A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure UPDATED 9/7 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure UPDATED 9/7
After much deliberation about where to post this pre-trip report, I've settled on this forum on the grounds that seven nights of our 14 night trip will be on board the Wonder, as we cruise Alaska. However, just to warn you that this pre-trip report will also have considerable chunks about Disneyland and non-Disney elements of our trip, so it's not all cruising.
Pre-trip report – part one: let’s do this again for Mark’s 50th birthday….
Dates: Saturday 30 August – Friday 11 September Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (42) and DH Mark (49, turning 50 during the trip ) Destinations: San Francisco, Vancouver, Alaska, Whistler, Disneyland Resorts: Doubletree by Hilton San Francisco Airport North, Pan Pacific Vancouver, Disney Wonder, the Fairmont at Vancouver Airport and the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland Meets: Mari and her DH Raleigh, Sharon (Princesssharon) and Karen (zacksmom 1993) Celebration: Mark’s 50th birthday!
We’d decided what to do for Mark’s 50th birthday as long ago as September 2011, when we were on our first Alaskan cruise, with our great friends Sue (rescuesk) and Steve and Barb (Grammy Grumpy) and Bob. We’d had an absolute ball with them, and on the last night, the question was asked “are we going to do this again?” to which everyone gave an enthusiastic The next question was “when?” and off the cuff, I suggested in four years’ time for Mark’s 50th birthday. Everyone agreed that would be our next cruise, altogether again.
Sadly, things don’t always pan out the way you hope, and for one reason and another, Sue and Steve and Barb and Bob won’t be able to join us on the second Alaskan cruise we take, but we decided to go ahead with our plans, having enjoyed the first cruise so much. To us, unlike many ports of call, where you see the highlights of the city you’re in, and then you feel as if you’re pretty much done (maybe that’s just us ), with Alaska, there were so many more things we wanted to do in each port of call. We heard stories of what both Sue and Steve and Barb and Bob had done, and we really fancied trying those things out on our next cruise, hence wanting to go back.
We knew when we wanted to book it – when we were on board for the Eastern Mediterranean cruise in the summer of 2014, as you always get a much better deal if you book on board. I think it was about the second night of our nine night cruise that we went ahead and booked, as we knew what we wanted. We’d be on the last sailing of the year again, departing on Monday 31 August, and returning on Monday 7 September. It would be exactly the same itinerary as we’d had before, leaving out of Vancouver, then heading into Tracy Arm Fjord, before visiting Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. I am really excited to be doing again, as I genuinely know that we’ll see new things nature wise, and be able to enjoy new shore excursions.
My original plan was to fly out to Vancouver using our Virgin Atlantic miles, as they flew there from Heathrow to Vancouver, but I couldn’t find any flights using our points. The reason quickly became clear, as it turned out that Virgin were rationalising their flights – great news if you’re on one of their regular routes, not so much if you want to go somewhere that isn’t a core route. Vancouver was axed, along with Tokyo, which is annoying, given we’d like to go back to Japan one day, and I was hoping to fly there with Virgin. Not any longer…
Ok, so now what to do? Well, the only thing I could do was have a look at flights into “nearby” airports, and I use that term advisedly, as of course the “nearby” airports were nowhere near. We’re talking LAX in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Now we’ve experienced LAX before, and it’s not a favourite place of ours. It’s a huge place, if you haven’t flown in there, and the immigration can take a long time to clear. We’ve picked up a bus from there to Disneyland before and have also got a car rental, and neither was a pleasant experience, with long waits after a long flight, so I think you can see where this is going.
Fortunately, I was able to secure a flight into San Francisco, and we’re flying Upper Class as we had enough miles to book it. While it’s not going to give us a bed on a red eye flight home, at least we do get to enjoy the amazing Clubhouse at Heathrow, which is really quite something. We’ve used it before, and have loved the experience, and I can’t wait to do it again.
So with that booked, and the deposit down on the cruise, what else did we have in mind for this trip? Well, I’d declared that it needed to be a three week trip, just like our last Alaskan cruise. After all, that straight away takes out seven nights. With flying into San Francisco, rather than Vancouver, we’d have to fly out an extra day ahead. That meant we’d be flying out on a Saturday, and the cruise would take us through until a week Monday. If we had a two week holiday, that would only literally leave us with another four nights.
I’d come up with some really grand plans. I don’t remember all the details now, and I think you can tell from this that things are going to change, but the original iteration of the itinerary was something along these lines:
Day 1 (Saturday) Fly out to San Francisco
Day 2 (Sunday) Fly up to Vancouver, visiting Victoria on the way
Day 3 – 10 (Monday – Monday) Alaskan cruise
Day 11 – 13 Take the Rocky Mountaineer over to Jasper or Calgary (as I say, the details are a bit vague in my head now)
Day 13 – 15 Visit Glacier National Park
Day 15 – 17 Fly to Vegas and spend a couple of nights there
Day 17 – 21 Spend the final few days at Disneyland
Now, after lots of soul searching, I decided that I just couldn’t justify the cost of the Rocky Mountaineer. I read some reviews, and I knew that on the short trips, the train could get in hideously late at night, as apparently freight trains take priority over it. I figured we could drive a similar route and stop whenever we wanted to, saving literally a couple of thousands of pounds.
I also had another problem. Whatever I tried, I could not make Glacier National Park work. I could work out the flights and the driving itinerary, but I was struggling to find car rental for a reasonable price. Then I got to the stage where I could really do with one extra day, except we were away for three weeks already. We really couldn’t ask for more time off.
Ok, time to go back to the drawing board then. Version 2 looked something like this:
Day 1 (Saturday) Fly out to San Francisco
Day 2 (Sunday) Fly up to Vancouver, visiting Victoria on the way
Day 3 – 10 (Monday – Monday) Alaskan cruise
Day 10 Whistler
Day 11 Kamloops
Day 12 Yoho National Park
Day 13 Banff National Park
Day 14 Calgary
Day 15 Fly to Vegas
Day 16 Vegas
Day 17 Palm Springs
Day 18 – 21 Disneyland
As you can see, Glacier National Park had disappeared by this point, along with the Rocky Mountaineer. We’d see some of the Canadian National Parks instead. Now this would work… just to get round to booking the rest of our itinerary.
For a long time, we didn’t make any other plans, as we had other holidays to look forward to, and I always try to pay for things in order – so anything we needed for our Florida trip in February took priority for example. It’s probably just as well in hindsight, because we were about to encounter a problem…
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The next question was “when?” and off the cuff, I suggested in four years’ time for Mark’s 50th birthday. Everyone agreed that would be our next cruise, altogether again. 
Well, the only thing I could do was have a look at flights into “nearby” airports, and I use that term advisedly, as of course the “nearby” airports were nowhere near. We’re talking LAX in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Now we’ve experienced LAX before, and it’s not a favourite place of ours. It’s a huge place, if you haven’t flown in there, and the immigration can take a long time to clear. We’ve picked up a bus from there to Disneyland before and have also got a car rental, and neither was a pleasant experience, with long waits after a long flight, so I think you can see where this is going. 
I read some reviews, and I knew that on the short trips, the train could get in hideously late at night, as apparently freight trains take priority over it. I figured we could drive a similar route and stop whenever we wanted to, saving literally a couple of thousands of pounds. 
Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
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