Disney for Alaska - experiences vs other cruise lines

[reluctantredhead]

Which lines have you searched?

We've sailed Seabourn twice and have two more cruises booked with them although Seabourn is considered ultra-luxury not everyone breaks it up between luxury and ultra-luxury lines when talking about the upper lines.

I assume you enjoyed your Seabourn experience, given your past and future sailings with them? My apologies, and please ignore, if this is diverging to far from the original topic.

You're right about the ultra luxury vs luxury distinction, which I'd forgotten about...I spent some time a couple of months ago on the Cruise Critic forum (just reading other people's posts) and learned a bit about that. I also learned about the "premium" lines (such as Viking and maybe Oceania?? I might be misremembering on that one) that some people lump in with the luxury ones (incorrectly, according to CC...lots of strong opinions on that over there). I was initially drawn to Viking because I heard about the educational presentations and experts onboard (my husband and I love to learn, especially about animals and nature), but I read too many negative reviews of the food situation for vegetarians (both DH and I) to want to sail with that line. With Disney, we know we'll be covered with decent to excellent vegetarian food, and after a poor experience on RCL, that's a big concern for us.

 

[Toolulu22]

FWIW, on one of our "bucket list" long weekend trips to Seattle last summer, I met a lady in line at Pike Place Market who'd just gotten off a Holland America cruise to Seattle. She said she and her husband had been on many Alaska cruises and preferred Princess or Norwegian, but tried Holland on the advice of a friend. Her husband, who chimed in with his opinion, loved the Holland cruise, but she said she hated it and spent the whole time wishing she were back on one of the other lines (she specifically mentioned strongly disliking the food). I think the difference of opinions here illustrates what makes it so hard -- so much of it is personal preference, and it's hard to know for sure what you'll like until you've tried it.

We did an Alaska land and sea on Holland last summer. First cruise with Holland and slightly nervous about the whole trip. Firstly, we liked the food. They have a few “ signature” restaurants, which we tried. We also ate in main dining and at the buffet. On that end, I guess it depends on personal preference, as you noted. No complaints at all about the food though.

We were well taken care of, especially by our cabin steward. I notice some posters concerned about that aspect and rightly so. Our steward took awesome care of us and if he saw us in the hallway- would say “Mrs, P- can I get anything for you?” or “Mr. P - do you need anything?” and if there was a request, he was on top of it!

We flew into Anchorage, spent a few days on our own, then met our group and took a train ride up to Denali, where we stayed a few days. Then off to Fairbanks, Dawson, White Horse, and boarded the ship in Skagway. Stopped at many small towns along the way. I recommend this journey to anyone wanting to visit Denali and the Yukon and see some Land as well as Sea. We loved Canada especially. We had 40 or so in our travel group. There were 3 larger multigenerational and travel buddy groups along with some couples (like us) and others.

Our ship- the Zaandam- was smaller with about 1200 guests. It didn’t have the same level of entertainment as a Disney ship, but we enjoyed it for the sightseeing. There were naturalists on board here and there to point things out and talk about what we were seeing. It was relaxing and they have a great spa and fitness area. We did enjoy playing Roulette in the casino.

We loved our trip so much, we’re flying back this summer and visiting Talkeetna and Denali on our own.

We are not dedicated cruisers, preferring to travel independently, but would choose Holland again.

 

[tidefan]

Here is my .02...

We've sailed to Alaska 3 times and are heading there for the 4th time this summer. It truly is a magical place and you will love it no matter which line you choose. That said...

Our first Alaska cruise was the 2015 DVC Member cruise on the Wonder and is perhaps one of our favorite cruises we've ever done. Still have friends that we made on that cruise. Now, part of it was that there were so many extras because it was a DVC MC, such as getting to see Inside Out 2 months prior to it being in theaters, meeting the director of the "Lava" short, who after going through the story of how it was made picked up the ukulele and sang the song, all the special gifts, the receptions that Ken Potrock hosted for all the members, and the broadway talent brought on to perform a special Disney on Broadway show. It was amazing. That said, most regular DCL sailings won't have that, however, they will share one especially beneficial thing in that sailing from Vancouver, it tends to do a complete inside passage on the east side of Vancouver Island. That first day is like sailing down a river!

Our other 2 Alaska cruises have been on Princess and we have loved them as well. One particularly nice thing we enjoyed with Princess is that you can order room service to anywhere on the ship if you have the Plus package, so we would sit on the rear decks as we left the ports, order food and drinks to our table out on the back and enjoy the scenery. That was great. Plus, Princess goes to Glacier Bay, which is beautiful. One thing about Princess is that we prefer the Royal-class ships over the Grand-class ships, especially where the buffet is concerned. We found it much better on the Royal-class ships.

This summer, we will be sailing Alaska on Virgin Voyages. This is their inaugural season up there, so I am real interested to see how it goes. We've sailed VV multiple times over the past few years and it has quickly become our favorite.

SIDE COMMENT: Here is a "left-field" suggestion. I have stated before that if you cruise Carnival, to focus on the new ships (Mardi Gras/Celebration/Jubilee) which are so different from any of their other ships. That said, we decided this year for Spring Break to support our good state of Alabama and that we should try the cruise out of the Mobile cruise port, which is the Carnival Spirit. We went into that cruise last week with low expectations and while it isn't perfect, we were very pleasantly surprised at just how much we all really enjoyed it. I will say, it is NOT the Mardi Gras (which we also love, BTW - better than the Oasis class ships IMHO), but it has many of the same great food options such as Guy's Burgers (no $18 charge like Johnny Rocket's on RCCL!) and Blue Iguana (unfortunately, however, no Shaq's Big Chicken). Where we were most surprised though was in the quality of the MDR and even the buffet. Not sure what I was expecting, but the food, while not gourmet, was very good, especially for what you pay. Also, the crowd on the ship was a very well behaved group! It was a great cruise and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again! I bring it up because we thought it was an awesome sized ship, being about 2,000 passengers, and while the decor is quite different, the size/feel of the ship is in line with the size/feel of the Wonder/Magic, which to me is a huge positive. It was clean, there wasn't any rust, and it felt like the crew (who was great, BTW), did a good job of keeping things tidy. At any rate, this is the ship Carnival has cruising in Alaska and just to let you know, I wouldn't hesitate to sail on her again, and I didn't think I would say that prior to last week!

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I assume you enjoyed your Seabourn experience, given your past and future sailings with them? My apologies, and please ignore, if this is diverging to far from the original topic.

You're right about the ultra luxury vs luxury distinction, which I'd forgotten about...I spent some time a couple of months ago on the Cruise Critic forum (just reading other people's posts) and learned a bit about that. I also learned about the "premium" lines (such as Viking and maybe Oceania?? I might be misremembering on that one) that some people lump in with the luxury ones (incorrectly, according to CC...lots of strong opinions on that over there). I was initially drawn to Viking because I heard about the educational presentations and experts onboard (my husband and I love to learn, especially about animals and nature), but I read too many negative reviews of the food situation for vegetarians (both DH and I) to want to sail with that line. With Disney, we know we'll be covered with decent to excellent vegetarian food, and after a poor experience on RCL, that's a big concern for us.

Yes we've loved our experiences with them. I've told people on the DIS before about the price difference as well lol meaning what you said about it being close in cost depending on the trip. With Seabourn tipping is neither required nor expected and there are no gratuities charged to your room each night, you do not see that 18% gratuity charge from DCL for things (spa stuff excluded like normal), you want a specialty coffee you just order it, you want an adult beverage you just order it.

While I never finished my trip report despite my promise (ugh I'm bad at that) if you have signatures turned on you can click on my thread for my incomplete but certainly still decent trip report from my first cruise with them in 2023 in the Adriatic sea (Encore) which would give you an idea on the rooms and ships, our 2nd cruise was March/April 2025 in the western Med (Ovation sister ship to Encore). Our upcoming ones are on Quest but they are for end of 2027 (Caribbean) and mid-2028 (Baltics)

Encore and Ovation are 100% all verandah and price point are better than Quest in our experience because Quest has the lowest category of Oceanview.

Alaska seems to be the equalizer in terms of destinations. Seabourn does provide you as yours to take home with you a Helly Hansen jacket for the Alaska sailings (if it's only Alaska as its destination not if you do a World Cruise or a transpacific sailing). For presentations on board Seabourn does that as well and at least on our western Med cruise if you missed the presentation you could watch it on the tv later on, I watched a fantastic presentation on the Moors, Gibraltar and more (as we were going through the Iberian Peninsula) as well as another one on Napoleon (as a portion of our cruise was in those areas/time period). Alaska is going to be more wildlife oriented so you may have more talks on that.

As for the food it is IMO very good, on the vegetarian aspect I felt they stepped up quite a lot in terms of that on our 2025 cruise. The menus listed in a more defined way gluten free (GF), vegetarian (plant icon), vegan (V), no sugar added (NS), and contains nuts (CN).

Here's a sample from one of the nights of the menu from our 2025 cruise, I know it's really hard to get a good pic so you may not see this as super helpfully but hopefully it gives you an idea. The Restaurant (which is the MDR) menu is also available during dinner hours as in-suite dining and can be served course by course if you wanted.

Don't confuse Earth & Ocean for your place you just plop down in swimwear, that is during the day. In the evening it's just like the other restaurants but more casual in atmosphere given it's outside.





Solis is their reservation only specialty dining restaurant but there is no additional charge for the restaurant. In Encore and Ovation there is a small but dedicated Sushi place that during lunch serves bento (cooked) meals and raw at dinner, we only liked cooked so we go there during lunch....the sake (certain ones included) can be dangerous . For Quest Sushi is served at The Club rather than being a stand alone restaurant.




There's a lot of overlap on the ultra luxury passengers as far as the more tenured ones have sailed with Regent, Silversea, Seabourn and most recently Explora. Many of them have done Windstar, Azamara or Oceania as well.

My best suggestion is to maybe join a Seabourn FB page (try to find one that isn't just a travel agent sponsored one as you're going to get too much of that stuff instead of people's actual experiences), you could absolutely ask your question about the vegetarian options also ask about Alaska specific cruises and you can also get an idea of the cruises for Alaska by looking at people's posts.

As a comparison for the ship and experiences it's very difficult to compare DCL because DCL is not at all the same target demographic nor style. Even skewing higher income people are sailing each line for completely different reasons.

You mentioned dress code yes there is one for the whole ship after 6pm it's elegant casual though vaguely a few years back "elegant jeans" were added as acceptable but no one really knows what that is lol. Then there's formal night which only applies to The Restaurant whereas the rest of the ship stays elegant casual. Certain regional areas become more casual due to the climate. Antarctica for example doesn't have formal night on the Expedition ships. I'm not sure how much people adhere to the dress code on the Alaska cruises but that is for sure something you could ask on the FB pages. Seabourn is usually referred to as the country club ambience for dress codes.