Ever since watching numerous documentaries and travel shows on TV, Alaska has always been on the "to-go places" list. What moves it up to a "do-able" trip, I guess, was due to the lower prices that was advertised where you could go with a balcony cabin for only 5K (for both Rockies and Alaska cruise) in 2009. It became a "research" topic, in early 2010, to find out more about the trips available in the market, and what people would recommend. During this period, I had noted that a lot of people have pointed out that to go on such trips, I have to make early decision, and then be quick in our booking - as early as possible for a cheaper pricing and secure the trip itinerary that I would want to go on.
As I have targeted 2010 trip to be for a 1st trip to Japan (7 days trip to Hokkaido), it was left on the side burner, and simmer it for a while. Started to read online on what I could find, and if you check online on Alaska, there were a lot on cruises but I have no firmed plan on how I was to go about this. When Mother and aunt found out that I was thinking on going, they immediately say that they were interested, and tasked me to "find out more". They were interested, in fact excited of the prospect, but not enough to do research themselves (of course, their usual excuses is that they are not IT savvy enough to do research online!)
While I had plenty of resources online on this topic, there were also no advertisement in the local papers on Alaska. So, it was all just researching, trying to find out as much as possible and trying to figure out why people are saying to book early, but no companies in SG had any details!!! Anyway, Hokkaido came and gone, I had more time to work on the Alaska trip. There were also lack of details on the websites on what is available by the cruise lines themselves, but somehow people (then again, they are all in US/Canada) still managed to book their cruise and actual holidays.
The whole thing actually took flight after the week of NATAS fair in August. Yes, for the 1st time, I actually went for the fair, to squeeze with the whole lot of people there, who were planning for their Dec 2010 holidays! Here I was, planning for my May 2011 holidays! :P
Ironically, at that time, most of the companies don't have much details on Alaska, except for 2 companies - both were offering a combination of Rockies and Alaskan cruise (Princess). New Shan was offering Rockies + Inside Passage cruise, while the other, which I cannot remember which company it was, maybe it was Super Travel or 5 Stars, they were offering Rockies + Voyage of the Glaciers cruise. The rest were saying that the pricing is not out, so they don't have any firm confirmation on their decision on what to do, and all that. There were also RCCI, Princess, HAL and a few others booths but they don't offer direct booking!
However, I came across Stamford Travel in NATAS, and as they say... the rest is history. They were not promoting their tour packages, but rather the cruise packages - they were handing out all sorts of pamphlets. First pamphlet for Alaska was the Oceania pamphlet which was a 9 day cruise of Alaska, if I recall correctly. It was not something that I was looking, but they took my contact details down, and ask if they could contact me and work out something for me.
They called back and arranged for a meeting a week later. First meeting was a bit interesting as there were 3 of them and me - in Ya Kun near my office. Felt very overwhelmed by the numbers, ha ha... They were nice, and listen to what I had said, showed me a video to give me an idea of how the cruise will be like and the destination. Gave me a few pamphlets on Rockies + cruise. Telling me the difference between Inside Passage and Northbound/Southbound. They also added in about land section, basically the whole HAL booklet on Alaska 2011 was made available to me to have a look, telling me that I can find these details in the web as well.
By this time, the group number had increased - from just 3 persons, it was increased to a possibility of 7, or even maybe 8 people. But due to the length and leave application issues, it finally rested on the number 5. So, it would be a twin sharing and triple sharing. Triple sharing also means that there could be some changes along the way just as it happens.
We started by thinking about just Rockies and the cruise. Then the land portion of Alaska was mentioned, the itinerary grew to Rockies, Cruise and Alaska land. Added into the mix was the number of days of leave available. In the end, it was a mixed decision. Shirley and Peter went ahead with the Rockies section, while all of us will be doing the Cruise Tour, sea and land section of Alaska - making our way up to Prudhoe Bay.
Once the destinations were firmed, we then started by deciding on the HAL cruisetour, which does the 7 days cruise with the 6 days land tour. However, by the time we are firmed on the cruise company, HAL's triple sharing for the land tour part was fully booked. As we could not move the dates, we turned our focus to Princess instead. They still have availability for triple sharing on their land tour section, and they had the exact same itinerary (except they had 1 more day in Fairbanks), we quickly place our booking and paid up our deposit to secure it.
With our general itinerary firmed, I started to look at the excursions that we could go for at the port of calls - Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway and also the Denali section of the land tour. Having read a lot of reviews and also lurking in the forums, and then reading up on areas which was discussed and highlighted as a "must-do" in the forums.
After much deliberation, decided on the following for the port of calls. Ketchikan - floatplane sightseeing of Misty Fjord National Monument; Juneau - Whale watching tour, and maybe followed by a visit to Mendenhall Glacier; Skagway - White Pass and Yukon bus/rail tour. As Princess cruisetour includes only the Natural History Tour (NHT) which is going only 17 miles (approx) into the park (4 hours tour), I had asked the agent to try to get them to change it to Tundra Wilderness Tour TWT) which is going 53 miles, or to somewhere near Stoney Hill, into the park (8 hours tour). There was another tour, Kantishna Experience which goes the entire 92 miles into the park but it was only offer Jun 8 onwards which by then we would have been in Fairbanks according to the schedule. That tour is also about 11 hours which I am not certain if the rest of the group could take it!
Even the arrangements for the additional excursions also took some time to get it arranged. It seems that the operators have some down time during the winter period, so we could only start to make some arrangements after Jan/Feb. For Ketchikan, I had wanted to go with Island Wings which was highly recommended by the forum, but she did not have the slot available, so we went with Family Air. For Juneau, I wanted Harv and Merv, but because the boat size is small (6 persons max), the rest of the group was a little worried about seasickness, so we settled for a larger boat of max of 40 people with Orcas Enterprise. As for Skagway, did not think we would want to drive around ourselves, although a lot of people say we could. It was a toss between Dyea Dave and Chilkoot Charters, and since Dyea Dave was pretty popular, we made arrangements with Chilkoot Charters instead. The only snag we had was the Denali Park section where we somehow was not able to upgrade to the TWT instead.
So by the time the day came, we were pretty much firm on all our plans.
As I have targeted 2010 trip to be for a 1st trip to Japan (7 days trip to Hokkaido), it was left on the side burner, and simmer it for a while. Started to read online on what I could find, and if you check online on Alaska, there were a lot on cruises but I have no firmed plan on how I was to go about this. When Mother and aunt found out that I was thinking on going, they immediately say that they were interested, and tasked me to "find out more". They were interested, in fact excited of the prospect, but not enough to do research themselves (of course, their usual excuses is that they are not IT savvy enough to do research online!)
While I had plenty of resources online on this topic, there were also no advertisement in the local papers on Alaska. So, it was all just researching, trying to find out as much as possible and trying to figure out why people are saying to book early, but no companies in SG had any details!!! Anyway, Hokkaido came and gone, I had more time to work on the Alaska trip. There were also lack of details on the websites on what is available by the cruise lines themselves, but somehow people (then again, they are all in US/Canada) still managed to book their cruise and actual holidays.
The whole thing actually took flight after the week of NATAS fair in August. Yes, for the 1st time, I actually went for the fair, to squeeze with the whole lot of people there, who were planning for their Dec 2010 holidays! Here I was, planning for my May 2011 holidays! :P
Ironically, at that time, most of the companies don't have much details on Alaska, except for 2 companies - both were offering a combination of Rockies and Alaskan cruise (Princess). New Shan was offering Rockies + Inside Passage cruise, while the other, which I cannot remember which company it was, maybe it was Super Travel or 5 Stars, they were offering Rockies + Voyage of the Glaciers cruise. The rest were saying that the pricing is not out, so they don't have any firm confirmation on their decision on what to do, and all that. There were also RCCI, Princess, HAL and a few others booths but they don't offer direct booking!
However, I came across Stamford Travel in NATAS, and as they say... the rest is history. They were not promoting their tour packages, but rather the cruise packages - they were handing out all sorts of pamphlets. First pamphlet for Alaska was the Oceania pamphlet which was a 9 day cruise of Alaska, if I recall correctly. It was not something that I was looking, but they took my contact details down, and ask if they could contact me and work out something for me.
They called back and arranged for a meeting a week later. First meeting was a bit interesting as there were 3 of them and me - in Ya Kun near my office. Felt very overwhelmed by the numbers, ha ha... They were nice, and listen to what I had said, showed me a video to give me an idea of how the cruise will be like and the destination. Gave me a few pamphlets on Rockies + cruise. Telling me the difference between Inside Passage and Northbound/Southbound. They also added in about land section, basically the whole HAL booklet on Alaska 2011 was made available to me to have a look, telling me that I can find these details in the web as well.
By this time, the group number had increased - from just 3 persons, it was increased to a possibility of 7, or even maybe 8 people. But due to the length and leave application issues, it finally rested on the number 5. So, it would be a twin sharing and triple sharing. Triple sharing also means that there could be some changes along the way just as it happens.
We started by thinking about just Rockies and the cruise. Then the land portion of Alaska was mentioned, the itinerary grew to Rockies, Cruise and Alaska land. Added into the mix was the number of days of leave available. In the end, it was a mixed decision. Shirley and Peter went ahead with the Rockies section, while all of us will be doing the Cruise Tour, sea and land section of Alaska - making our way up to Prudhoe Bay.
Once the destinations were firmed, we then started by deciding on the HAL cruisetour, which does the 7 days cruise with the 6 days land tour. However, by the time we are firmed on the cruise company, HAL's triple sharing for the land tour part was fully booked. As we could not move the dates, we turned our focus to Princess instead. They still have availability for triple sharing on their land tour section, and they had the exact same itinerary (except they had 1 more day in Fairbanks), we quickly place our booking and paid up our deposit to secure it.
With our general itinerary firmed, I started to look at the excursions that we could go for at the port of calls - Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway and also the Denali section of the land tour. Having read a lot of reviews and also lurking in the forums, and then reading up on areas which was discussed and highlighted as a "must-do" in the forums.
After much deliberation, decided on the following for the port of calls. Ketchikan - floatplane sightseeing of Misty Fjord National Monument; Juneau - Whale watching tour, and maybe followed by a visit to Mendenhall Glacier; Skagway - White Pass and Yukon bus/rail tour. As Princess cruisetour includes only the Natural History Tour (NHT) which is going only 17 miles (approx) into the park (4 hours tour), I had asked the agent to try to get them to change it to Tundra Wilderness Tour TWT) which is going 53 miles, or to somewhere near Stoney Hill, into the park (8 hours tour). There was another tour, Kantishna Experience which goes the entire 92 miles into the park but it was only offer Jun 8 onwards which by then we would have been in Fairbanks according to the schedule. That tour is also about 11 hours which I am not certain if the rest of the group could take it!
Even the arrangements for the additional excursions also took some time to get it arranged. It seems that the operators have some down time during the winter period, so we could only start to make some arrangements after Jan/Feb. For Ketchikan, I had wanted to go with Island Wings which was highly recommended by the forum, but she did not have the slot available, so we went with Family Air. For Juneau, I wanted Harv and Merv, but because the boat size is small (6 persons max), the rest of the group was a little worried about seasickness, so we settled for a larger boat of max of 40 people with Orcas Enterprise. As for Skagway, did not think we would want to drive around ourselves, although a lot of people say we could. It was a toss between Dyea Dave and Chilkoot Charters, and since Dyea Dave was pretty popular, we made arrangements with Chilkoot Charters instead. The only snag we had was the Denali Park section where we somehow was not able to upgrade to the TWT instead.
So by the time the day came, we were pretty much firm on all our plans.
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