it was probably good for us to start out with that. Many of us caught the limit of orange rockfish and black bass. Then we moved to another location to catch halibut. All seven of us caught our limit of 2 halibut. My mother who I could tell really had no interest in fishing even caught 2 halibut and maybe even enjoyed it a bit. The we switched over to catching salmon. This was much tougher than catching rockfish or halibut, but we still managed to catch a bunch. They cleaned and filleted the fish after we had a chance to take pictures with our fish. This trip was very pricey but I was extremely pleased with the experience. I would recommend this outfit to anyone and they handled beginners very well. They have an option called “share the pole” where 2 people can share one fishing rod which can save you some money. We didn’t do this though several other on the shop did. I could tell that some people were a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, but the fish were really biting so I think everyone really got into it. We ended up with about 96 pounds of fish after they were cleaned and filleted. We dropped most of it for processing so that it could be sent home for us to enjoy later.
We took some of the halibut with us to have for dinner that night. This is something I knew we wanted to do so I had looked into it online. The only restaurant in town that I could find online that advertised that they would cook your catch was Apollo restaurant which also happened to be a block from our hotel. I had asked at the hotel and on the boat and no one seemed to know about any other restaurants that would cook your catch for you. We brought our halibut to Apollo and they really did a great job with it. I think they charged about $18 per person and they prepared the fish in 2 ways: half beer battered and half grilled. That also included salad, pasta and potatoes. The fish was superb! If you fish in Seward I definitely recommend bringing some of your catch to Apollo.
The next morning we drove to Whittier, another very scenic drive. Right before you get to Whittier, there is a mountain range that you drive under via a one lane tunnel. I was not aware of the way this tunnel works until we got there. Since there is only one lane, traffic can only go in one direction at a time, and this included trains. So if you time it wrong, you might have an hour wait to go through the tunnel. We had about a 30 minute wait, no big deal. Whittier is a tiny little town, but it has some beautiful scenery. By the way Avis has a small rental location right at the port which was very convenient. There is also a small gas station right nearby which isn’t easy to find, but I promise, it is there.
We boarded the Star Princess and the process was very quick, unlike what I have seen in other ports like Fort Lauderdale, LA and Houston. I think from the time we got in line we were on the boat in 20 minutes. Part of this may be due to the fact that many of the passengers show up much later by train. I hear a lot of people posting about the difficulty they have with choosing which ship to take in Alaska. I have been on 4 princess ships and I would say the subtle differences that people fret about don’t seem to matter as much to me. Also we had cabins on with balconies on the starboard side and we had fantastic views. When booking it seemed that the port side rooms filled up first. During glacier viewing, the ship turned and stopped so that each side had ample time to view. Also I have heard read some reviews about how the Star princess is in bad shape. I disagree, all of the Grand Class ships I have been on (Caribbean, Sapphire, Emerald and Star) have really seemed to be in the same condition, which I would say is quite good. I saw a broken railing on the back of the ship, but it didn’t spoil anything for us. Also we booked this cruise last year during the Sip and Sail promotion. It definitely doesn’t seem like the cost of a drink package would come close to penciling out for anyone in our group but it sure made things simpler.
The second day was in Hubbard Glacier. It was cloudy and rainy in the beginning of the scenic cruising time and it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to see much, but things cleared up quite a bit when we got close to the glacier. It was vey impressive and we saw calving (large pieces of ice falling off the glacier into the water) several times.
The third day we were in glacier bay national park and saw some more very impressive glaciers. We picked up some park rangers along the way and one of them gave a great talk in the morning. This was very well attended, probably the most crowed I saw the theater for the entire cruise. The rangers were on deck to answer questions and narrate things throughout the day.
Day 4 we arrived in Skagway. We had booked a helicopter tour to Meade glacier. We booked this through the cruise line. I had never booked an excursion through the cruise line before, but doing so made it very easy. the tour was great, though very pricey (you should be seeing a theme by now), but I would say it was a worthwhile experience. We had a 20-30 minute helicopter ride to the glacier, then walked around the glacier for about 45 minutes. This was very interesting. Then helicopter ride back. Since we were in this port for about 12 hours we had plenty of time after this in port. We walked around skagway. There are way too many jewelry stores there. We took the white pass railway tour. We bought the tickets right at the dock. Also more really great scenery.
Day 5 was in Juneau. It was rainy. We booked a whale watching tour through Harv and Marv which seems very popular. They picked us up right at the port and then drove us to the whale watching boats. We lucked out and had a private boat for the 7 of us. The boat clearly could have fit twice as many people. We saw many whales, a couple of them came right up to the boat. This too seems a bit hit or miss. I think they did a good job finding whales and I would recommend Harv and Marv to anyone interested in whale watching. It seems like Juneau is the best place to do whale watching on this itinerary. The boat was covered so when the rain picked up it wasn’t an issue. It started raining a bit harder once we got back so we didn’t bother going to Mendenhall glacier.
Day 6 was in Ketchikan. My favorite port of the 3 and definitely the best weather of the 3 port days. We hadn’t booked a tour ahead of time. We ended up doing the self guided walking tour of the downtown area. It’s available online, but they have paper copies in the visitors center. The most interesting part was following the Ketchikan Creek and seeing the salmon swim up stream. We also decided to see the Lumberjack show. It was fun/interesting.
Day 7 was a sea day and then we arrived in Vancouver. In Vancouver our flight wasn’t until the late afternoon so we checked our bags with CDS baggage storage. They have a counter right in the cruise terminal. It’s $10 per suitcase if you want them to transport the bag to the airport. This was very handy and allowed us to do a tour. We booked a private 2 hour walking tour with Tour Guys. They also offer free short group walking tours, but for our group of 7 having a private longer tour was worthwhile. The subway from the downtown area was a quick, easy way to get to the airport and I think for the first time in this lengthy dissertation I’ll say that it was pretty in expensive. Then back to LA.
2 pieces of advice that I heard over and over again that are still worth repeating. Pack layers and expect rain. I was very happy to have a light weight water resistant jacket. We also brought light weight plastic ponchos but most of us didn’t end up using them despite a fair bit of rain. Great trip. Really not much that I would change. Hope this helps someone.