Alaska Cruise

[dcannon101]

Has anyone used their points for the Alaska Cruise? If so, which one would you recommend? Did you upgrade staterooms? I am looking for information about the various cruises and want to know which one would be the best for our first Alaskan cruise.

 

[wdw1972]

I've cruised Alaska, but would never use my points to do so - it makes poor financial sense. You'd be using a minimum of 400 points (worth $4000) plus paying port fees for another $300 or so, plus the $95 exchange fee. You can book the cruise directly with Holland America for less than the $4400 - and if cash is tight just rent a portion of your dvc points (maybe 300 or so) to raise the cash to pay for it.

That said, I'd recommend a roundtrip cruise going out of Vancouver as opposed to one from Seattle. From Seattle it's not as scenic because the ship cruises outside of the inside passage - basically out at sea where there's nothing to see. The one-way between Vancouver & Seward is supposed to be very nice, but airfare there can be very high - it's best to do this when you've got time to add another week on land, to make the airfare more "worth it".

You really can't go wrong with Holland America - they're tops in my book, and in Alaska the 2 leaders are HAL and Princess.

 

[Minybear]

I have booked an Alaska cruise through DVC using our points for 8/28 Inside Passage. Here is my original post. It has some great info on it. http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=330252

Minybear

 

[WDWguruDH]

I agree with wdw1972 on just about everything. We did the roundtrip out of Vancouver and loved it! We had previously done the one way out of Seward and the Vancouver trip was better.
We used points and will do it again...the real cost of points is about $6 a point a year (intial purchase divided by 40+ plus that years dues). This is the actual value of your points. Most will point to the $10+ for rental, but the $4 difference is paying you for the headache, hassle and risk of renting, not the actual points. Using the actual value, you would have to hunt for a good deal to beat the price, you could do it, but once again - headache, hassle, etc to save a couple hundred dollars.
The thread posted by minybear above is an excellent thread, my wife (WDWGuru) posted a ton about our various experiences.