Cruise Line for Alaska?

[EllieJedi]

I am trying to decide on a cruise for next summer for my adult sons and myself to Alaska. I have decided on a one-way cruise, most likely Southbound with either Holland America on the Nieuw Amsterdam or on Princess on either the Coral Princess or Sapphire Princess. I’m looking at a Signature Suite on Holland for the 3 of us and either a mini-suite or vista suite on Princess. I’ve sailed on Princess before but only on their newer ships. The itineraries and port times are very similar between the two, as both leave from Whittier, visit Hubbard Glacier, Glacier Bay NP, Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and sail the inside passage before arriving in Vancouver. Anyone sail on any of these 3 ships, or with Holland or Princess to Alaska recently that could offer some advice? We would be looking at a trip between the very end of May and the end of June.

I am still on the fence about adding on a pre-cruise land tour through the cruise lines versus doing that portion of the trip on our own. Either way we want to spend a day in Anchorage, 2 full days in Denali and hopefully a day to cruise the Kenai Fjords. I know that the road in Denali is closed at mile marker 43 through next year.

 

[kdonnel]

I don’t see a huge difference between the mainstream cruise lines so I would pick based on itinerary.

Between May and June I would pick June unless much more expensive. The weather just gets better later in the season.

 

[adkkev]

Do the pre-cruise stuff on your own. Just do some research about the places you want to visit.

I recommend this because it gives you the opportunity to stop and see things that you might not get to experience while on a cruise sponsored land tour.
Your four days pre-cruise may not be enough time to really get to enjoy these places especially since the drive to/from Denali to Anchorage takes several hours. You could add some time and stop in Talkeetna, explore this quirky town, take a flight seeing plane ride to see the mountain (if the weather is good perhaps land on a glacier near the mountain). The Kenai Fjords cruise tour is well worth the time and can take much of your day there.
If you are lucky while driving along Turnagain Arm during the tide coming in or out you’ll get to see the wind surfers riding the waves of the bore tide.

 

[EllieJedi]

I don’t see a huge difference between the mainstream cruise lines so I would pick based on itinerary.

Between May and June I would pick June unless much more expensive. The weather just gets better later in the season.

The only port that had a significant difference in the itinerary was Juneau as Princess is 6:30 AM - 4PM vs Holland 8 AM - 5 PM. There’s a bit of jump in price but the jump isn’t huge until we get into July and I can’t go much past the 4th of July due to work.

The prices between the lines aren’t completely apples to apples as the Holland signature suite is bigger than the Princess mini-suite. The Princess vista suite is bigger and has more amenities.

 

[bobbiwoz]

We really appreciated the fact that in Glacier Bay, National Park rangers were aboard, and they had excellent programs that day. We were on Princess. I don’t know if Holland has the rangers on board.

Our post cruise land tour with Princess was excellent!

 

[barkley]

not recent but when we did alaska (inside passage round trip from vancouver) it was with holland america-i would NOT reccommend them. the vibe is much stuffier than other lines we've been on but that could be b/c they've traditionaly tended to attract an older crowd. from what i can tell these days they still go for this audience (they are the top of the list on many sites for seniors looking to cruise) so as a result have somewhat less in the way of onboard activities (and the ones they have were not greatly appealing to a younger passenger).

 

[tvguy]

You are probably good with all cruise lines in Alaska. HAL has been doing it longer than anyone and has the best permits and naturalists but face it, Alaska is so amazing you can't go wrong. My two Alaska cruises were on HAL.

 

[rndmr2]

We did a Northbound Itinerary out of Vancouver on Princess in 2018 (The Star Princess, the old one that got sold in 2020) and it was really nice. We did a 4 night Land tour afterwards to Denali and Fairbanks

 

[China Expat]

I did Alaska five times on Holland America. It's best suited for adults. Iloved the ship size and passenger count, educational salons, good berthing spots, and attentive crew. LOts of space for quiet and gazing.

 

[EllieJedi]

I did Alaska five times on Holland America. It's best suited for adults. Iloved the ship size and passenger count, educational salons, good berthing spots, and attentive crew. LOts of space for quiet and gazing.

I am leaning towards Holland America for many of the reasons you mentioned. One thing I wasn’t aware of until yesterday is that the Nieuw Amsterdam now has a Morimoto at Sea restaurant. Another plus.
https://cruiseindustrynews.com/crui...staurant-at-sea-opens-aboard-nieuw-amsterdam/

 

[TiggerTrigger]

Not firsthand opinion here, but my parents go on 6-10 cruises per year and have cruised Alaska several times. I know they've cruised Holland America a few times, but they prefer Princess. From everything they've shared with us, both Holland and Princess attract a more mature group of passengers...they've just found Princess to be more lively and prefer the accommodations and service they've had on Princess. They're in their 70s, if that makes a difference.

 

[EllieJedi]

Not firsthand opinion here, but my parents go on 6-10 cruises per year and have cruised Alaska several times. I know they've cruised Holland America a few times, but they prefer Princess. From everything they've shared with us, both Holland and Princess attract a more mature group of passengers...they've just found Princess to be more lively and prefer the accommodations and service they've had on Princess. They're in their 70s, if that makes a difference.

Well, Holland may have made the decision for us. The stateroom that we really want is waitlist only for all of the sailings that we are looking at already. It looked to me that the cruise line might be holding some of the better categories for people that book their cruise tours.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Anyone sail on any of these 3 ships, or with Holland or Princess to Alaska

We've "done" Alaska twice on Holland America. They've done it the longest and typically have the best port times and excursions. They also do have rangers onboard when traveling in Glacier Bay.

We've also been on Princess, although not in Alaska, and I'll agree, for the most part, you're going to find a slightly younger passenger load on Princess over HAL.

 

[AppleDumpling]

We did the southbound cruise on Princess back in 2015. Different ship (smaller, older one that no longer sails), but the itinerary looks the same. We did the land tour through Princess as well, before the cruise. I don’t remember if it was 4 or 5 nights, but we flew to Anchorage to start, had two nights at Denali NP, and one near Talkeetna. Did not go to the Kenai peninsula.

We decided not to rent a car, so DH and I could both relax and take in the scenery. Rode buses, driver acted as a tour guide and would stop along the way for photo ops. Also, one day on the glass dome train, which was great. Stayed several nights at the Princess-owned lodges. We had a wonderful time and would recommend it. On the ship, we had a balcony cabin, which was well worth it.

 

[design_mom]

I'm not sure this counts as "recent" but we did the NB one way trip on the Coral Princess in 2018. It was a multi-generational trip to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Our group ranged from middle-schoolers to grandparents in their late 70s.

Overall, we really liked the trip. The food was pretty good, there were plenty of activities, etc. The ship is one of their older/smaller ones. We liked that it wasn't huge (less walking for the grandparents) and it had plenty of stuff, but I think the kids were a little jealous of some of the bigger ships' amenities that we could see in port (water slides, etc... the Coral Princess did not have any of those.) I can't remember specifics, but one nice thing about the smaller ship was that when we got into a port, there were fewer people invading the city (of course, it depended on which other ships were also in port that day. The Coral Princess has about 2000 passengers and some of the big ships have close to 4000. That makes a difference in how crowded the port is.)

One thing that we almost skipped, but are glad we didn't: Princess had an Iditarod racer and one of her dogs come on board and give a presentation one night. It was really interesting! Even the kids really enjoyed it.

Edit: Another thing we did on board was we went to a presentation where they showed how they carve the food sculptures for the buffet. One little tidbit of info they shared was that the food for both the northbound and southbound cruises gets loaded in Vancouver before the start of the NB cruise. So for the southbound cruise, all the produce, etc. has been aboard for at least a week. I do not know if that would make a noticeable difference for the SB cruise (we were NB) but I thought I'd pass it along because I didn't think about that. I would assume most cruise lines might do it the same way.

 

[EllieJedi]

I'm not sure this counts as "recent" but we did the NB one way trip on the Coral Princess in 2018. It was a multi-generational trip to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Our group ranged from middle-schoolers to grandparents in their late 70s.

Overall, we really liked the trip. The food was pretty good, there were plenty of activities, etc. The ship is one of their older/smaller ones. We liked that it wasn't huge (less walking for the grandparents) and it had plenty of stuff, but I think the kids were a little jealous of some of the bigger ships' amenities that we could see in port (water slides, etc... the Coral Princess did not have any of those.) I can't remember specifics, but one nice thing about the smaller ship was that when we got into a port, there were fewer people invading the city (of course, it depended on which other ships were also in port that day. The Coral Princess has about 2000 passengers and some of the big ships have close to 4000. That makes a difference in how crowded the port is.)

One thing that we almost skipped, but are glad we didn't: Princess had an Iditarod racer and one of her dogs come on board and give a presentation one night. It was really interesting! Even the kids really enjoyed it.

Edit: Another thing we did on board was we went to a presentation where they showed how they carve the food sculptures for the buffet. One little tidbit of info they shared was that the food for both the northbound and southbound cruises gets loaded in Vancouver before the start of the NB cruise. So for the southbound cruise, all the produce, etc. has been aboard for at least a week. I do not know if that would make a noticeable difference for the SB cruise (we were NB) but I thought I'd pass it along because I didn't think about that. I would assume most cruise lines might do it the same way.

My sons are in their early 30s so are both past the age where they really want the water slide type cruise, at least for Alaska. Of the 3 ships I’m looking at, the Sapphire Princess holds the most passengers at 2670 double occupancy with the Nieuw Amsterdam at about 2100 and Coral Princess at 2000. I think Sapphire is about as big as I would want to go for Alaska.

We would really like to see an Iditarod racer. We had someone from MN who had completed the race come and speak to the boys school many years ago and I was so impressed by the training.

I’ve been reading a lot about Northbound vs. Southbound and my one concern with the Southbound is that it sounds like Hubbard Glacier can be a bit hit or miss in terms of whether ships can get fairly close (not 9 miles away), even later in the season. Since we are planning to do one of the full day Kenai Fjords cruises as well, I’m wondering if a Northbound cruise is as much of a negative?

 

[EllieJedi]

We did the southbound cruise on Princess back in 2015. Different ship (smaller, older one that no longer sails), but the itinerary looks the same. We did the land tour through Princess as well, before the cruise. I don’t remember if it was 4 or 5 nights, but we flew to Anchorage to start, had two nights at Denali NP, and one near Talkeetna. Did not go to the Kenai peninsula.

We decided not to rent a car, so DH and I could both relax and take in the scenery. Rode buses, driver acted as a tour guide and would stop along the way for photo ops. Also, one day on the glass dome train, which was great. Stayed several nights at the Princess-owned lodges. We had a wonderful time and would recommend it. On the ship, we had a balcony cabin, which was well worth it.

Being able to relax and not drive is my main motivating for looking at the cruise tours. With the trains, we could still make it work to do the Kenai Fjords for a day before the tour would start. The Princess lodges do look very nice.

 

[antmaril]

I have cruised twice to Alaska. Once on HAL and the other on Princess. Both amazing. Both visited Glacier Bay, which I think Is a must.

Have fun! Alaska is amazing,

 

[fly girl]

I love Alaska cruising! I have done 3, all on Celebrity. Like you, I prefer the one way because you will definitely see more. Those 2 itineraries look to be the same, so then it comes down to what cruise line is best suited for you.

 

[tasha99]

I've been on a HAL cruise and a Celebrity cruise--HAL was one way (we were moving, and that was the easiest way--ship the car, take a cruise. Same price as the ferry for the car + passengers, but a much nicer trip.) I've taken the ferry, too, and think that for the cost (with a car), it sucks.

HAL was an older crowd and my son, who was a teen then, didn't like it. Glacier Bay on HAL was excellent and I think HAL and Princess get the best permits for that, plus both (I think) have rangers on board for that portion.

Celebrity was better in all other respects--middle aged rather than old crowd (still not many kids), but we like to go to AK in May, when kids are still in school.

One thing I look for on an Alaska cruise is the water route. Some cruiselines go further out to sea, bypassing the inner passage, which is my favorite part. Even beyond the inner passage, there are cruises that have more close-to-land sailing that is between land masses vs. fully on the outside. It makes a big difference for scenery.