We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise to Alaska with our little JellyBean in May of 2019.
If you follow these ten tips, you’ll likely enjoy your Alaskan cruise as much as we did!
Our first tip is to not let the idea of “having to have” a balcony prevent you from taking
an Alaskan cruise.
Many people will say that you must have a balcony for an Alaskan Cruise.
However, during our cruise there was plenty of opportunity to see the sights from our
ship’s public areas and open decks.
In fact, even though we had a balcony, all of our most memorable experiences and photos
happened in public areas of the ship and we spent very little time sightseeing from our balcony.
We found our balcony to have a fairly limited view, while the public areas and open decks
had a much wider view of all sides of the ship, allowing us to fully appreciate the
scale and grandeur of what we were seeing.
Our next tip is to do a good amount of research for any ship you’re considering to ensure
the ship is a good option for Alaska.
A few questions to consider are:
Does the ship have good public viewing locations?
Are there inside public areas with expansive windows?
Does the ship have covered outdoor viewing areas?
And, if you’re interested in swimming, does the ship have an indoor pool?
Our third tip is to consider Glacier Bay National Park for your itinerary if your Alaskan cruise
is truly going to be a once-in-a-lifetime visit.
Glacier Bay National Park is a 3.3 million acre park full of breathtaking mountainscapes
and 1,045 glaciers and it’s one of the biggest highlights of any cruise that spends the day there.
The park can only be accessed by two cruise ships each day, so the number of people who
can experience the park is relatively limited compared to other Alaskan destinations.
Our next tip is to consider a round-trip cruise from Vancouver If you’re worried about seasickness
on your Alaskan cruise.
Ships sailing to Alaska from Vancouver typically sail in the protected waters of the Inside
Passage east of Vancouver Island.
Flanked by land on both sides for the majority of the route, the journey tends to be calm
and the scenery is beautiful.
By contrast, ships sailing from Seattle typically sail in the less calm Pacific Ocean for a
day at sea and join the Inside Passage north of Vancouver Island.
Our fifth tip is to pack a sleep mask if you have a balcony or oceanview cabin and have
a difficult time sleeping in brighter conditions.
When we cruised in late May, a really early sunrise and really late sunset meant that
we had over 17-and-a-half hours of daylight and zero official hours of night.
With so much sunlight, our cabin was never completely dark, even with the curtains drawn.
Our next tip is to pack for all seasons when visiting Alaska.
While many people will tell you to dress in layers when visiting Alaska, that wasn’t
quite helpful enough during our visit.
The day prior to embarking on our cruise, the weekly forecast indicated high temperatures
in the 40s and 50s for the entire trip.
In actuality, temperatures climbed into the 70s and we found ourselves wishing we had
packed shorts.
We also found that we could not rely on weather forecasts once we were on board the ship as
the forecasted temperature for the next day was often wrong by 10 degrees or more.
Our seventh tip is to make sure you budget for shore excursions and consider independent
tour operators.
Alaska offers many unique, once-in-a-lifetime wildlife and outdoor experiences and those
excursions tend to be more costly than excursions offered in Caribbean ports and elsewhere.
We were able to save some money by booking online with independent tour providers who
guaranteed an on-time return to our ship or they’d cover the cost of getting us to the
ship at the next port.
Our next tip is to use the internet to discover many resources for exploring Alaskan ports
on your own.
In addition to finding free walking tours online for each of the ports we visited, we
also found a website that listed the berth locations for our ship.
The docking information was helpful for our planning since some ships dock much closer
to downtown and tourist areas than others.
And if you’re planning to visit the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway,
the park’s website explains how to reserve free tickets in advance for the ranger-led
tours and how kids can be sworn in as Junior Rangers.
Our ninth tip is to make sure you add scale to your photographs.
Many sights in Alaska are hugeand it can be hard to represent the true size unless you
add a reference for scale to your photos.
For example, if you’re taking a photo of a mountain -- such as the 3,500 foot tall
Mount Juneau -- make sure you include some buildings or other objects that help show
exactly how tall it is.
Our final tip is to bring a large map of the areas your Alaskan cruise will be sailing
to and hang it in your cabin.
During our cruise, the map was very helpful for identifying landmarks and other points
of interest as we cruised by, especially in the Inside Passage area.
The map was also fun for showing our little JellyBean where we were and how our ship would
get to the next destination.