Other Options...

[ngl]

Has anyone used other companies for Alaska? Considering a land trip pre-cruise and AbD ends a week earlier than we need. Similarly, anyone have recent experience with Nat Geo? They weren't getting great reviews for a while. We will have a tween and a teen with us.

We did Tauck for Alaska in 2018 (our kids were only 10 & 8 at the time but loved it). At that time we had not done any ABD trips but have since done 2. I would say they were are highly comparable with the one caveat that Tauck uses one guide instead of 2. They also seemed more "flexible" about things. You went to dinner at any time at the hotel restaurants for instance and ordered whatever you wanted off the menu (including alcohol). Not many "dinners on your own" but that may be because it was Alaska and not many options at various places but the on your own was really any time you wanted. We would not hesitate to do Tauck again if the itinerary was better than ABD.

 

[Donalyn]

We did Alaska on our own in 2021 (when it seemed like the entire world was in Alaska for big wide open spaces during the second summer of COVID world). No company had an itinerary that matched what I wanted, which I will admit was relatively unique. (I didn't want a lot of bus time or distance between locations, due to some back issues with in our party, so I traded out Denali for experiences closer to Anchorage. It was not the standard trip to Alaska, but we had a wonderful time and did a lot of different things.) So we did Seward/Whittier/Alyeska/Anchorage/Mat-Su Valley.

Good luck finding what works for you.

On a separate note - we are booked on a different sort of group travel experience. We are going to Dublin with Big Game Travel in September to watch our NFL team play a game. We will be there for a week and as part of the tour there is a day trip out to Galway/Cliffs of Moher, then some planned activities in Dublin (like visiting Guiness and Jameson, when in Rome, after all). But also appears that we will have a good amount of time on our own. Still waiting for more information on the itinerary to really figure our what we want to do. But should be interesting.

 

[Dis_Yoda]

We did Tauck for Alaska in 2018 (our kids were only 10 & 8 at the time but loved it). At that time we had not done any ABD trips but have since done 2. I would say they were are highly comparable with the one caveat that Tauck uses one guide instead of 2. They also seemed more "flexible" about things. You went to dinner at any time at the hotel restaurants for instance and ordered whatever you wanted off the menu (including alcohol). Not many "dinners on your own" but that may be because it was Alaska and not many options at various places but the on your own was really any time you wanted. We would not hesitate to do Tauck again if the itinerary was better than ABD.

I've done 3 Tauck Tours in Europe and that type of meal ordering is common for them. Usually the only set menu would be your opening or ending meal and even then you have some selections to pick from. They tend to have a lot less meals on your own than others as well.