MassDisLovers
A dream is a wish your heart makes....
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
On Sunday we arrived in Ketchikan which , according to the DCL Navigator, was first established as a fishing camp in 1883 and then later became known as a mining supply center for gold and copper mining. By the early 1900s was a logging town and that remained for more than 70 years. Like Juneau, Ketchikan is only accessible by boat or plane. The city is currently known as the "Salmon Capitol of the World" and the economy is now based on tourism and fishing. Our twenty-something girls were hoping to meet some lumberjacks, but as it turned out they were about as elusive as the whales on our excursion that day!
The day was overcast and we were not scheduled to arrive until noon, so we decided to have a leisurely breakfast in Tritons. Shortly after we arrived our new Dis Friends, Karla and her Mom Nancy arrived so we enjoyed their company, along with Karla's husband Dan, while we ate and chatted.
In preparing for this trip I had purchased the "Frommers Guide to Alaska by Cruise Ship" and several other travel books. They all recommended an excursion to the Misty Fjords National Monument in the Tongass National Forest, so we had decided to book this through DCL ($179.00 pp). We had hoped to do the Disney Lumberjack show, but the Misty Fjords excursion was a 5+ hour long adventure so we couldn't do both. Based on the guide books we decided to go with the Misty Fjords.
The excursion was on a large catamaran with an enclosed upper deck (where we sat) and plenty of room to walk around outside and enjoy the sights. The promotional literature for the trip advertised that we would see salmon, black-tailed deer, brown and black bears, wolves, minks, bald eagles, martens, mountain goats, river otters and humpback whales as well as other wildlife. The Misty Fjords are beautiful mountains that rise out of the sea and they are located in a unique ecosystem that supports this wildlife. The receeding glaciers gave way to brush, forest, waterfalls and salt marshes. We were very excited!
We left the dock shortly after 12:30 pm and began our adventure. There were naturalists on board who gave intermittent narrations about the areas we were in. We expected to be directed to look here or there for whales or eagles or.... anything.... but that really didnt happen. Overall the excursion fell way short of our expectations. While it is certainly not the tour operator's fault that we did not see whales, we actually only saw one bald eagle and a group of seals on the entire trip. The scenary was beautiful, but not all that different from what we had been seeing since we left Vancouver 6 days earlier. Most people on the trip grew restless and many napped and the children really got whiny and bored. They served some light snacks along the way, which made it nice and had some coloring sheets downstairs for the children, but the lack of wildlife made an already long excursion seem much longer. To pass the time we chatted with the folks seated around us. Pretty much everyone felt that while it wasnt a bad excursion, it really wasnt worth $179.00 for a boat ride and it really wasnt good, either.
We got back at nearly 6 pm and all aboard was at 7:30 pm. We felt a little cheated - we hadnt seen the town at all- so we went to a couple close-by shops and bought a few more things to take home. We boarded the ship near the end of the time ashore and had to get ready for dinner. If we had been on a spectacular tour that afternoon we might not have felt that we missed anything in not seeing the town, but in reality we saw pretty much none of Ketchikan and pretty much no wildlife either.
Dinner was semi-formal so we put on our fanciest clothes and went to the least fancy restaurant - Parrot Cay. The previous evening our servers had asked who would be ordering the baked lobster tails (presumably to get a count). Being from New England we often have fresh Maine lobster so we were very much looking forward to this dinner. Five of us answered that we would like lobster, and my father jokingly said that he would like 5 lobster tails. Well....lesson learned... do not tease your servers. Not only did Englebert bring him 5 lobster tails- he brought him 5 complete dinners! My father was embarrassed and upset -he hates to waste food and he felt awful that they had actually thought he wanted 5 dinners. He begged us to help him eat them so it wouldnt be wasted, but before we could even start in on one, Englebert arrived with second meals for all of us who had ordered the lobster. For five people we now had 13 full dinners.
The table was so full of dishes we barley had room to put a fork down between bites. Of course the girls were plenty giggly about Grandpa's 5 dinners but he didnt find it funny at all. And, to make matters worse, the lobster tails were dry and tough and...well not really good at all. He did the best he could, but in the end just about all of the rice and green beans and two untouched lobster tails remained. My father sort of slunk out of the dining room and we wondered if he'd ever return!
After dinner went to the Adult Comedy show in WaveBands (Daren Streblow) which was ok and then headed back to do a little packing. The tip envelopes were there, glaring at us from their places on our beds. I hate tip envelopes... they reinforce the fact that the trip is nearly over. We counted our cash and remarked how yes! we still had plenty of cash, but then remembered that was becuase we had been constantly using our credit cards... and got the envelopes ready. We remembered to set the clock forward an hour (we have had a little trouble with this on past cruises) and called it a night around midnight. At some point the girls came back, but I only truly know this because they were in their beds in the morning when I got up.
Next - The last day of this trip - and will this be our last DCL experience?
The day was overcast and we were not scheduled to arrive until noon, so we decided to have a leisurely breakfast in Tritons. Shortly after we arrived our new Dis Friends, Karla and her Mom Nancy arrived so we enjoyed their company, along with Karla's husband Dan, while we ate and chatted.
In preparing for this trip I had purchased the "Frommers Guide to Alaska by Cruise Ship" and several other travel books. They all recommended an excursion to the Misty Fjords National Monument in the Tongass National Forest, so we had decided to book this through DCL ($179.00 pp). We had hoped to do the Disney Lumberjack show, but the Misty Fjords excursion was a 5+ hour long adventure so we couldn't do both. Based on the guide books we decided to go with the Misty Fjords.
The excursion was on a large catamaran with an enclosed upper deck (where we sat) and plenty of room to walk around outside and enjoy the sights. The promotional literature for the trip advertised that we would see salmon, black-tailed deer, brown and black bears, wolves, minks, bald eagles, martens, mountain goats, river otters and humpback whales as well as other wildlife. The Misty Fjords are beautiful mountains that rise out of the sea and they are located in a unique ecosystem that supports this wildlife. The receeding glaciers gave way to brush, forest, waterfalls and salt marshes. We were very excited!
We left the dock shortly after 12:30 pm and began our adventure. There were naturalists on board who gave intermittent narrations about the areas we were in. We expected to be directed to look here or there for whales or eagles or.... anything.... but that really didnt happen. Overall the excursion fell way short of our expectations. While it is certainly not the tour operator's fault that we did not see whales, we actually only saw one bald eagle and a group of seals on the entire trip. The scenary was beautiful, but not all that different from what we had been seeing since we left Vancouver 6 days earlier. Most people on the trip grew restless and many napped and the children really got whiny and bored. They served some light snacks along the way, which made it nice and had some coloring sheets downstairs for the children, but the lack of wildlife made an already long excursion seem much longer. To pass the time we chatted with the folks seated around us. Pretty much everyone felt that while it wasnt a bad excursion, it really wasnt worth $179.00 for a boat ride and it really wasnt good, either.
We got back at nearly 6 pm and all aboard was at 7:30 pm. We felt a little cheated - we hadnt seen the town at all- so we went to a couple close-by shops and bought a few more things to take home. We boarded the ship near the end of the time ashore and had to get ready for dinner. If we had been on a spectacular tour that afternoon we might not have felt that we missed anything in not seeing the town, but in reality we saw pretty much none of Ketchikan and pretty much no wildlife either.
Dinner was semi-formal so we put on our fanciest clothes and went to the least fancy restaurant - Parrot Cay. The previous evening our servers had asked who would be ordering the baked lobster tails (presumably to get a count). Being from New England we often have fresh Maine lobster so we were very much looking forward to this dinner. Five of us answered that we would like lobster, and my father jokingly said that he would like 5 lobster tails. Well....lesson learned... do not tease your servers. Not only did Englebert bring him 5 lobster tails- he brought him 5 complete dinners! My father was embarrassed and upset -he hates to waste food and he felt awful that they had actually thought he wanted 5 dinners. He begged us to help him eat them so it wouldnt be wasted, but before we could even start in on one, Englebert arrived with second meals for all of us who had ordered the lobster. For five people we now had 13 full dinners.
The table was so full of dishes we barley had room to put a fork down between bites. Of course the girls were plenty giggly about Grandpa's 5 dinners but he didnt find it funny at all. And, to make matters worse, the lobster tails were dry and tough and...well not really good at all. He did the best he could, but in the end just about all of the rice and green beans and two untouched lobster tails remained. My father sort of slunk out of the dining room and we wondered if he'd ever return!After dinner went to the Adult Comedy show in WaveBands (Daren Streblow) which was ok and then headed back to do a little packing. The tip envelopes were there, glaring at us from their places on our beds. I hate tip envelopes... they reinforce the fact that the trip is nearly over. We counted our cash and remarked how yes! we still had plenty of cash, but then remembered that was becuase we had been constantly using our credit cards... and got the envelopes ready. We remembered to set the clock forward an hour (we have had a little trouble with this on past cruises) and called it a night around midnight. At some point the girls came back, but I only truly know this because they were in their beds in the morning when I got up.
Next - The last day of this trip - and will this be our last DCL experience?
