CruiseBoundnKY
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2006
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Alaska...DCL versus other cruise lines
- Thread starter CruiseBoundnKY
- Start date
RedSox68
Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
For Alaska -- my recommendation would be HAL or Princess. They are known for their cruises there. We did HAL and included a land portion and it was fantastic. We chose HAL over Disney because Disney doesn't go to Glacier Bay and that was a deal breaker for us. Plus what Disney wanted for a 7-night we were able to book the 20-night land and sea on HAL which included hotels and some meals!
If you are willing to give up the pixie dust.... another vote for HAL/Princess with Glacier Bay and savings.
@CruiseBoundinKY: Have you also considered which month? May to July is dryer with varying temperatures. It's when I would want to go before the August rain and September storms.
@CruiseBoundinKY: Have you also considered which month? May to July is dryer with varying temperatures. It's when I would want to go before the August rain and September storms.
Last edited:
wombat_5606
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 17, 2006
Yes, I can be counted as one that wouldn't recommend DCL for Alaska.
HAL and Princess are the Alaska experts and own a big part of the state. Glacier Bay is very important to see, in my opinion. I'm also a huge supporter of the one way cruise (if you must cruise) and to spend time in the heart of Alaska.
I've never been disappointed on any cruise line I've sailed. It will be different, but it's not disappointing.
HAL and Princess are the Alaska experts and own a big part of the state. Glacier Bay is very important to see, in my opinion. I'm also a huge supporter of the one way cruise (if you must cruise) and to spend time in the heart of Alaska.
I've never been disappointed on any cruise line I've sailed. It will be different, but it's not disappointing.
PrincessShmoo
DIS veteran
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2009
We've done Alaska twice, both times on HAL. One round trip out of Vancouver and one land/cruise package. While we've not used Princess for Alaska, I wouldn't hesitate to do so, if the itinerary/cost worked for us.
At some time I'd probably use DCL for Alaska, but for the cruise, not so much the Alaska experience.
At some time I'd probably use DCL for Alaska, but for the cruise, not so much the Alaska experience.
mevelandry
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2013
Following. 
(Want to cruise Alaska in 2018).
(Want to cruise Alaska in 2018).
RedSox68
Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
Just be aware that Alaska can have terrible mosquito seasons -- which are highest in July and August. We went in May and loved it -- still snow and ice around and just cool enough to be comfortable. And saw lots of babies from a variety of wildlife (baby grizzly are very cute)
I have an Alaskan cruise booked for summer 2018 with DCL. Full disclosure, my husband and I (no kids) are big Disney fans and we've only sailed with DCL. I have no desire to cruise with any other line and if DCL didn't have a line, I doubt we would ever go on another cruise.
That being said, I did my research because most people will recommend another line for Alaska. Even now, I just went and looked up HAL again to see their itineraries, and every time I look, the ships just seem so old and run down to me. The rooms are nothing special and look old. I'm not into fancy dining or dining rooms or casinos.
So for me, DCL was the right choice, and we don't even have kids.
That being said, I did my research because most people will recommend another line for Alaska. Even now, I just went and looked up HAL again to see their itineraries, and every time I look, the ships just seem so old and run down to me. The rooms are nothing special and look old. I'm not into fancy dining or dining rooms or casinos.
So for me, DCL was the right choice, and we don't even have kids.
RedSox68
Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
From experience -- we've sailed on two HAL ships (Zaandam and Eurodam) and they were both beautiful, up-to-date with fantastic staterooms (verandah room bigger than Disney's -- but no split bath). And their verandahs are huge -- the biggest we've ever seen. Big enough to put chaise lounge chairs on. Honestly on either cruise did we notice any run down areas or shabby carpet, etc. Keep in mind that a lot of ships out there are newer than Disney's classic ships -- which are approaching 20+ years. Absolutely loved their any time dining -- the dining rooms are not fancy like people think and we were very comfortable with casual dress just like Disney. Their food was amazing though. Nothing wrong with being a devoted Disney sailor, but for us we feel we got much more from Princess and HAL for our money and saved thousands.
skylynx
DIS Sponsor in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2003
We've done 22 cruises...21 on DCL and one on Norwegian to Alaska the year before DCL announced cruises to Alaska. We knew it was going to be different from our DCL cruises and we thought we were prepared for that with realistic expectations. It was also our only cruise ever to a cool-weather destination, so that would be different, too. If we hadn't cruised DCL first we wouldn't have had much to complain about. Here's are some differences we noticed.
1. The standard NCL balcony cabins comparable to our verandah stateroom on DCL were arranged so the extra bed and bunk that came out of the ceiling went across the sliding glass doors on to the balcony, effectively blocking them. Unlike on DCL where the bunks are along the long walls, these obstructed our ability to go in and out of the balcony doors (and by obstructed, I mean we had to climb over the bottom bunk and duck our head under the top one whenever the bunk was down). And since both our kids were teens on this trip, they stayed out late and slept in late and so the bunks were hardly ever up and out of the way. I could have known this if I'd thought to look closer at the Norwegian Pearl stateroom floor plan but I was just so used to DCL I didn't even think this is what they would do with the room layout for four people. So if you've got kids along, check the floorplan of your stateroom. It was substantially smaller than the DCL comparative stateroom. If we'd wanted something more like the space and location of bunks in a DCL stateroom, we'd have had to gone up a couple categories into a suite.
2. Due to the colder, sometimes wet, most of the time windy weather, people who didn't have balcony cabins would camp out all day in the food court area so they had windows but were still indoors. This meant if you wanted to get a meal from the food court and eat your meal sitting down, there likely wouldn't be a table. This was apparently allowed by Norwegian, as we never saw any groups that had been at dining tables literally all day with games and books and blankets chased off even though there weren't places for people carrying trays of food to sit down. Not sure what to do about that...we were lucky enough to have a balcony cabin so we'd just wrap up our stuff as best we could and carry it back to our room to eat. I don't know how DCL manages this on Wonder as the additional viewing area they added during its pre-Alaska dry dock isn't big enough to hold all the people who want to look out the windows but stay warm and dry.
3. Glacier Bay. We really wanted to see this as it won't be there forever. DCL still doesn't go there. Wouldn't have missed that day for the world.
4. Although we were glad for the anytime dining option because there were so many things floating by our stateroom balcony we didn't dare miss a lot of it by eating long meals indoors, we did really miss the interaction with our dining room servers. We cruised at the end of June, and it stayed light until nearly 11 pm so it wasn't even as if we could just wait until dark to eat so as to avoid not missing any of the scenery. So the evening meal ceased to be a social event and became more of just something to stop you from being hungry!
5. Our kids grew up in DCL clubs from Oceaneer's Club to Vibe, so I worried they would be unimpressed by Norwegian's teen club program. DS and DD are both very sociable, so they immediately found what we called a "pod" of other teenagers to hang out with. They LOVED being able to go to a late night sit down eatery with their pod, and there was lots of teens-only stuff for them to do during the day while we were hanging out on the balcony with the camera, like bowling and karaoke in the adult night clubs.
I think it is also easier to do a non-Disney cruise if it isn't a destination where you'd miss something distinctively Disney, like Castaway Cay, or even disembarking out of Port Canaveral. We're possibly going to join some friends on a Princess cruise out of California to Baja within the next year. We've done two Baja Disney Cruises out of Los Angeles and San Diego and there was next to nothing Disney about of either of those terminals because they are shared with other cruise lines so it was row after row of folding chairs in what looked mostly like a hangar with one or two banners hanging up. The Princess cruise has the identical itinerary as DCL but is over a thousand dollars less than our rate for a similar stateroom. If we do the Princess one, we'll have reasonable expectations that while it won't be Disney, we'll save some major dollars and still have a very enjoyable cruise.
1. The standard NCL balcony cabins comparable to our verandah stateroom on DCL were arranged so the extra bed and bunk that came out of the ceiling went across the sliding glass doors on to the balcony, effectively blocking them. Unlike on DCL where the bunks are along the long walls, these obstructed our ability to go in and out of the balcony doors (and by obstructed, I mean we had to climb over the bottom bunk and duck our head under the top one whenever the bunk was down). And since both our kids were teens on this trip, they stayed out late and slept in late and so the bunks were hardly ever up and out of the way. I could have known this if I'd thought to look closer at the Norwegian Pearl stateroom floor plan but I was just so used to DCL I didn't even think this is what they would do with the room layout for four people. So if you've got kids along, check the floorplan of your stateroom. It was substantially smaller than the DCL comparative stateroom. If we'd wanted something more like the space and location of bunks in a DCL stateroom, we'd have had to gone up a couple categories into a suite.
2. Due to the colder, sometimes wet, most of the time windy weather, people who didn't have balcony cabins would camp out all day in the food court area so they had windows but were still indoors. This meant if you wanted to get a meal from the food court and eat your meal sitting down, there likely wouldn't be a table. This was apparently allowed by Norwegian, as we never saw any groups that had been at dining tables literally all day with games and books and blankets chased off even though there weren't places for people carrying trays of food to sit down. Not sure what to do about that...we were lucky enough to have a balcony cabin so we'd just wrap up our stuff as best we could and carry it back to our room to eat. I don't know how DCL manages this on Wonder as the additional viewing area they added during its pre-Alaska dry dock isn't big enough to hold all the people who want to look out the windows but stay warm and dry.
3. Glacier Bay. We really wanted to see this as it won't be there forever. DCL still doesn't go there. Wouldn't have missed that day for the world.
4. Although we were glad for the anytime dining option because there were so many things floating by our stateroom balcony we didn't dare miss a lot of it by eating long meals indoors, we did really miss the interaction with our dining room servers. We cruised at the end of June, and it stayed light until nearly 11 pm so it wasn't even as if we could just wait until dark to eat so as to avoid not missing any of the scenery. So the evening meal ceased to be a social event and became more of just something to stop you from being hungry!
5. Our kids grew up in DCL clubs from Oceaneer's Club to Vibe, so I worried they would be unimpressed by Norwegian's teen club program. DS and DD are both very sociable, so they immediately found what we called a "pod" of other teenagers to hang out with. They LOVED being able to go to a late night sit down eatery with their pod, and there was lots of teens-only stuff for them to do during the day while we were hanging out on the balcony with the camera, like bowling and karaoke in the adult night clubs.
I think it is also easier to do a non-Disney cruise if it isn't a destination where you'd miss something distinctively Disney, like Castaway Cay, or even disembarking out of Port Canaveral. We're possibly going to join some friends on a Princess cruise out of California to Baja within the next year. We've done two Baja Disney Cruises out of Los Angeles and San Diego and there was next to nothing Disney about of either of those terminals because they are shared with other cruise lines so it was row after row of folding chairs in what looked mostly like a hangar with one or two banners hanging up. The Princess cruise has the identical itinerary as DCL but is over a thousand dollars less than our rate for a similar stateroom. If we do the Princess one, we'll have reasonable expectations that while it won't be Disney, we'll save some major dollars and still have a very enjoyable cruise.
moogiepet
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2012
We're adults cruising without kids and always choose DCL... However, for our 2018 AK cruise, we are going with other family members who REFUSE to sail Disney because of the "kids!" We have been on 3 DCL cruises, just the two of us, no kids and while staying in the adult areas, we hardly know there are kids onboard! I can't wait to point out EVERY SINGLE kid I see on the other cruise line we go with!! ALL cruise lines are going to have kids on them!
We are choosing Royal Caribbean for our Alaska cruise because I refuse to sail with any Carnival Corporation cruise line (Princess/HAL) because of previous bad experience.
We are choosing Royal Caribbean for our Alaska cruise because I refuse to sail with any Carnival Corporation cruise line (Princess/HAL) because of previous bad experience.
Alaskan mosquitos are Dengue and Zika free. It's safe to feed the wildlife.
elvispursley
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2008
We are also looking into cruising AK in 2018 but will likely go with Princess for a couple of reasons:
1) They have itineraries that leave out of Seattle (where we're from, so no additional transportation)
2) Significantly less is $$. For 3 adults and 2 kids we would book adjoining mini-suites with balconies and for the 2 rooms it was still way less than the family verandah rooms on DCL.
3) My kids will be 14 and 12--the last time we cruised DCL, they have had NO desire to be in the Edge club at all. They are happy hanging out at the pool or just exploring the ship with their parents (aren't we just so lucky). So no real need for the kids club on this cruise.
4) Glacier Bay!!
5) My parents are as high up in the Princess cruise tier as you can get (I've only cruised with them once); they'd likely go and we'd have them book all our rooms and we'd be under their reservation, giving us all the benefits that go with that (this is not a real reason to go with Princess over DCL as we'd book even without the folks going).
I just can't get past how much the AK cruises are on DCL! It makes those European cruises oh so much more tempting (and an easier argument to present to DH on why we should do Europe instead)!
1) They have itineraries that leave out of Seattle (where we're from, so no additional transportation)
2) Significantly less is $$. For 3 adults and 2 kids we would book adjoining mini-suites with balconies and for the 2 rooms it was still way less than the family verandah rooms on DCL.
3) My kids will be 14 and 12--the last time we cruised DCL, they have had NO desire to be in the Edge club at all. They are happy hanging out at the pool or just exploring the ship with their parents (aren't we just so lucky). So no real need for the kids club on this cruise.
4) Glacier Bay!!
5) My parents are as high up in the Princess cruise tier as you can get (I've only cruised with them once); they'd likely go and we'd have them book all our rooms and we'd be under their reservation, giving us all the benefits that go with that (this is not a real reason to go with Princess over DCL as we'd book even without the folks going).
I just can't get past how much the AK cruises are on DCL! It makes those European cruises oh so much more tempting (and an easier argument to present to DH on why we should do Europe instead)!
Marypoppins14
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2014
I agree with pp statement re: DCL sticker shock. I sailed a mid-late August 2015 Alaska from Vancouver. 2018 prices are just shy of DOUBLE the price. Absolutely insane. I would not even consider DCL at these outrageous prices. I have sailed DCL 9x, 3x in concierge on the Dream. I have loved and relished the wonderful service and amenities, but the value is no longer there for me. I will sail one more time (Magic 5nt Western, 02/2018); earn my Platinum status, but then, I"m afraid that I may be out. Time to look to NCL Haven and RCCL (sailed Oasis and Explorer, love both ships). Unless DCL performs a major price correction. I used to sail DCL 2x/year; then moved to 1x/year. At best, we may sail every other or every 3 years, if ever. Very sad, but hard-earned $$$ needs to be well spent, and DCL no longer offers any level of value for me. YMMV, of course.
RedSox68
Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
RedSox68
Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
We are also looking into cruising AK in 2018 but will likely go with Princess for a couple of reasons:
1) They have itineraries that leave out of Seattle (where we're from, so no additional transportation)
2) Significantly less is $$. For 3 adults and 2 kids we would book adjoining mini-suites with balconies and for the 2 rooms it was still way less than the family verandah rooms on DCL.
3) My kids will be 14 and 12--the last time we cruised DCL, they have had NO desire to be in the Edge club at all. They are happy hanging out at the pool or just exploring the ship with their parents (aren't we just so lucky). So no real need for the kids club on this cruise.
4) Glacier Bay!!
5) My parents are as high up in the Princess cruise tier as you can get (I've only cruised with them once); they'd likely go and we'd have them book all our rooms and we'd be under their reservation, giving us all the benefits that go with that (this is not a real reason to go with Princess over DCL as we'd book even without the folks going).
I just can't get past how much the AK cruises are on DCL! It makes those European cruises oh so much more tempting (and an easier argument to present to DH on why we should do Europe instead)!
As I previously mentioned, we did a 7-day cruise in a verandah and 12-night land tour with HAL in 2012 for 3 adults. That's 20 nights (including the last night at the airport) and included all the hotels on the land portion, some breakfasts and dinners and many lunches, all land excursions, transportation (buses, trains and the flight back from White Horse Yukon to Vancouver) and the airport hotel the last night -- and we only paid a couple thousand more than Disney wanted for just the 7-night cruise. Same when we went to London and took the 12-night British Isle cruise -- which Disney was also offering the same itinerary. Three adults in a verandah room on Princess -- and we paid (I am NOT kidding) $7,000 less than what Disney was charging for a 7A! It blew my mind. Even with the extra nights in London and Airfare, we didn't even come close to spending another $7,000.
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2010
Depends... what do you like about the DCL ships? We sailed with DCL to Alaska in 2014 and we sailed RCCLs Radiance of the Seas on a northbound cruise last July and it was OK. The adult pool area was taken over for kids since it is warmer & covered in there so there wasn't a really good adult only area to just relax poolside which I missed. The staterooms were worn and I had issues with hot water one day during my shower - there was zero cold water suddenly when I was soaped up. It was hard to get service at the bars and staff seemed mostly ambivalent. Our serving staff in the main dining room frequently neglected to take drink orders or bring the beverages we ordered. The food was decent but I still preferred to just go to the buffet than the main dining room due to lackluster service.
We saved a lot of money and got to go places DCL doesn't however so I think it was still a win... I would argue I had a much better time on ship with DCL though. For a floating hotel it sufficed but after two lackluster cruises with RCCL I'll give someone else a chance. When/if we go again I will choose Princess to go to Glacier Bay.
We saved a lot of money and got to go places DCL doesn't however so I think it was still a win... I would argue I had a much better time on ship with DCL though. For a floating hotel it sufficed but after two lackluster cruises with RCCL I'll give someone else a chance. When/if we go again I will choose Princess to go to Glacier Bay.
Dug720
See the line where the sky meets the sea?
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
I guess I should have checked here first ... we just booked a 2018 Alaska Cruise with DCL. Now having buyer's remorse.
Unless you're booked concierge, you can always cancel DCL and switch to another line. Especially this far out.
jdg345
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2006
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