The Alaskan Jewel! Welcome Aboard….You don’t Exist! updated 12/13/2015 About This Page:

[jenseib]

Hi all!
For those that don’t know me, I am Jen. For those that do…well hi again!

I am a mom of 3, 2 grown kids and then my baby who is 10 and a grandmother to a now 10 month old.

For those that know me, you know I am a pretty big Disney fan..nerd..geek…whacko….whatever term you want to use is fine. I’m cool with it. I tend to try and go to Disney World once a year, though it doesn’t always happen and then there are years when I go more than once, so it all evens out in the end.

This year is a non-Disney year believe it or not! We decided to sail on Norwegian (NCL)....to Alaska…. as you can tell my by title.

What? Disney sails to Alaska, so why didn’t you sail with them?
Well long story short, we found going out of Seattle was going to work better for us and Disney sails out of Vancouver. And then price and availability was another factor. When I started looking at the week we wanted to cruise, Disney was pretty much sold out. Every so often a stateroom would pop up but the price was sky high. In the end we went with NCL which was almost half the cost of DCL and we got a bigger stateroom category.

When did you go? July 31 we flew into Seattle and set sail on the NCL Jewel on Aug. 1.

Who went?
Well that would be me…obviously…and my husband Skip and my youngest, Claire.

797765 by Jennifer Dowling, on Flickr

I often travel with Claire and my husband comes most times, but he is what I like to call a resister. He complains a lot about vacations, even though I know he has a good time. Things have changed around here a little bit and it was easier for Skip to get away and believe it or not he was excited about this trip!

I will be sharing the good, bad and the ugly….and the beautiful. There was a lot of good and a lot of beautiful…unfortunately there were some bad and ugly as well and I will tell all the details.
I also will also be comparing my experience to Disney Cruise line. I have sailed them 4 times in the past and they are still ranked number 1 to me. I also sailed Princess for the first time last year and I may do some comparisons to them as well.

Please bear with me as I am slow at writing. I edit my pictures as I go and it is time consuming and I am also busy with work and life, so it takes me a while.

Coming up…I will clue you in how this cruise came about…it was not the vacation I had been planning on originally.

[Cam22]

Great start, Jen! Count me in to learn all the details whether good or bad.

[OhToodles!]

Interested to hear about your travels!

[Nanny2004]

Can't wait to hear about your trip. We are cruising to Alaska next year for the first time. We will be cruising with Disney, but would love to have a comparison with another cruise line.

[taylan1]

Great start! I can't wait to read more and see your pictures!

[chezp]

Great start! I so hear you about the availability of staterooms on Disney for the Alaskan cruise. I looked a few weeks ago and every single Alaskan cruise for the whole of August was already sold out!

[Big Baloo]

Signing on! And wow, look how tall Claire is getting!

[Poobah7206]

Looking forward to reading about your experience.

[Pris]

Can't wait to hear more! I love Alaska. We've been twice, once with Disney and once on Celebrity. We are returning next summer on Disney again.

[patclairesmom]

Can't wait to hear about this adventure!

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by Cam22

Great start, Jen! Count me in to learn all the details whether good or bad.

Thank goodness most was good!

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

Interested to hear about your travels!

Welcome!!! Glad you are joing in.

Originally Posted by Nanny2004

Can't wait to hear about your trip. We are cruising to Alaska next year for the first time. We will be cruising with Disney, but would love to have a comparison with another cruise line.

I really want to go back. So many different things to do there and we only touched the tip of it. Skip would like to add a land portion too. This was the only vacation where he wished we still had a few more days.

Originally Posted by taylan1

Great start! I can't wait to read more and see your pictures!

Welcome!!!

Originally Posted by chezp

Great start! I so hear you about the availability of staterooms on Disney for the Alaskan cruise. I looked a few weeks ago and every single Alaskan cruise for the whole of August was already sold out!

I was shocked how sold out Disney was this year. I even looked at the end of July and most was sold out or hardly any selection for the ones that still had availibilty. It's for sure something you want to book early with Disney.

Originally Posted by Big Baloo

Signing on! And wow, look how tall Claire is getting!

She is growing like a weed. I don't notice it so much till either people comment on it or I look at pictures from a few months ago. I swear she has had a growth spurt for 6 years now.

Originally Posted by Poobah7206

Looking forward to reading about your experience.

Thanks! I hope to get to the fun stuff soon!

Originally Posted by Pris

Can't wait to hear more! I love Alaska. We've been twice, once with Disney and once on Celebrity. We are returning next summer on Disney again.

NICE! We really want to go back again.

Originally Posted by patclairesmom

Can't wait to hear about this adventure!

Welcome!!!!! This was a really fun trip.

[jenseib]

So let’s get this boring non picture part done with so we can get on to the fun stuff!!!!!

A little background…
Last year I was very fortunate to travel 4 times throughout the year. In Feb. 2014 I went to Disneyland (for the first time) for a work conference. I had a wonderful time with a co-worker and hope to meet up again with her next year.

In March Claire and I went to Disney World and Sea World and then Skip flew down and met up with us to go on the Disney Magic and we also went to Universal Studios and Legoland. Another pretty darn good trip.

In August I had a 1 day conference located at Disney World. I flew down Friday, went to the conference most of the day Sat and then hit the Villain’s party at Hollywood Studios. On Sunday I went to the Magic Kingdom then over to Universal Studios and flew home Monday. I was solo that trip but did meet up with another co-worker for some of my park time. It was a nice little break from the real world.

Finally in Sept I cruised on the Caribbean Princess out of Ft. Lauderdale with my Mom. This was actually work related, but it was mostly pleasure on our part.

I was lucky and Skip did not gripe too much at all about my travels but he did gripe about any plans I wanted to do this year. He wanted to do another family vacation but he wasn’t sure on the timing. Ever since I had come back from California he kept talking about wanting to go. It then kind of faded away but it was always there that we would be going to Disneyland this year. I was aiming for Feb and that got brushed aside because of work reasons at home for Skip. Then April was tossed around…well tossed by me, but it got thrown back in my face.

So in April we took a quickie weekend trip a few hours away from home to help satisfy our travel urges.

By the end of April though I was really wanting to get something planned. It is Disneyland’s 60th anniversary and I wanted to stay onsite to make the most of it. Skip is famous for deciding last minute…yes we have planned trips to Disney World with less than 2 weeks to go.
I started doing a little more pressing about what time frame he was planning on going and he finally said the first or second week of Aug. The first would have to work for us because if we went the 2nd it may run into Claire starting school.
Then he sprang it on me…I don’t want to go to Disneyland. Yeah my heart sunk. Where would you like to go? I asked?
You won’t want to go there but I want to go somewhere that starts with an A. Well my first thought was Aulani, Disney’s resort in Hawaii, but Skip had no clue what I was even talking about there.
Finally he said Alaska! Yes…Yes!!!!! I would love to go to Alaska and there are cruises there. I have no idea why he thought I wouldn’t want to go. I had asked several years ago about going and his comment was “who in their right mind would ever go to Alaska for a vacation?”
Well I have shows like Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers and Gold Rush, to name a few, to thank now because Alaska now was at the top of his list and he very much wanted to go.

So the searches began. Like I said, Disney wasn’t giving us many options and the prices were high, but surprisingly Skip wasn’t saying no to Disney. In the end going out of Seattle was just going to work out better and we had many more choices and a much better price range. So on the last day of April I put the NCL Jewel on hold to get the free beverage package and then I also put a Princess cruise on hold as well. The prices were pretty neck in neck so I then had to decide which line would work better for us as a family.

I reached out on Cruise Critic and asked some questions. Of course I got a lot of mixed answers. But I worked through it and I decided to go with NCL for a few reasons. Skip and I have sailed NCL before for our honeymoon 12 years ago…and actually I have sailed with them once before as well. The drink package was a big perk. We are not big drinkers but on vacation Skip likes to have some beers or other drinks and they can be pricey. This would be nice not to worry about how much they cost. And I just felt the whole freestyle thing would be more to Skip’s liking. He likes to be pretty casual and dressing up is usually a challenge.

Then I did some more looking and saw that the price of a Penthouse Suite was really not all that much more than the mini suite I had put on hold. It would be more room…..location was a huge plus to me…AFT…and it would include the beverage package, the specialty dining package, gratuities for he and I and $75 shore excursion credit for each port. Those perks were almost an even match for the price increase and it was well worth it in my opinion. I called in early May and asked about upgrading and was sure to ask if those perks would be with it and yes it was, so I made the change and put our deposit down.

Then the search for a hotel started. At first I was looking near the airport because they had shuttles, but then to do anything worth wild it was going to cost and arm and a leg to get there, so I turned my search to Downtown. I really wanted the Marriott but at this time the price was already close to $500 a night with taxes. Wow! I searched all the downtown hotels that peaked my interest or was recommended by others and the bottom line was we were going to be paying $400 plus for the night. I then looked to see what NCL offered and I found it. The Crowne Plaza. It was going to be $313 for the night. Not cheap, but compared to the booking directly with them it was a bargain and I added that to the reservation, which then included transfers from the hotel to the port.

I then searched out shuttle options and was given many suggestions but in the end I went with the Shuttle Express. I called to make a reservation as I wanted to prepay and the girl I got was a total idiot. She told me they don’t take reservations and just where to find them at the airport and I can schedule my return at that time. I really didn’t like that idea. I know I read others had made reservations so about a week or so later I called back and got someone who actually took my reservation and allowed me to prepay.

We looked over excursions, but Skip wouldn’t commit to any. He really liked the Deadliest Catch themed one in Ketchikan, but he didn’t like the price…oh by the way….all excursions for the most part are pretty costly in Alaska. Since we were new to the area and also since we had shore excursion credit we decided we wanted to book straight through NCL. Finally I made a decision and called about 2 weeks before the trip and made them. Since we had the credit we were told we don’t prepay, but that they will bill it to our onboard account and each day the credit would be applied. I booked for the 3 Alaskan ports and left Victoria go for now and we would decide later.

I also set to the task of making specialty dining. I decided the first night we would go to the main dining room, as well as the last night since we would be in Victoria that night and the rest I made reservations.

Not too far before our actual vacation NCL changed port times on a lot of cruises and mine was no exception. The only change was for Victoria though. It really was no biggy to me for the most part. We would be arriving later and leaving later, but we didn’t have anything specific planned…though I thought about Butchart Gardens.

All was set.

Now on to packing. I started putting things I thought we would need in piles in a spare bedroom all summer long. At one point I pulled out sweatshirts and jackets. I told Skip to try some on and he said he would not need any. I told him it could be chilly and it could be rainy. He said “If I need something, I’ll buy it there”. Ok then. I did pack a zipped up sweatshirt and that was it for him.

I got finished packing for the most part about 2 days before leaving. It really was a challenge as I just wasn’t sure what types of clothes to bring and how much of it we would need. I actually did a good job and only ended up bringing home a few clean clothes…most of everything was worn at least once.

I took the day before we flew off of work officially though I did finish up some last minute things. We cleaned out the fridge, double checked we had all we needed, packed the back packs , mowed the grass and did all those fun last minute things you need to do before vacationing.

And then we all tried to sleep. We had to get up early for our flight and it was going to be a long travel day, but excitement was settling in. Even Skip was excited and he was a chatter box about all our upcoming activities.

On to the fun!!!!

[Cam22]

Great planning! I'm really anxious to hear all about your excursions.

[Big Baloo]

Yay for fun!

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by Cam22

Great planning! I'm really anxious to hear all about your excursions.

I was really happy with the ones we did do. They all were well done.

Originally Posted by Big Baloo

Yay for fun!