For our big family vacation this year, we chose a cruise to Alaska! Tyla and I did two cruises (cruise 1 post and cruise 2 post) before Elijah was born, but we had saved an Alaskan cruise because it was so easy to do. Sometimes those easy/local things get put off for a long time!
This cruise was on Royal Caribbean’s “Quantum of the Seas” ship. We chose it because our first two cruises were with Royal Caribbean and the related Celebrity cruise line. We knew they had good family programs and Elijah was still within the age limit for their kids club.
We had four stops on this cruise:
- Icy Strait Point, Alaska – This isn’t really a town. It’s a purpose-built cruise port and the small fishing village of Hoonah is nearby. We didn’t schedule an excursion here and just ended up walking along the shore about halfway to the town before returning. The popular activity here is a giant zipline. It was cool to set foot in Alaska for the first time, but the port didn’t wow us. While we were parked in the port, we spotted a few whales!
- Skagway, Alaska – We were excited for this port because it was a bigger town and because we had booked a zipline excursion. (The most popular excursion is a train ride up into the Yukon.) Unfortunately, we never got to stop there! The winds were gusting over 40 knots, and they were blowing the ship around so much that it couldn’t dock safely. The captain tried twice but it didn’t work out so the rest of our itinerary was slightly modified. We were bummed to miss the port but thankful that we booked through the cruise line, so our excursion was immediately refunded.
- Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier – This wasn’t really a stop, but it was a “view from the ship” destination. We drove through the narrow fjord called Endicott Arm. It’s only about a half mile wide so getting a giant cruise ship through there is a bit of a feat. The Dawes glacier is at the end of the fjord and there are an increasing number of icebergs along the way. We were excited to spot seals on one of the icebergs as we went by. We went as far as we could before the icebergs got too thick and then the captain spun the ship around so we could all view it easily.
- Juneau, Alaska – Our modified itinerary gave us a full day in Juneau instead of just the afternoon. We got off the ship in the morning and spent a couple of hours walking around the shops near the port. After lunch back on the ship, we got off again for our Jeep excursion. This was basically a 4.5 hour car rental. The Jeep came preprogrammed with waypoints and a related audio guide. The best stop was the Mendenhall Glacier. We stopped at the main visitor center area and did a 2 mile hike out to Nugget Falls. It was pretty rainy all day, but we were prepared, and the Jeep was stocked with extra umbrellas. It also had gold panning equipment, but we only discovered at the very end that the gold panning spot wasn’t in the default waypoint list. We added that to our trip and spent a few quick minutes realizing that understanding the concept of panning for gold is a lot different than remembering how the different tools work in the cold rain while you’re in a hurry to get back to the ship! After returning the Jeep, we had about half an hour before they pulled up the gangway so Tyla and Elijah were kind enough to let me stop into Alaskan Brewing and have a beer.
- Victoria, British Columbia – There’s a US law that says a cruise cannot leave a US port and return to a US port without stopping in another country unless it is registered in the US. That would have huge tax implications for the cruise lines so there’s always at least a token stop in another country. In this case, we arrived in Victoria at 5pm and left at 10pm. Unless you’re eating dinner on shore and exploring in the dark, this isn’t really an ideal stop. We didn’t schedule an excursion but we did get out and walk around. We headed east out of the port along the coast and found ourselves out of the crowd and enjoying sunshine for one of the first times on the trip.
With the skipped Skagway stops and the two ports where we mostly just walked around, a lot of our time was spent on the ship. Thankfully the ship had a ton of things to keep us busy!
- SeaPlex – There was an indoor area on the top decks called the SeaPlex and we spent a lot of time there. Aside from the usual staples of ping pong, foosball, cornhole, etc, they had a big sports are that would change throughout the day. Over the course of the trip we used that area for bumper cars, roller skating, laser tag, soccer, and dodgeball. It was quite impressive and they did a good job of knowing which events needed to have a pre-registration so you didn’t have to wait in line for a long time.
- iFly – There is a chain of indoor skydiving places called “iFly” which is basically a cylinder on top of a giant fan that lets you practice free falling. The ship had one of these too! We pre-paid for an extended session which got us extra instruction and two 1-minute flights. One minute sounds short but it felt plenty long when we were in the tunnel. All three of us did that initial session. Later we discovered that we could also sign up for a single flight for free. I’m glad we did the paid session first because the free one included very little instruction. Tyla was nice enough to stand outside the tunnel and take pictures and video of Elijah and I flying!
- Rock climbing – There was a two-story rock-climbing wall on the side of the ship with a wide variety of routes for different skill levels. The wall was closed most of the time because of wind and rain, but Elijah got to spend about an hour there our last full day on the ship.
- Pools – The ship does have an outdoor pool, but it wasn’t used a lot on this cruise because of the weather. The indoor pool got a lot of use but somehow never seemed overly crowded. Elijah spent a lot of time in there and especially enjoyed it when the water was sloshing around during the rockier days at sea.
- FOOD – My main challenge on a cruise is figuring out how I’m going to be hungry enough for my next meal! The two basic choices for food are the main dining room and the buffet. We chose to eat our breakfasts and lunches in the buffet and then ate dinner in the dining room around 7 or 8pm every night. We chose the “My Time Dining” option which gave us a private table and the option to move our dining times around. We were very lucky to get a window table and the same great waiters every night. They would usually end up encouraging us to order multiple appetizers, entrees, and desserts so that we could sample many different items. Aside from all that great food, there were also endless ice cream cones, pizza, and hot dogs available. There are a lot of specialty restaurants that cost money, but we were more than happy with the included offerings.
- All Access Ship Tour – We paid for a 2.5-hour tour of the boat and got incredible behind the scenes access to backstage of the theater, galley, laundry, engineering, food storage, and even the bridge! They provided little speakers that hung on your ear which made it easy to hear what was going on. It’s amazing to see everything that needs to happen to keep 4000+ guests fed and entertained. There are people working extremely hard for long hours with no days off so that you can enjoy your time napping and overeating.
This cruise was quite different from our previous cruises.
- It was obviously much cooler and wetter than our Caribbean trips.
- In the Caribbean, we barely remember ever feeling the ship move, but the movement was impossible to ignore on this trip when you were walking around or lying in bed. It never bothered us or kept us from doing anything.
- On the first cruises I remember lots of naps and downtime where we would kill an hour or two just reading or staring at the ocean. With an 11-year-old in tow, that didn’t happen as often and we had to spend a lot more time figuring out how to keep him entertained and fill time. I once heard someone say that as a parent, you don’t take vacations, you just play tour guide for your kids. So my love of cruising so I don’t have to worry about logistics didn’t play out this time, but it was still worth it.
With the missed port and the different dynamics of having three people’s wishes to coordinate, I would say that this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I booked it, but it turned out differently great. We have a lot of wonderful memories together and we’re all dreaming about doing it again!