Nice Quiet and Small Alaskan Cruise
Zaandam Cruise Review to Alaska
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 73
Review summary
We have always wanted to visit Alaska and a cruise was the way to do it. We knew we wouldn't be doing this again so we wanted to make the most of it. Many of the cruises or cruise portions of the trips don't visit a lot ports, especially the ones up around Anchorage and Homer. That was really nice to be able to see all of the coastline and the different landscape of Alaska from Ketchikan all the way to Kodiak. We saw the glaciers around Tracy Arm Fjord and also Hubbard Glacier. Those were our favorite places we visited. We don't get around very well and figured a land portion would be more difficult for us. This was a great option to be able to see as much as we could in one trip. The weather we had was absolutely gorgeous! Only a couple rainy days during the entire trip, and we went in early August!Embarkation
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
The food was excellent. Between the other more casual restaurants and the room service we didn't even go to the main dining room. We are not drinkers and only had a few sodas on board. They are expensive. The water options are not great. A bottle is $5 and other than that you have to order it by the glass through room service or go to one of the dining areas to get a glass. It would have been nice if they at least offered a bottle or two a day for free for guests, since water is a necessity.
Onboard Activities
We are older and did not participate in much on board. I would not recommend this for a family or anyone that doesn't just want to lay quietly around the pool. The shore excursions were much better for activities than the ship.
Service and Staff
The room stewards we had and the service staff on the rest of the ship were absolutely wonderful! They were great the entire trip and we couldn't have asked for any better service.
Ship Quality
Cabin / Stateroom
We had a verandah suite, I'm not sure what the difference would be between that and a balcony. It was a decent sized room compared to the inside and oceanview rooms. Our verandah was great. I wouldn't have wanted to do this or any Alaskan cruise without the option of a verandah. That is where we spent most of our time on the ship.
Ship tip
There is NO coin operated laundry, only valet laundryt that you have to pay extra for. The ship info said there was one aboard but we aksed and also looked and could not find one.
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
We didn't really look around town too much at this port. It was our first stop and we were still a little nervous to veer far from the ship after our morning excursion.
Coming in and out of Juneau was absolutely beautiful. We saw tons of whales on our excursion here and also got to take a detour and visit a really nice lookout to see the Mendenhall Glacier. We also took the tram and that was really nice to view the area from that high up.
Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), Alaska
Wasn't much here. The town itself was fairly dumpy but the trolley tour we took through the forest was really nice.
This was a close second as our favorite port. We did not take any excursions here but the town was really neat and the landscape was spectacular.
This was our favorite port. The landscape was the most beautiful on the entire trip. We were lucky to see this on a clear, sunny day.
We loved this because of the Butchart Gardens tour we did. The gardens were amazing. Other than that we didn't tour any of the city.