Attack of the Cobra Chickens...Our Alaskan Adventure September 16-23, 2024

[Kari0180]

I'm really kind of sad to write this up, it's our final day on board. Reality would set in about 24 hours later. But we got one day left, so let's make the most of it!

We started our day finally visiting Palo for brunch. We were quickly seated and presented with our menus. We've eaten at Palo enough that we have a set routine of what we eat. We were first presented with our complimentary beverages

I had a mimosa, and DH had a glass of Prosecco. We were then presented the bread basket

Everything in this basket is so good, I love the focaccia rolls. We were also served items from the pastry cart. I went with the almond croissant

I don't know what it is about these, but they are amazing, I have to eat on every time. I'll admit that I'm strange, I'm not a fan of almonds, I don't really like nuts at all, but something that has almond flavoring and I'm all over it!

DH went with the fruit tart, he said it was very good. I was hoping for a small taste, but he kept it to himself. It was then time for our antipasti choices

We had Prosciutto, Coppa, Bresola, Salame Gentile, Cerignola Olives, Roasted garlic, Caciotta a Tartufo, Parmigiano-Reggiano and sweet pepperdew. DH didn't' realize that the red thing was a pepper, he thought it was a tomato. He bit into it and had some issues; he still claims that this was my fault.

The seafood platter included Jonah crab claw, lemon marinated shrimp, green lip mussels, spiced ahi tuna and gravlax. It was then time for the breakfast items, we started off with some eggs benedict


I somehow missed my eggs benedict, I just did the classic with the rosemary ham. DH did the one with the salmon, we actually split these. I love eggs benedict and this is my favorite place to get them, so much better than Cabanas. I mean look at that cross section, it's the perfect poach! Next up, the soup round


We split both the celery and tomato basil soups. I've already mentioned my love for tomato soup, this never disappoints. We both really enjoy the celery soup as well, but I don't like the sausage. DH admitted that he's not a fan of it either. Thankfully, it's only 3 pieces that can be picked out. We might just ask for it without the next time because the soup is a must have!

 

[Kari0180]

It was then time for our entrees, again, we split ever

This is the best lasagna, it's so rich, the cheese is amazing! It's so rich, I'm glad that we split it, but I always debate getting my own and just chowing down! We also split the chicken parm, how I missed a photo of this, I have no idea! But the chicken parm is my favorite meal at brunch, the chicken is amazing, and I love the risotto. We then split a Margarita Pizza

The pizzas are so good, prepared in the pizza oven! They were running a little behind on pizzas this day, so it took a while for us to get it, but it was worth the wait. The only thing about the pizza is that I feel bad that we never finish it, I think I had 2 slices, DH had 1, but we couldn't finish it. DH also had to have the steak


Photo of DH with his steak, he really enjoys it and it's the one entree that he gets to have all to himself. I like steak, but I don't know what it is about this one, I don't like it. I have a bite every time we go to Palo, and it just isn't for me. Once we finished our entrees, it was time for dessert

Once again, we split two

First up, the warm amaretto chocolate fondant. Looking at this while I'm writing just makes me want to grab a spoon and dig in! The thing that I love about this is that even though it's all chocolate and served with Nutella gelato, it's not overkill. I love all the chocolatey goodness.

We also split the Italian Zabaglione. This was our second time having this dessert, it's very good, but it's VERY rich. I don't know how anyone can finish this on their own, I don't think I ever could. But I love the fruit in it, the strawberries and blueberries are so fresh!

Our server came to present us with our bill, and I noticed a charge for $100, I mentioned that we were Platinum and shouldn't brunch be free? Our server said that the $100 would go away after our Platinum discount was applied. This was only our 3rd cruise as Platinum, and it had been over a year and a half since our last cruise, I just believed him and kind of forgot about it. Flash forward to after our cruise, I went through our folio and noticed the charge never went away. I called DCL, the cast member I spoke with told me that it was a mistake, that I will get my card refunded, but he couldn't do it, that he had to send my request to someone else, but that I could expect my refund in about a week. A few days later, I get an email from an executive guest correspondent, telling me that Palo brunch isn't part of the Platinum benefit, only dinner, and that they're sorry that I misunderstood. Not going to lie, this made me so mad! I mentioned how we questioned the server, and he told us that it was free. The response to that was again that only dinner was covered, that if we had gone and spoken to the Palo representative (not the server), they can include brunch at their discretion. I was about to just give up on this but decided to try one more thing. I reached out to our cruise group and also another general Disney cruise group on Facebook and asked if anyone else had every encountered this issue. Not a single commenter (and there were a lot) said that their brunch was covered. I had every single ship mentioned in the comments, so I emailed again and sent all the comments (first, I blacked out everyone's names, very time consuming, but it was worth it). I also said that as a Platinum Castaway member, I'm incredibly disappointed with the responses that I'm receiving, that it would be nice to have loyalty recognized over money and that this experience has me rethinking cruising with DCL in the future (this is the truth, every time we book a cruise, I question if it's time to try another cruise line). The representative emailed me back again telling me that brunch isn't included, but due to the "miscommunication", they were willing to apply a $100 on board credit to a future cruise. I applied it to our upcoming cruise, we will see in a couple of weeks if it actually happened.

Weeks later, this still bothers me, I know that I should just let it go, but I really hated the representatives' responses. We originally talked about re-editing our vlog to share our experience, but in the end decided not to. I have learned my lesson though; I need to remember that the bill should say $0 and if it doesn't to not leave until it does! We have both brunch and dinner booked on our next cruise and we have dinner booked first, so we'll just use our benefit then. But with 2 more cruises booked after, I'll remember to check in case we don't do dinner! If you made it through my whining about my Palo bill, I appreciate it, forgive me, and now back to our day!

After brunch was over, we headed to the French Quarter Lounge to play "General Knowledge" trivia. I don't have any general knowledge, so we scored 10 out of 20. We headed back to our room to change out of our Palo clothes and grabbed some more hot chocolate before we headed back to French Quarter Lounge to play Villains Trivia. We joined up with another couple, scored 16 out of 20, still lost, but had a good time getting to know our teammates!

We then decided to go back to our room, change again, this time into swim wear and headed to the adult only hot tub. DH grabbed me the drink of the day, the Pacific Rim and DH had a Long Island. We had a great time in the hot tub, we had some great conversations with other people, and it was nice and relaxing!

It was then time for our final drink tasting ,we headed back to the Cadillac Lounge for Martini tasting. We tasted 5 Martini's during this tasting, our bartender let us know that we would be drinking 2 classic Martini's and 3 Martini "creations". First up

This was a classic Manhattan, not my thing, it tasted like cough syrup. I drank it for the cherry at the bottom

Up next was a dirty martini, even more gross, but I enjoyed the olives!

#3 was created by our bartender, it was a Whiskey-tini. OMG, this was so good, it had whiskey (duh), amaretto, and vanilla ice cream. This is where I get bummed about the tastings, they'll create these fabulous drinks for the tastings, but you usually can't order them if you went to the bar. Granted, this was also our last day, but if I could've had access to this drink earlier, I would've drunk a lot of them!

 

[Kari0180]

The French Martini was #4, Grey Goose, Chambord, and Pineapple juice.

I also enjoyed this one, it was nice and sweet!

Our final martini was a sidecar, bourbon, Grand Marinier, and lime juice. I also enjoyed this one, the sour of the lime juice paired really well with the alcohol.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate DH's patience in not drinking any of his martini's until after they were passed out just so he could take this photo! Next to him, I was a total boozehound, drinking them right after we received them, DH would take a tiny sip and then arrange the glass for his photo. With martini tasting ending, we walked (I maybe stumbled) to the gift shops to see if there was anything else we needed to purchase, I purchased one last ornament and then we headed out to the walking track to do some reflecting and scenery viewing.

It was then time for the depressing task of packing, doing the survey, and arranging our tip packets. I loved the fact that the survey is now digital, it made things so easy! While we were packing, we realized that we had yet to take advantage of getting our Platinum gift, so I called and got that arranged to be delivered while we were hanging out in the room. About 20 minutes later, this beauty arrived

I've heard about Cloudem Blue and have always wanted to try it, so I was super excited when they offered it as a choice for the Platinum gift. Look at how sparkly it is! As for the taste, as others have said, it's basically sparkling apple juice, it's very sweet. DH was not impressed; he didn't like it. I was excited because that meant more for me, but after my second glass, it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to finish this on my own. If I hadn't waited until the absolute last second to order our gift, I could've put it in our fridge. Instead, I brought it to Azure and offered the rest of the bottle to one of our trivia friends.

Glass of Cloudem Blue in hand, it was time to play decades trivia. This was music that spanned from the 50's to the 2010's.

We did pretty well, our team scored 34 out of 40. We came very close again to winning, but no such luck. No trivia medals were awarded to us on this cruise! It was then time to head to our final dinner in Tritons for the Captain's Gala (aka Lobster Night). This is also a favorite menu for us. We were seated, ordered and started with our appetizers
Started with the marinated tiger shrimp, always enjoy this, but I leave the slaw thing alone and just eat the shrimp!

Also went with the Age Prosciutto with parmesan cheese, garlic, and cranberries. My favorite was the cheese, but everything was tasty. DH also got the Huntsman's appetizer; this wasn't my thing, the ham was good, but everything else was not good, DH wasn't a fan either. Again, not that it was bad, just wasn't our thing, but I'm sure if you liked duck mousse and goat cheese, you would enjoy it! He also got the Roasted Oyster mushrooms; these were the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted. I usually like mushrooms, but these were awful, they were cold, congealed, and bleh. And that is all I'm going to say about that!

Moving on to the soups, we both got the White Onion soup, I always enjoy this one, I like the chunks of salmon mixed in. It was then time for our mains, and of course we went with the lobster

How can you go wrong? Lobster, yum! Butter, Yum! Potatoes, Yum! Asparagus, not yum (but I dislike asparagus)!

 

[Kari0180]

We also split the Fettuccini with Parmesan Crusted Chicken

DH thought this was okay, I was not a fan. I will say most of this was related to the peppers, I'm not a fan of peppers and I missed that on the menu. Also, by the time I got to the pasta, it had gotten cold, so it was really heavy, but the chicken had a good flavor to it. It was then time for dessert

Another favorite dessert of mine, the Chocolate Lava Cake, this is so yummy, the vanilla ice cream and the chocolate, oh, I just want some lava cake right now! DH also got the Raspberry Vanilla Creme Brulee, I apparently forgot to take a photo (apparently, I was starting to slack on our final day), but he really enjoyed it! It was then time to say goodbye to our dining team, they took great care of us over the cruise. Since we would be doing express walk off the next morning, we wouldn't be grabbing breakfast in the dining room. We thanked them for their care, and had to get a photo before we headed out

Usually, we watch the 'Til we Meet again show in the atrium, but we figured we had taken the character photos we wanted, so we decided to spend our evening in Azure. First, we played Pop! which was a pop culture game and then we finished with the 80's Music Challenge. Things got a little crazy during this challenge and once again, people's competitive sides really came out. We wound up leaving early, we would have our earliest morning yet ahead of us. And while we didn't know it at the time, a very long travel day ahead of us.

Disembarkation Day

No photos but thought I would tell you about our travel home. We woke up, showered, packed up the rest of our stuff and then headed to Cabanas for breakfast. Cabanas has a very limited menu for breakfast on disembarkation day, but we still enough for a meal. After we finished eating, we went back to our room, grabbed our bags and headed up to the atrium to join the line to get off the ship for express walk-off. Once, the ship was cleared, we made our way through customs and then headed to the sky train station (although we went to the wrong station first). It was a quick ride to the airport, we got checked in, through security and were soon at our gate waiting for our flight to take off. We were at our gate before 9:30 and our flight was at 12:00, so we had plenty of time...so we thought.

We were flying West Jet again on our way home and had a layover in Edmonton, so we were in the Canada departures terminal. We only had a little more than an hour layover in Edmonton, so when the first announcement came in that our plane was delayed coming into Vancouver, I got a little nervous. I went to the desk where I was assured that it would be okay, that there were 42 people on our flight that needed to connect from Edmonton to Minneapolis so the plane would be held for us if it we were running behind. And then the second announcement came that the plane was going to be further delayed. And then a third announcement saying that all Minneapolis passengers needed to go down to baggage claim, claim their bags and that they would be notified with new flight information. We headed down to baggage claim and waited in front of the carousel. The other passengers around us were getting texts with their new flight information, but we weren't getting anything. At the same time, we kept hearing over the PA that the bags from our flight were delayed. After over an hour of nothing coming down and no flight information (everyone around us at this time had received their next flights). I went to the baggage claim desk to see if they could help me. They apologized for the baggage delay, but they were able to find our flight information, they booked us on a United flight...and it left in 90 minutes. The reps were a little flabbergasted but told me that I should go check in for our flight and that they will assist DH in getting the bags.

As I mentioned earlier, we were in the Canada departures terminal, and I now had to get to International. We were on one end of the airport and the United desk was on the complete other side, it took me 25 minutes of a brisk walk before I got to United. I started checking us in on the screens, meanwhile, DH was texting me that he had one of the bags, but they misplaced our second bag. Meanwhile at United, I had to pay for bags that I already paid for with WestJet, it was a huge sh*t show. My screen then froze trying to actually print off the boarding passes and there was nobody around to help, the line to reach the agents was so long and time was ticking. I'll spare you the details but basically had a panic attack trying to figure out what to do. DH finally got to me, and he was able to find an agent. Who was incredibly rude and told us that the reason the screen froze was because it was too late and that we weren't going to make our flight and that we should've arrived at the airport earlier, we tried to explain our situation, but she didn't care, told us to contact WestJet and walked away from us. WestJet was at least next to us, so we walked over there, waited in line and talked to one of their agents, who told us they couldn't help us and gave us a 800 number to call. Not my finest hour, but at that point, I full out started sobbing, we were stuck in the airport, nobody wanted to help us and I just wanted to get home. Thankfully, one of the United agents heard what was going on, called us over and was able to get us on a new flight. Our new flight would connect through Denver, and we wouldn't get home until about midnight, but at least we had a flight home. We dropped off our bags, headed through customs, grabbed some lunch and waited at our gate to board our flight to Denver.

We had a pretty uneventful flight to Denver, once we landed, we had to take the shuttle to a different terminal, but we had enough time to grab a quick dinner and take it to our gate. We got on the plane, there was a lot of turbulence so no beverage service. We finally arrived after midnight, grabbed our bags and headed to the ride share lot. Our original flight was supposed to land at 7:00 pm and we had a ride arranged to pick us up, but they had to cancel on us when our flight was delayed. We had 2 ride shares cancel on us until the 3rd finally picked us up and we got to my father in laws house to pick up Morty and Hef and finally get home. I thankfully had taken the day off, but poor DH only got about 3 hours of sleep before he had to go to work.

I contacted WestJet after we got home, explained our situation, I had to file several claims, we were refunded for our bags, but that was about it, no refund for our meals or our ride share home. Another lesson learned, there was a direct Delta flight that we could've booked when booking flights, but it was several hundred dollars more a person. Yep, lesson learned, pay the extra, book the direct flight! Not surprising, both DH and I got sick a couple of days after we got home, thankfully, just head colds and we recovered after a few days.

 

[Kari0180]

Final Thoughts:

Since Alaska is a very popular route and I know that I had a lot of questions before going, I thought I would give my opinions on some questions that I see.

Verandah or not? I think this really depends on your family and how you like to cruise. For DH and I, we spend almost no time in our stateroom. This cruise was no exception, we left our room when it was dark, we came back when it was dark with maybe a small detour to drop something off or to change. If we wanted to check out the views, we headed to decks 4, 9, or 10. We probably didn't even need the porthole, we should've just gotten our normal inside stateroom. But if you spend a lot of time in your room, the views are amazing!

Excursions: Be prepared, Alaska is expensive! Most excursions start at about $300/person with some being over $1k. Part of the reason, we didn't get a verandah was so we could spend the money on the excursions that we wanted. Were they worth it? Heck yes! If you're able, I definitely recommend taking the Glacier Viewing excursion, this was the most expensive excursion we did, but the sights from the smaller ship and the closer view of the Glacier were so amazing! Our excursions in all of our ports were amazing as well. All of our excursions were booked through DCL, but I know you can book for cheaper elsewhere. I just always prefer the safety of DCL!

Vancouver-If you've never been, I would recommend taking a day or two to explore pre or post cruise. Vancouver is a great city; we felt very safe walking around and some of the places we traveled to are very unique.

This was the best cruise we've done so far; I thought that Alaska would be a once in a lifetime, bucket list trip for us, but both DH and I have said we need to find a time to go again in the future. Won't be for a few years, but we've both decided that we will need to go again, this time, we'll maybe explore the 9-night itinerary.

So, what's up next for us? We have a few trips planned over the next 13 months. We leave in 17 days for our next adventure, we're spending a couple of days at Disney, staying at Caribbean Beach, planning on going to MK, Epcot, and possibly HS. It's been over 2 years since we last set foot in one of the parks, I'm excited to ride Tron and Tiana's Bayou Adventure and we get to try some new restaurants. But the main reason for our trip to board the Disney Treasure, we're doing the 7-night Western Caribbean itinerary, going to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, and Castaway. I've watched a bunch of vlogs of those who got to go on the preview cruises and the ship looks amazing! We weren't very big fans of the Wish, but I'm hoping the longer itinerary will make this a much better ship!

After the Treasure, we'll be headed out on our first non-Disney cruise. DH's work does trips for their viewers and the next one is a cruise on Celebrity and we're going to Greece! Don't really have any specifics at this time, DH just kind of gets told what to do, but I'm very excited!

After Greece, we'll be headed to San Juan and will be boarding the Magic for a 7-night Southern Itinerary. This is another itinerary I've been wanting to do for several years and happy that we're finally going.

Lastly, January 2026, we will be boarding the Destiny for a 4-night that will stop at both Castaway and Lookout Cay. We really haven't made too many plans for this cruise yet, DH wants to combine with a longer trip to Disney World, and I really want to do a B2B, 4 nights is just too short on a Disney cruise, we'll see who wins that argument!

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone who followed along, read about our trip and maybe watched our vlogs. I had a great time writing and reminiscing, it really was an amazing trip. I plan to write up our trip on the Treasure, so you will be hearing from me soon!

 

[Kari0180]

Our final vlogs of the trip

 

[Skywatcher1206]

I loved your report! We went on a DCL Alaska cruise on the Wonder in May 2022 and had a great time. We are also looking into booking it again (and taking our kids this time) for August 2027.

Can’t wait to read your Treasure trip report. We are taking that trip August 2026.

 

[JulieBeeRN]

We soon made our next stop, and the views were even more beautiful than our first stop.

T

What is the name of this port adventure? It sounds amazing.