saintstickets
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2009
This will be a different trip report for me. DW and I are going on a DCL cruise to Alaska!
For those that have not followed any of my previous TR's, an introduction is in order. DW and I are empty-nesters. We have 3 children, twin boys and a daughter. One of the twin boys (Knoxville, TN) and our daughter (Petal, MS) are married. The other twin son is in California. We have no grandchildren. We bought into the Disney Vacation Club in 2009 and have been taking at least one Disney related trip each year since and sometimes two in a year. Our last trip was October, 2014 and that was a combined DCL cruise with a trip to WDW for F&W. The TR link is below in my signature. This year we will take this cruise and then visit WDW during December. The next trip is in April, 2016 for F&G followed by a DCL cruise. We will follow that up with a trip during F&W in the fall of 2016 and a DCL cruise/F&G/Harry Potter trip in April/May, 2017. That's all we have planned for now but give me time, I'm sure I'll think of something for 2018! This TR, like all previous ones, will be picture heavy. We LOVE to eat so there will be food porn pics too. SOMETIMES I can be a bit sarcastic (I prefer to call it witty) and I'm not always PC so be forewarned if you choose to follow along. I hope you do! Now to this TR....
We’ve always wanted to go to Alaska but I wasn’t so sure about a cruise. Last October, DW finally talked me into going on a DCL cruise. I told DW I canceled my life insurance for the duration of the vacation so as to remove any incentive for her to lure me up on deck late at night and suddenly I end up in the deep, blue sea! As is evident, I survived. Not only did I survive but I was hooked! We booked this Alaska cruise for a departure date of 8/24/15 before we left the ship!
The first cruise was just a 3 night jaunt on the DCL Dream. The Alaska cruise is for 7 nights and is on the DCL Wonder. Since we will be flying out to the west coast, we decided to fly into Sacramento, CA for a few days before the cruise and see DS2, the “younger” of our twin boys. We don’t get to see him much since he moved there so we couldn’t pass up this chance while we were in the neighborhood.
Being the uber-planner I am and not having flown very much, I booked the 3 legs of our flight probably farther in advance than needed. The 1st leg from NOLA to Sacramento was booked on 4/14 with Southwest. The 2nd leg from Sacramento to Vancouver was booked on 2/27 with Alaska Airlines and the final leg from Vancouver back to NOLA was booked on 3/01 with Delta. As you can see, each flight was booked between 4 and 6 months prior to our leaving. I chose these flights because they each were one of the shortest total trip times with only one layover and a decent layover time. There were some flights with shorter total trip times such as one from Vancouver to Chicago to NOLA but it only had a 50 minute layover at O’Hare. I don’t travel much but that seemed like it would be pushing fate to try that flight. So I’m sitting here all fat dumb and happy thinking I’ve got my flights booked, hotel reservations made and excursions booked and there’s nothing left to do except wait for our 90 day mark to book the adult restaurant Palo on the Wonder as well as a massage onboard for DW. Then I get an email from Delta on 5/16 saying our flight times have been changed. Instead of arriving in NOLA at 9:47pm, the part of the flight from the layover in SLC to NOLA has been pushed back to where we have a nearly 4 hour layover in SLC and will not get into NOLA until well after midnight! I’ve got to get up and go to work the next morning and it will be 3 hours from touchdown in NOLA until the time I get back home. So I start trying to find alternate flights and researching to see how much the cancelation fee will be at Delta. Naturally there is nothing on their website telling the fee amount so I sent them an email with my concerns. While I am waiting to hear from Delta, I get an email from Alaska Airlines saying that instead of leaving at 10:30am to fly from Sacramento to Vancouver, the flight will be leaving at 8:00am! Now I have a 4 hour layover in Seattle! Too short of a layover to leave the airport to meet people or see things but wayyyy too long to be sitting in uncomfortable seats draining my iPhone battery! Okay, I still haven’t heard back from Delta so I call Alaska Airlines to see what their cancelation fee will be. No charge because they altered the flight! And, they have a flight that leaves at 11:55am instead of 8:00am. We get into Vancouver an hour later than originally planned but I’ll live with that instead of having to get up so early and a long layover. In addition to a decent change, the new flight is $64.50 cheaper than the original one. Score!!
I finally hear back from Delta and they too will not charge me a cancelation fee because they are making the change. Because the flight originates in Canada, they had to book the flight in Canadian dollars and then whatever the exchange rate to US dollars is at the time, the US dollar amount will be the amount that appears on my credit card. Therefore, any credit will follow the same procedure and be issued in Canadian dollars and then converted to US dollars on my credit card. By the time they got around to issuing a credit, the Canadian dollar had risen against the US dollar so my credit card credit was $22.84 more than the original amount charged. Score again!! Oh, I’m not through…the pixie dust hasn’t stopped yet. I found a flight on American Airlines to replace the just canceled Delta flight from Vancouver to NOLA that will land an hour and a half earlier and it was $281.18 cheaper. Score double time!!
Not knowing anything about Vancouver, we don’t know where to stay or what to do. It seems that the consensus recommendation is to stay at the Pan Pacific. When I first started looking at hotels back in March, the price for Pan Pacific was way too high. I ventured over to Priceline.com and tried to find something there. I’ve never booked a hotel using this site so after a little research, I made a bid on a 4.5/5.0 star hotel in the Coal Harbor area. Word to the wise using Priceline…look at the area maps CLOSELY! The area appears to only include those hotels that are right by the dock (Fairmont Pacific & Pan Pacific) but it actually crosses a street that includes several other hotels. I bid about 60% of what the rack rate was for the Pan Pacific fully expecting it to not be accepted and lo and behold, my bid was accepted…but it wasn’t for the Pan Pacific. Because the bid area included areas I didn’t realize, we ended up getting the Shangri-La hotel. It’s still a 5 star hotel but it is about 6 blocks away from the dock and with the price I bid, I only saved about $30 off the rack rate price. Since it was Priceline, there is no backing out either. Okay, I can live with this. This is the night before the cruise and it is near several sections of Vancouver we wanted to see that we can walk to as well.
The cruise ship returns to Vancouver on Monday, 8/31 and docks early allowing you to go ashore around 8:00am. We decided to not try and rush getting to the airport for a flight out the same day and spend another night in Vancouver. We found a small boutique hotel, Auberge, that was several blocks from the dock for a decent price and booked that for the night after the cruise. I had set up a price alert for Pan Pacific early on and on 6/24, I received a notice that the price had fallen to the alert level I had set. I went to their website and not only had the price fallen quite a bit, but they were also offering an additional 15% discount if you prepaid. The payment was non-refundable but since we have trip insurance, if something happens, I’ll be able to get our money back through the insurance. The discounted price was about $69 USD more expensive than the reservation at Auberge but since the Pan Pacific is located next to the dock, we would save a $35 cab fare plus we now have a premier corner suite! Book it Danno!! I called Auberge and canceled that reservation as soon as I received my confirmation email from the Pan Pacific. For two days, there was a pending transaction charge for the Pan Pacific on my Discover credit card. I kept waiting for it to transfer to the completed transactions section but on the third day it was gone from ANYWHERE on the online credit card info. Uh oh!! On the 4th day, a completed transaction finally showed up but the exchange rate had changed. The final amount was $0.62 less than the pending transaction amount!
Let’s recap…Alaska Airline flight cancel and rebook - $64.50 cheaper…Delta Airline flight cancel - $22.84 credit larger than original charge due to the exchange rate difference…American Airline flight booked to replace Delta flight - $281.18 cheaper than original Delta price…Pan Pacific hotel replaces Auberge reservation with a huge upgrade in room – call this even with the upgrade…so in total, we are paying $368.52 less than originally expected and we haven’t left yet!! If I keep going, they might pay me to take this vacation!!
With that said and being the pessimistic optimist I am, I’m wondering if I have used up my entire allotment of pixie dust for the next two years. What flights will change between now and when we leave? What excursions will be canceled? Will DW finally push me overboard as I have suspected was the reason for her recent cruise fixation? Stay tuned for more.
In the meantime, here are our plans for this trip. There is a little wiggle room here and there and one never knows with the weather in Alaska which excursion might be canceled but nevertheless, here is what we HOPE to do…
8/20 - Thursday – Fly out of NOLA at 3:30pm on Southwest. We have a layover in Las Vegas. Do they have slot machines in the airport? We arrive in Sacramento at 7:55pm. DS2 will pick us up. With the water shortage in California, I asked him if we need to bring a few gallons of bottled water to clean up with. He thinks we’ll be okay.
8/21 – Friday – DS2 is planning our excursions this weekend! GULP!! We know we are going to visit one of these
Well…several of those. We are going on a winery tour. This should be fun!
8/22 – Saturday – DS2 has a friend that has a sailboat. If he can arrange it, we will take a little drive and launch the boat where we can see this
DS2 said we can sail around the bay, see Alcatraz (I hope he’s not in cahoots with his mom and they try to leave me there!) and stop at the dock for a bite. That should be a great day if he can pull it off!
8/23 – Sunday – We fly out of Sacramento at 11:55am on Alaska Airlines. There is a layover in Seattle and then we arrive in Vancouver at 3:39pm
We don’t have any specific plans this night in Vancouver but the Shangri-La hotel is near the trolley hop-on hop-off route so I think we’ll try to visit Gastown and/or Chinatown for the shops and restaurants.
8/24 – Monday – Our DCL Wonder onboard arrival time is 11:30am. We were pleasantly surprised with the ease of the check-in at Pt. Canaveral. We’ll see if this is as good. Once onboard, we plan on going to Guest Services and pay for two placeholder cruises. DCL has changed their book onboard policy where you can pay a flat $200 to book a future cruise instead of the 10% previously required. The new policy does not require you to name a sail date and you have 24 months to sail from the date the $200 is paid. By paying the placeholder amount, you also get the onboard booking discount of 10% off whatever the cruise price is when you finally make your sail date choice. Next up for us is that we are supposed to have a meet up at 3:00pm with people met online on another website. I have an idea about what shows, movies, etc that we will see during the cruise but we won’t know for sure the times until we board and get the daily Navigator that lists all the activities. It shouldn’t change from prior sailings but we will see.
8/25 – Tuesday – This is a sea day. I have scheduled a massage for DW at 8:00am. We have a wine tasting event at noon. If my restaurant rotation request is honored, we should eat at Triton’s tonight. It is also formal night and that is the reason I wanted Triton’s tonight. Of the three restaurants in the rotation, this appears to be the more upscale one.
8/26 – Wednesday – We have brunch reserved at Palo’s this morning. Palo is the adult exclusive restaurant that requires reservations. There is a champagne tasting event at noon and a mixology class at 2:00pm. We’ll probably make one of those before the ship makes it’s way into the Tracy Fjord
From all the pictures I’ve seen, this will be fantastic! I hope I don’t run out of memory card room on my camera while we’re here!
8/27 – Thursday – This is our first port day. We dock in Skagway early that morning.
We have booked an excursion with TEMSCO Air that leaves at 9:15am. The first part of the excursion we board this
And fly up to the Denver glacier to a dog sled camp. From there, we do this
And for the next 30 or 40 minutes we get to ride the dog sled around the glacier. This is the excursion we most look forward to the entire trip. There are many more opportunities to do this excursion at the next port but we have read where it is not uncommon for these tours to be canceled due to weather. We chose to do this in Skagway so if it gets canceled, we have a chance, albeit slim, to rebook the next day at the next port. If we did something else in Skagway and waited until tomorrow to do the dogsled trip, if it were canceled, we would not have any other chance to do this.
Once we get back to Skagway, we plan on walking around the town and see the sites.
8/28 – Friday – Today is our 33rd anniversary and we will dock in Juneau.
Again, the ship docks early and we have a whale watching tour scheduled today that leaves at 7:30am and hopefully we will see some of this...
This excursion is 6+ hours and has a stop mid-tour at a remote cabin where we eat freshly caught salmon. Tonight is also the night we hope to see the Kyle & Mistie Knight magic show. You might have seen this couple on TV. They won the “Wizard Wars” magic competition on the SyFy channel and also appeared on the Penn & Teller ‘Fool Us’ show on the CW channel. They regularly are on stage in Las Vegas. As an added bonus, Mistie is from here in Mississippi and grew up a couple of hours from where we currently live.
8/29 – Saturday – Our port of call today is Ketchikan
The ship doesn’t dock until 11:15am today so we’ll get to sleep in a bit. We will meet up with Island Wings Air Service to board of these
And fly up into the Misty Fjords where we will land on a remote lake that is only accessible by float plane. After a short walk around, we take off and continue this flightseeing tour of the National park that is 2.3 million acres and completely roadless! One thing that will be in the back of our minds is that on June 25th of this year, a very similar tour out of the same city, with the same plane manufacturer (single engine de Havilland) crashed and killed all 8 passengers and the pilot. Ours is not the same company and our plane is a different de Havilland model (ours is smaller!) but I’m sure we will be a bit apprehensive until we are safe and sound back on the ground in Ketchikan.
8/30 - Sunday – Today is another sea day. Depending on how she feels, DW might get another massage today since we have nothing planned during the day but we do have reservations again at Palo for dinner.
8/31 – Monday – The ship starts letting passengers off at 8:00am this morning. Since we are not rushing to meet a flight, we are in no hurry. Our hotel tonight, the Pan Pacific, is right across the street from the dock. We will store our luggage if our room is not ready and see more of Vancouver. We hope to go to Stanley Park, Granville Island and maybe visit Butchart Gardens. These are the gardens that inspired the Victoria Gardens in the Canadian pavilion at EPCOT.
9/01 Tuesday – We fly out of Vancouver this morning at 10:45am on American Airlines. We have a layover in Dallas and arrive in NOLA at 7:54pm. If all goes well, we’ll be back in our own bed by 11:00pm that night.
Those are the plans but you know what they say about the “best laid plans of mice and men”. If it all goes according to Hoyle without any hiccups, it will be a miracle. Well, as I always say, expect the best, plan for the worse and be glad if it ends up somewhere in between!
For those that have not followed any of my previous TR's, an introduction is in order. DW and I are empty-nesters. We have 3 children, twin boys and a daughter. One of the twin boys (Knoxville, TN) and our daughter (Petal, MS) are married. The other twin son is in California. We have no grandchildren. We bought into the Disney Vacation Club in 2009 and have been taking at least one Disney related trip each year since and sometimes two in a year. Our last trip was October, 2014 and that was a combined DCL cruise with a trip to WDW for F&W. The TR link is below in my signature. This year we will take this cruise and then visit WDW during December. The next trip is in April, 2016 for F&G followed by a DCL cruise. We will follow that up with a trip during F&W in the fall of 2016 and a DCL cruise/F&G/Harry Potter trip in April/May, 2017. That's all we have planned for now but give me time, I'm sure I'll think of something for 2018! This TR, like all previous ones, will be picture heavy. We LOVE to eat so there will be food porn pics too. SOMETIMES I can be a bit sarcastic (I prefer to call it witty) and I'm not always PC so be forewarned if you choose to follow along. I hope you do! Now to this TR....
We’ve always wanted to go to Alaska but I wasn’t so sure about a cruise. Last October, DW finally talked me into going on a DCL cruise. I told DW I canceled my life insurance for the duration of the vacation so as to remove any incentive for her to lure me up on deck late at night and suddenly I end up in the deep, blue sea! As is evident, I survived. Not only did I survive but I was hooked! We booked this Alaska cruise for a departure date of 8/24/15 before we left the ship!
The first cruise was just a 3 night jaunt on the DCL Dream. The Alaska cruise is for 7 nights and is on the DCL Wonder. Since we will be flying out to the west coast, we decided to fly into Sacramento, CA for a few days before the cruise and see DS2, the “younger” of our twin boys. We don’t get to see him much since he moved there so we couldn’t pass up this chance while we were in the neighborhood.
Being the uber-planner I am and not having flown very much, I booked the 3 legs of our flight probably farther in advance than needed. The 1st leg from NOLA to Sacramento was booked on 4/14 with Southwest. The 2nd leg from Sacramento to Vancouver was booked on 2/27 with Alaska Airlines and the final leg from Vancouver back to NOLA was booked on 3/01 with Delta. As you can see, each flight was booked between 4 and 6 months prior to our leaving. I chose these flights because they each were one of the shortest total trip times with only one layover and a decent layover time. There were some flights with shorter total trip times such as one from Vancouver to Chicago to NOLA but it only had a 50 minute layover at O’Hare. I don’t travel much but that seemed like it would be pushing fate to try that flight. So I’m sitting here all fat dumb and happy thinking I’ve got my flights booked, hotel reservations made and excursions booked and there’s nothing left to do except wait for our 90 day mark to book the adult restaurant Palo on the Wonder as well as a massage onboard for DW. Then I get an email from Delta on 5/16 saying our flight times have been changed. Instead of arriving in NOLA at 9:47pm, the part of the flight from the layover in SLC to NOLA has been pushed back to where we have a nearly 4 hour layover in SLC and will not get into NOLA until well after midnight! I’ve got to get up and go to work the next morning and it will be 3 hours from touchdown in NOLA until the time I get back home. So I start trying to find alternate flights and researching to see how much the cancelation fee will be at Delta. Naturally there is nothing on their website telling the fee amount so I sent them an email with my concerns. While I am waiting to hear from Delta, I get an email from Alaska Airlines saying that instead of leaving at 10:30am to fly from Sacramento to Vancouver, the flight will be leaving at 8:00am! Now I have a 4 hour layover in Seattle! Too short of a layover to leave the airport to meet people or see things but wayyyy too long to be sitting in uncomfortable seats draining my iPhone battery! Okay, I still haven’t heard back from Delta so I call Alaska Airlines to see what their cancelation fee will be. No charge because they altered the flight! And, they have a flight that leaves at 11:55am instead of 8:00am. We get into Vancouver an hour later than originally planned but I’ll live with that instead of having to get up so early and a long layover. In addition to a decent change, the new flight is $64.50 cheaper than the original one. Score!!
I finally hear back from Delta and they too will not charge me a cancelation fee because they are making the change. Because the flight originates in Canada, they had to book the flight in Canadian dollars and then whatever the exchange rate to US dollars is at the time, the US dollar amount will be the amount that appears on my credit card. Therefore, any credit will follow the same procedure and be issued in Canadian dollars and then converted to US dollars on my credit card. By the time they got around to issuing a credit, the Canadian dollar had risen against the US dollar so my credit card credit was $22.84 more than the original amount charged. Score again!! Oh, I’m not through…the pixie dust hasn’t stopped yet. I found a flight on American Airlines to replace the just canceled Delta flight from Vancouver to NOLA that will land an hour and a half earlier and it was $281.18 cheaper. Score double time!!
Not knowing anything about Vancouver, we don’t know where to stay or what to do. It seems that the consensus recommendation is to stay at the Pan Pacific. When I first started looking at hotels back in March, the price for Pan Pacific was way too high. I ventured over to Priceline.com and tried to find something there. I’ve never booked a hotel using this site so after a little research, I made a bid on a 4.5/5.0 star hotel in the Coal Harbor area. Word to the wise using Priceline…look at the area maps CLOSELY! The area appears to only include those hotels that are right by the dock (Fairmont Pacific & Pan Pacific) but it actually crosses a street that includes several other hotels. I bid about 60% of what the rack rate was for the Pan Pacific fully expecting it to not be accepted and lo and behold, my bid was accepted…but it wasn’t for the Pan Pacific. Because the bid area included areas I didn’t realize, we ended up getting the Shangri-La hotel. It’s still a 5 star hotel but it is about 6 blocks away from the dock and with the price I bid, I only saved about $30 off the rack rate price. Since it was Priceline, there is no backing out either. Okay, I can live with this. This is the night before the cruise and it is near several sections of Vancouver we wanted to see that we can walk to as well.
The cruise ship returns to Vancouver on Monday, 8/31 and docks early allowing you to go ashore around 8:00am. We decided to not try and rush getting to the airport for a flight out the same day and spend another night in Vancouver. We found a small boutique hotel, Auberge, that was several blocks from the dock for a decent price and booked that for the night after the cruise. I had set up a price alert for Pan Pacific early on and on 6/24, I received a notice that the price had fallen to the alert level I had set. I went to their website and not only had the price fallen quite a bit, but they were also offering an additional 15% discount if you prepaid. The payment was non-refundable but since we have trip insurance, if something happens, I’ll be able to get our money back through the insurance. The discounted price was about $69 USD more expensive than the reservation at Auberge but since the Pan Pacific is located next to the dock, we would save a $35 cab fare plus we now have a premier corner suite! Book it Danno!! I called Auberge and canceled that reservation as soon as I received my confirmation email from the Pan Pacific. For two days, there was a pending transaction charge for the Pan Pacific on my Discover credit card. I kept waiting for it to transfer to the completed transactions section but on the third day it was gone from ANYWHERE on the online credit card info. Uh oh!! On the 4th day, a completed transaction finally showed up but the exchange rate had changed. The final amount was $0.62 less than the pending transaction amount!
Let’s recap…Alaska Airline flight cancel and rebook - $64.50 cheaper…Delta Airline flight cancel - $22.84 credit larger than original charge due to the exchange rate difference…American Airline flight booked to replace Delta flight - $281.18 cheaper than original Delta price…Pan Pacific hotel replaces Auberge reservation with a huge upgrade in room – call this even with the upgrade…so in total, we are paying $368.52 less than originally expected and we haven’t left yet!! If I keep going, they might pay me to take this vacation!!
With that said and being the pessimistic optimist I am, I’m wondering if I have used up my entire allotment of pixie dust for the next two years. What flights will change between now and when we leave? What excursions will be canceled? Will DW finally push me overboard as I have suspected was the reason for her recent cruise fixation? Stay tuned for more.
In the meantime, here are our plans for this trip. There is a little wiggle room here and there and one never knows with the weather in Alaska which excursion might be canceled but nevertheless, here is what we HOPE to do…
8/20 - Thursday – Fly out of NOLA at 3:30pm on Southwest. We have a layover in Las Vegas. Do they have slot machines in the airport? We arrive in Sacramento at 7:55pm. DS2 will pick us up. With the water shortage in California, I asked him if we need to bring a few gallons of bottled water to clean up with. He thinks we’ll be okay.
8/21 – Friday – DS2 is planning our excursions this weekend! GULP!! We know we are going to visit one of these
Well…several of those. We are going on a winery tour. This should be fun!
8/22 – Saturday – DS2 has a friend that has a sailboat. If he can arrange it, we will take a little drive and launch the boat where we can see this
DS2 said we can sail around the bay, see Alcatraz (I hope he’s not in cahoots with his mom and they try to leave me there!) and stop at the dock for a bite. That should be a great day if he can pull it off!
8/23 – Sunday – We fly out of Sacramento at 11:55am on Alaska Airlines. There is a layover in Seattle and then we arrive in Vancouver at 3:39pm
We don’t have any specific plans this night in Vancouver but the Shangri-La hotel is near the trolley hop-on hop-off route so I think we’ll try to visit Gastown and/or Chinatown for the shops and restaurants.
8/24 – Monday – Our DCL Wonder onboard arrival time is 11:30am. We were pleasantly surprised with the ease of the check-in at Pt. Canaveral. We’ll see if this is as good. Once onboard, we plan on going to Guest Services and pay for two placeholder cruises. DCL has changed their book onboard policy where you can pay a flat $200 to book a future cruise instead of the 10% previously required. The new policy does not require you to name a sail date and you have 24 months to sail from the date the $200 is paid. By paying the placeholder amount, you also get the onboard booking discount of 10% off whatever the cruise price is when you finally make your sail date choice. Next up for us is that we are supposed to have a meet up at 3:00pm with people met online on another website. I have an idea about what shows, movies, etc that we will see during the cruise but we won’t know for sure the times until we board and get the daily Navigator that lists all the activities. It shouldn’t change from prior sailings but we will see.
8/25 – Tuesday – This is a sea day. I have scheduled a massage for DW at 8:00am. We have a wine tasting event at noon. If my restaurant rotation request is honored, we should eat at Triton’s tonight. It is also formal night and that is the reason I wanted Triton’s tonight. Of the three restaurants in the rotation, this appears to be the more upscale one.
8/26 – Wednesday – We have brunch reserved at Palo’s this morning. Palo is the adult exclusive restaurant that requires reservations. There is a champagne tasting event at noon and a mixology class at 2:00pm. We’ll probably make one of those before the ship makes it’s way into the Tracy Fjord
From all the pictures I’ve seen, this will be fantastic! I hope I don’t run out of memory card room on my camera while we’re here!
8/27 – Thursday – This is our first port day. We dock in Skagway early that morning.
We have booked an excursion with TEMSCO Air that leaves at 9:15am. The first part of the excursion we board this
And fly up to the Denver glacier to a dog sled camp. From there, we do this
And for the next 30 or 40 minutes we get to ride the dog sled around the glacier. This is the excursion we most look forward to the entire trip. There are many more opportunities to do this excursion at the next port but we have read where it is not uncommon for these tours to be canceled due to weather. We chose to do this in Skagway so if it gets canceled, we have a chance, albeit slim, to rebook the next day at the next port. If we did something else in Skagway and waited until tomorrow to do the dogsled trip, if it were canceled, we would not have any other chance to do this.
Once we get back to Skagway, we plan on walking around the town and see the sites.
8/28 – Friday – Today is our 33rd anniversary and we will dock in Juneau.
Again, the ship docks early and we have a whale watching tour scheduled today that leaves at 7:30am and hopefully we will see some of this...
This excursion is 6+ hours and has a stop mid-tour at a remote cabin where we eat freshly caught salmon. Tonight is also the night we hope to see the Kyle & Mistie Knight magic show. You might have seen this couple on TV. They won the “Wizard Wars” magic competition on the SyFy channel and also appeared on the Penn & Teller ‘Fool Us’ show on the CW channel. They regularly are on stage in Las Vegas. As an added bonus, Mistie is from here in Mississippi and grew up a couple of hours from where we currently live.
8/29 – Saturday – Our port of call today is Ketchikan
The ship doesn’t dock until 11:15am today so we’ll get to sleep in a bit. We will meet up with Island Wings Air Service to board of these
And fly up into the Misty Fjords where we will land on a remote lake that is only accessible by float plane. After a short walk around, we take off and continue this flightseeing tour of the National park that is 2.3 million acres and completely roadless! One thing that will be in the back of our minds is that on June 25th of this year, a very similar tour out of the same city, with the same plane manufacturer (single engine de Havilland) crashed and killed all 8 passengers and the pilot. Ours is not the same company and our plane is a different de Havilland model (ours is smaller!) but I’m sure we will be a bit apprehensive until we are safe and sound back on the ground in Ketchikan.
8/30 - Sunday – Today is another sea day. Depending on how she feels, DW might get another massage today since we have nothing planned during the day but we do have reservations again at Palo for dinner.
8/31 – Monday – The ship starts letting passengers off at 8:00am this morning. Since we are not rushing to meet a flight, we are in no hurry. Our hotel tonight, the Pan Pacific, is right across the street from the dock. We will store our luggage if our room is not ready and see more of Vancouver. We hope to go to Stanley Park, Granville Island and maybe visit Butchart Gardens. These are the gardens that inspired the Victoria Gardens in the Canadian pavilion at EPCOT.
9/01 Tuesday – We fly out of Vancouver this morning at 10:45am on American Airlines. We have a layover in Dallas and arrive in NOLA at 7:54pm. If all goes well, we’ll be back in our own bed by 11:00pm that night.
Those are the plans but you know what they say about the “best laid plans of mice and men”. If it all goes according to Hoyle without any hiccups, it will be a miracle. Well, as I always say, expect the best, plan for the worse and be glad if it ends up somewhere in between!
)
off the walls waiting!
