[00:00:00] Speaker A: For those not that know, we stayed in the Roy O Disney suite on board the Wonder for this cruise. It it. I was going into the cruise, I said it's one and done. Now it's like one and an excuse in my bank account can accommodate it.
Welcome back everybody to this week's episode of the DCL Duo podcast. Brought to you by my Path Unwind Travel and also our good friends over at the WDW magazine. We're excited to share this one. Just a plug for WDW magazine, DCL magazine. The float test issue of DCL magazine. Be sure to head over to dcl-magazine.com to get your issue today. And if you use code DCLDUO in the store, you can get 10% off everything over in that WDW magazine store, which they've got some great stuff over there. They've got the calendars, the magazine subscriptions, the electronic magazine, everything, everything over there. Great articles, great stuff. Head, head over there. Be sure to check them out. Sound like you're gonna say something, Sam? Oh, well, you're just playing with puppets over there, right?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I'm just playing with my stuffies. I'm just playing with Alaska Mickey and Minnie over here. Sorry, I can't help myself. They're just too cute and I'm wearing the shirt to match Minnie.
Let's see, which way do I move? There we go. Yeah.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Nice.
All right.
All right. Well, as per usual on these kinds of shows, we're going to give you our review of our Alaska voyage on the Wonder, as we've done in the past with other kind of non Caribbean cruises where the Caribbean cruises like to focus on the onboard experience. We'll talk a little bit about that in this episode. But we're really going to be focused on kind of the shore excursion experience and what you can expect on that as well as some other things. And so get, get ready. We got a lot to cover, a lot to cover in a short period of time.
We've had a lot of requests for Nathan to come on and unfortunately he's a little tuckered out from his first day at school.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: So he is his first day in middle school.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: First day of middle school, yes.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: A sixth grader now, so it was kind of a big day. He stayed up late pretty much every night of the cruise, like till midnight.
In fact, 1am one night because of a time change. And so, yeah, he's pretty tuckered. Asked him if he, if he was willing to come on and he just said, I'm too tired. And I told him. I'm not going to force Leo to come on.
So we will, we will pass on Nathan's reviews.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Nathan did not get to try Paolo. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I'm just going to answer that question right up front. He did not get to try Paolo, but we'll talk more about that in a second.
All right, well, so let's start with some sort of pre cruise things because we got a lot of questions about staying at the Pan Pacific. So a lot of people recommend staying at the Pan Pacific Hotel if you're going to Vancouver to take a DCL cruise. We did opt to stay at the Pan Pacific. We full disclosure, we have an AMEX card gets us some added benefits. So we booked the Pan Pacific Hotel through AMEX to take advantage of those benefits, one of which was a room upgrade. So we, we ended up being on the club level which was. Or having access to club level lounge. We weren't on the same level as having it, which was fantastic and made, made the experience all the better.
It is pricey to stay at the Pan Pacific and there's some other great options in downtown Vancouver. I've heard great things about the Fairmont, which is right across the street, literally across the street from the Pan Pacific.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Everything in Canada place area is like really close together and there is of course like a big like mall with lots of places like food places you can get to. There's a Rexall drugstore like right across the street, a McDonald's right there. So there's like a lot of stuff to access. If you are at any of the hotels that are kind of near Canada Place, which is basically the mall that's next to the port, so super easy for access. The great thing about the Pan Pacific is that they take your luggage for you. So we just call them the morning of the cruise you call them, I think they said by 11:00am Is that right, Brian?
[00:04:26] Speaker A: It was 10 or 11. It was 10 or 11.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we called them at about 9:00am and they sent a porter or not a porter. They sent a bellhop up with a cart to grab our bags and they of course recommend, they even tell you on the phone they recommend you tip like three to $5 a bag. Which I think is totally reasonable considering that most people sailing on a week long cruise have pretty large heavy bags. And so we gave them a tip.
We didn't see our bags again until they arrived to our stateroom on the missing one.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: They picked them up from our stateroom and they were by our stateroom within a half hour of us boarding the ship. So that might be a function of the room we stayed in, which we'll talk about again in a minute.
I was looking here. Rizzo, the rat is saying, I heard the Fairmount does too. I didn't see their bellman running across the street with luggage. It's totally possible. They do check with the hotel. If it's near the port, they may do that. The Pan Pacific literally sits on top of the port facility and the parking garage for the port and all of that sort of stuff. So, I mean, it was. We'll talk about the boarding experience in a second as well. But it was right there. So I'm like, by no means saying you have to stay at the Pan Pacific. You could take an Uber from any hotel in the Vancouver area and get down to the port and drop your luggage. It was very convenient. And, you know, as hotel stays go, the Pan Pacific's rooms looked very, very nice. I'd seen some things online suggesting some of the rooms were not nice.
We didn't experience that. Our room was fabulous, spacious, great.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: We had two rooms. They were both nice. We had two adjoining rooms, one for Brian and I and one for my mom and Nathan. And they were adjoining rooms.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Our friend Alan is confirming the Fairmont will do the luggage service. So. Great. So you have another option that does the luggage service.
So anyway, it was great. I don't want to spend too much time dwelling on the hotel.
I did want to highlight one thing that we did is when we pulled up to the Pan Pacific, they asked if we'd already paid for parking because there was some kind of deal they could work for us to just leave the car for some price. I prepaid for parking in Canada Place for the cruise, so I just went online and prepaid the day of the cruise, I basically checked my car out of.
We valeted our car. So valet. And then ended up. I picked the car up at 9, figuring I'll just go move it down under and then go have breakfast and then get on the ship. Uh, turns out Canada Place doesn't open to public parking until 10am I. I could have tested that. I decided not to. I just found, as anyone who listens to our show for any appreciable amount of time knows, I found a Starbucks and had a coffee and worked a crossword puzzle for. For 30, 45 minutes and then drove the car down and parked. Uh, when I got down into the garage, they had these. I don't know, they're not cones, but like portable stanchions that had people's names and license plates numbers on them with reserved spots.
I never managed to find my actual reserve spot, but I just parked in an open spot and I asked someone, they said it's no big deal, they'll just find your license plate somewhere else in the garage, you're registered with them and you'll be fine. And we were. And so that, that was seamless because I parked the car, got in an elevator, rode right back up to the Pan Pacific, went up, met Sam and Nathan. We hung out in the lounge for about an hour waiting for 11am to to do boarding. They had breakfast, I had my coffee. I was good. And so the parking in Canada Place was fantastic. I would recommend that.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. The other great thing about staying in near Canada Place is there are two free shuttles, one of which goes to Grouse Mountain and another of which goes to the Capilano Suspension Bridge park.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Which I want to talk about. Which I want to talk about both of those.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Wanted to say that both of those things are really nice so you don't have to take your car to them. Even though both of them are like 15, 20 minute drive to North Vancouver.
Not super far, but you can take a free shuttle there and back and then not to pay for any parking at either of places. So super convenient. We took the shuttle to Capilano Suspension Bridge our first full day in Vancouver. Our second full day in Vancouver because we went to an early morning breakfast with the bears excursion at Grouse Mountain.
We could not take the shuttle because we needed to get there earlier than the shuttle started running.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: And let's clarify. So our cruise embarked on Monday, August 25th. We drove up Saturday morning. It was a easy breezy drive up from Seattle. We have NEXUS passes that enable us to expedite our crossing into Canada. Those passes are available to anyone living on a state that borders Canada. So we have those passes. They count as our global entry passes and all of that sort of stuff too. So we use them to breeze through the NEXUS lane, as is typical. And crossing into Canada much faster than crossing back into the U.S. although our U.S. experience this time was also pretty easy breezy.
We got up there around, I don't know, around 11:30 in the morning. I think we had a little bit of a hiccup checking into the hotel because I had forgotten that one of the reservations was in Sam's name. I thought they were both in my name. And so we were a little freaked out because they're like, well, we only have one Room for you. And we're like, that is not going to work. But hopefully they fix that quickly.
Getting into the hotel parking, too, was a little bit of a challenge because the cruise ships were disembarking in port that day or three cruise ships were. And so they had things kind of coned off, but we navigate.
So we had the afternoon evening on Saturday. We had a full day on Sunday, and then we embarked on Monday. And so as Sam, why don't you talk about on. On Saturday afternoon, we booked the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So the Capilano Suspension Bridge park is basically a bunch of different trails and all of which basically have steps. I will say this is not a really. This is not an ADA accessible experience. This is something you're going to have to be not just like mobile without sort of wheelchair, but also be able to walk, like, up and down lots of steps and across a very, very large and long suspension bridge both ways in order to get the full experience.
It was a fantastic. It's kind of in the woods, in the forest. It's very. So it's kind of dark there, but they have these twinkle lights all over the place. It's very beautiful, very rustic. The suspension bridge is not for the faint of heart. It is very long and kind of a sc.
Because of course, it's moving as you're going across and there's lots of people moving.
And it goes both directions. So you are. You're saying to the right to go in one direction. You're saying to the right to go in the other direction.
And so. But it's very cool. I would highly recommend it. It is a beautiful place to visit, especially if you enjoy kind of walking around in the woods and seeing all of these different. There are lots of small suspension bridges, but it's a. It's a park, essentially what it is. There is a fee to per person. There's also a fee for parking. This is not a free park, but I would still highly recommend. And I would also recommend taking that free shuttle from Canada Place, which is what we did.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Just a couple of things in the chat I wanted to acknowledge. So Alan saying his tip is to stay at the Fairmont at the airport and then take the train in.
Would have gladly done that, but for the amount of luggage that we were hauling on the ship. I did not want to wrestle. I would not want to wrestle that on public transit, but.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: And we weren't flying, so.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah, we didn't fly. We drove. So that. Yeah. And then Alicia is asking how much it costs to park? Alicia, I just looked it up for you. It was around $450 for the week. So I'm not going to lie, it's pricey to park right there in the cruise terminal, especially as compared to parking at Port Canaveral for a week. But when we get to the end of the cruise, I will tell you why it was fantastic.
So it is expensive. I will acknowledge that.
Had a great time at the Capisano Capilano. I keep want to add an S. Capilano suspension bridge. Sam's mom was with us. We should highlight it was the two of us. Nathan, our 11 year old, soon to be 12 year old son and Sam's mom who is in her 70s.
And I will say going across the suspension bridge was not fun for her. She is mobile, she's able to walk, all that good stuff. But it was more, a little more challenging for her, challenging for me.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: And that's all she did. So she went across the suspension bridge. We all went across together then me and Brian and Nathan did a bunch of other bridges and walkways and kind of toured around. Whereas she kind of hung around and read some of the exhibits and stuff that were there and rested because she had to go back across the suspension bridge.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, there is no. If you go across, there's no easier way back. So you got to go across the bridge twice. It is lengthy and there are lots of people on it and it sways and it moves. So it's a really cool thing to see, really cool views, to have something to definitely do if you're, you know, at all active and interested in doing it.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So and, and Alan is noting it is $450 Canadian dollars, not 450American dollars. So fair enough. Alan, that means it may be about $300, not $450American. We always, we. We forget that the conversion is favorable for the. For us.
Very next day we went to Grouse Mountain.
We had again booked that in advance.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: We should, we should pa. One second, we should pause. C CT was asking about the restaurants we ate at in town. I should say the first night because our Amex card gave us 150, 150 Canadian dollar food and beverage credit, but whatever per room.
Yeah, you're right, it was $130, $130 per room.
We decided to eat in the hotel because we were kind of tired from the drive up and the day at Capilano. So we at the restaurant in the Pan Pacific was like a bar restaurant that was on the lobby. I Had an Sam's going.
I had an excellent butter chicken. I was impressed.
I was impressed.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Your dinner was the best of my mom. Liked her dinner as well. I thought mine wasn't great to be perfectly.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: But I was.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: I was use that again. But it was. It was free or included.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: I ordered the butter chicken with trepidation.
But I ordered it and then I got it. I was like of butter chickens I've had this is easily probably in the top three. So it was. It was pretty good. All right. So yes, next day we took the free shuttle up to Grouse Mountain.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: No, we didn't take the shuttle because we had early.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: So we had booked. So Grouse Mountain has a. An entry fee that includes a bunch of the activities and then it has some add on things that you can do. One of the add on things that is available is called breakfast with the bears. Let me be clear. You're not eating with the bears or feeding the bears. But they have two rescue grizzly bears on site, both of which are about 25 years old. They were each rescued when they were cubs, both of whom mothers died or disappeared.
And they are still in. They are human habituated. They are not domesticated bears. So they are behind a barrier and they actually have several acres that they can roam and they of course hibernate. So they are still wild bears. But we got to go early.
We got to do like a special viewing of the bears and a talk with one of the naturalists or one of the park rangers who told us all about grizzly bears and about bears in the wild and bears of the Pacific Northwest including of course Canada and Alaska and Washington. And so it was super interesting. And then after that we had breakfast, a little breakfast buffet in a yurt. And then we got to go around the rest of the property. Brian and Nathan did a zipline excursion. That was an add on.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And I want to give a pro tip on this. So yeah, Nathan and I did ziplining. We also had signed up to do the ropes obstacle course that they have up there.
And my pro tip is don't sign up for both. That was a terrible, terrible mistake. The zip lining was much more strenuous than anything I had experienced in the Caribbean. When we. Where we've gone ziplining before, we've done both like a one long steep zip line. I think in St. Thomas maybe. Yeah, St. Thomas. I think it was St. Martin. St. Martin. And then we also did a multi, a multi zip line tree forest canopy tour in what was. Yeah, St Kitts Saint Kitts. Okay. And. And both of those were like, you know, the one is just point to point, you wrote a tram up, you walked around a boardwalk, you rode down, you were done. The other one was, you know, ride the canopy from basically platform to platform to platform, minimal walking, and it's all downhill. They said. There was. This was.
We did a beginner zip line just to test everything out. Then we did a steeper, longer zip line that went down. Then we did one more across the water.
We had to carry the trolleys that go onto the zip line, and they probably weighed 10 to 15 pounds each. So Nathan's lugging his trolley. I'm lugging my trolley. At the third zip line, they have us drop the trolley off, and we have to walk uphill to then get on a ski lift that takes us to the very top of the mountain.
And we ziplined across. But then I had to hike up a steep, steep, steep grade to get to the last zip line that would take us back across. There was a lot more hiking in this. I was carrying both of our trolleys at that point because Nathan was really tired. So at time, all was said and done, he was not interested in doing the rose obstacle course. I was not interested in doing it. And we ended up just kind of losing the amount that we paid for it. And neither of those experiences was. I think it was about 125 to 130 Canadian dollars a piece to do, you know, each experience. And so we ended up losing that because I wasn't going to drag him on a miserable experience. So my pro tip is, if you're going to do one, do one unless you're, like, super athletic and ready to go.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: So, anyway, the other part of this was it was a very sunny day, and you can probably tell my nose is kind of red. And actually, it was worse during the cruise because Glacier Day really did a number. But even at Grouse Mountain, it was full all day, not much shade. It was lovely. We got to. I got to hear an owl talk. There was another bird of prey talk. I got to watch some movies about different, you know, wildlife in British Columbia.
Really great place to visit. Highly recommend. There's also, like, a ski lift that will take you up to the very top to basically where Nathan and Brian were, where you can get some great views. We got some great views just going up the funicula because in order to get to Grouse Mountain, actually when you. You park or you get off the shutt, and then you take a funicular up to Grouse Mountain and even just from that funicular or just from that location, you get fantastic views. But there's even a chairlift that's basically a ski lift that you can go even higher up to get even better views. So I would say generally speaking, it's a fantastic place to visit. Highly recommend for a pre cruise or post cruise excursion out of Vancouver. Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: All right, I want to talk quickly about embarkation day and what that experience is like. This is not a Disney controlled port. This is a, you know, just like going out of San Diego or something like that. There are generally multiple ships in port on embarkation day. So we had three or four import. Viking was there.
I think Princess might have been there. Anyway, we had multiple ships too.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: I think it was four. Yeah.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: So it was nice that the luggage was taken.
We just boarded with like backpacks. Basically we went down to street level. You walk outside, you go into the port, you check in with Disney. Since we were sailing concierge this trip, for those of you don't know, we sailed concierge. Our check in was fairly well expedited. Some of the first people to get checked in, you then go around, you go through, you exit, you actually exit back out of the port onto the pier, walk a little bit down and then take some an escalator down to security and actually you go through U.S. customs at that point because you're getting ready to go to Alaska. So we went through security, went through customs. It was all bio facial recognition, not customs. I say border patrol, basically cbp. We went through facial recognition like you would when you disembarked the ship. And then we went to the waiting area and we were in the waiting area for five minutes. They called family of the day and then they had concierge. They did back to back and then they had concierge board.
So all told, it was a very well run, well oiled machine. Sam's mom even comments at how well run it was to embark. I have not experienced anything like that at a non Disney owned terminal. In some ways it was even better than some of the Disney owned boarding processes that we've been through. So really easy, really simple. We were on the ship, probably from elevator down to the lobby to the ship. I'd say all told, maybe 30 minutes door to door.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: So yeah, yeah, absolutely. Super smooth experience. I think part of that is also we sailed towards the end of this Alaska season. Of course there's a couple more cruises that are happening, but still towards the end of the season. And so they Are used to having Disney and other ships there every single day.
Every day. We were at the Pan Pacific. So Saturday, Sunday and Monday there were three or more ships in port. I think on Saturday I think there were three or four. On Sunday I believe there were three and then on Monday there were four. So yeah, they are a well oiled machine. They are used to these, these cruising cruises going out of those ports.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: So we boarded, we did do the concierge lunch. We won't go through all the details of that. I did want to say our room was ready bang on at 12:30. We went under the rope.
For those not that know, we stayed in the Roy O. Disney suite on board the wonder for this cruise. It it I was going into the cruise, I said it's one and done. Now it's like one in an excuse in my bank account can accommodate it. It was.
I want to spend a minute on the suite. It was unbelievable, this room.
We had seen it before but I don't think I fully understood the size and spaciousness of this room until we got into it. So you walk in the front door, you walk down a hallway. To your right is a little, you know, toilet and sink powder room.
To the left is a door into the master bedroom. There was a walk in closet. There was a king size bed which is so nice to have on a cruise, especially when you sleep in one at home. There was a bathroom with two sinks, a shower, a toilet, a huge. So I mean Sam got in the soaking tub and I was like, like two other people could fit in there.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: And so there's also a little kitchen. If you, as you're going down the hall there's a little kitchen area, the kitchenette, it doesn't have any, you can't cook in there but it's got a wine fridge and a regular fridge. It has a sink in there. It has cabinets with, you know, bowls and stuff if you wanted to have cereal. Then you walk down the hall.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: It has the all important coffee maker that will make you your lattes and espressos in the morning. It's a. What was the brand?
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Is it Lovato or was it. No, no, Nespresso.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Nespresso. It was an espresso coffee maker. They had every pod imaginable there for you to choose from with a menu to explain them all. They had a tea kettle right there.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: If you want wine in the wine fridge.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Yes. And a price list.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yes, a price list because they're not free but.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: And Mickey bars in the freezer.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Right. And so then the regular fridge had all of the drinks that we had requested plus Mickey bars stocked in the freezer bottom we also had a beautiful cheese tray that was a cheese and cracker tray that was there for us, some fruit that was there and then some champagne and stuff that we had pre ordered as well as a lovely champagne gift from our wonderful travel advisor Kayleigh. Thank you Kayle. It was very at my path.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Unwinding at mypath.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Unwinding.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: So we walk in past the kitchen and you then find yourself in basically a spacious living room with a TV that retracts and comes up from a kind of hutch thing.
The entire suite is bordered by balcony so that you could step out to the balcony from the library room which is, I'm giving air quotes because it didn't actually have like books or anything in it. But it's basically a room that is kind of off the master bedroom and also off of the living room that has a Murphy bed and that's where Nathan slept. It was really nice. It had doors like two sets of like not French door, sliding doors, double sliding doors so he could have privacy in there. And that's actually where the door was to the balcony. So there's only one door to the balcony. There wasn't doors in every room but there were windows across all of the rooms to the balcony other than the master because the master is the only bedroom that did not or the only, I should say the master. And the second bedroom did not border the balcony. It was the living room and the dining room and the library that bordered the.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: And a dining table that seats, seats, seat six. They had the Palo menus there. So one of the benefits of the Roy suite is you can order Palo into the room. Brunch or dinner.
Both menus were there. And then we had a cabin behind the dining room that has two kind of twin size beds down below two twin bunks that drop down from the ceiling. It has a small walk in closet and then it has its own bathroom with sort of a standard DCL bathroom with sink, toilet, shower.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: But it's bigger, it's a toilet, a shower, bath combination but it's definitely bigger than a standard bathroom. So we had two and a half bathrooms basically three bedrooms, a dining room, a living room and a kitchenette.
Humongous. It's. It has more bathrooms than we have in our own house. So that was really lovely for the question.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: The chat was seriously considering this room today as my in laws are joining us but seems only one king and the other beds are Twin. That is, that is true. In the second bedroom, the, the bunk or the, the bed that drops down in the library is probably about a full. Maybe, maybe a queen, but probably a full. But yeah, it's. The room sleeps up to seven. We got that question a lot.
The room does sleep up to seven.
So it.
Fabulous room. And I will say the best benefit of it was if we needed something or we wanted something, we picked up the phone and they like practically came running like, how can we help you? Right. And so Sam loves the tea sandwiches. So a couple days we said, could you just bring some tea sandwiches down so we can just enjoy them in the suite? No problem. No problem.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: We had hot breakfast because if you're, if you're staying in a one bedroom suite or higher, you can order hot breakfast your room. You can also order any of the food from the dining room to your room for dinner. So we did hot breakfast in our room almost every day other than Paulo and you can't do it on disembarkation day. So Paulo. We had Paulo brunch one day and we had disembarkation day but every other day we ordered hot breakfast to the room. We also one night decided to skip main dining and ordered dinner into our room and not room service menu. We ordered off of the main dining.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Menu and actually ordered off of multiple, multiple main dining menus.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: The nice thing about that is we, because we had this big dining room, we, it wasn't like we were sitting and eating on the couch. We were sitting and eating at a nice table. So anyway, we'll beyond that. The concierge experience was lovely for this, for this cruise because we could get basically any of the excursions we wanted because we had first dibs at them. We could, we have the benefit of using the concierge lounge. You have drinks included from 5pm to 10pm But I want to say sailing concierge on line is not necessary.
We haven't done it for now, now a while.
We don't have any concierge bookings on tap for the next year and a half that we have booked, you know, many sailings for.
So it's certainly not a necessary thing. It was kind of one of those really nice things to do. And I want to say we got to celebrate because I'm not going to say what it was, but Brian got a promotion at work and we got to celebrate that promotion at work. And so that was super exciting as well.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Two other things I just wanted to cover.
One is Josh was asking about the balcony. The balcony extends the full length of the room. It's like four balconies put together. There were four really comfy chairs out there. The non. They're non standard balcony. They were cushioned and there was a table.
I think the deck plan actually shows it having like two lounge seats that those were not present, which was fine. We use that space to actually set up a digital telescope that I had so we could kind of scan the coastline for wildlife and things like that.
Very comfortable balcony. But the best part was open those drapes and those shades and you're just staring at the Alaska scenery the entire time.
So that was great.
Someone asked about whether the food was hot when it gets delivered.
Everything was impeccable in that suite. Everything. Breakfast was hot, main dining, food was hot. One of the reasons. Seen a lot of comments about, you know, ordering Palo and one of the reasons we did and is we had heard the Palo experience is not as great in the suite itself from a couple people just because there is some, you know, maybe the food isn't as fresh or doesn't seem as fresh, and it's also served kind of all at once.
So, you know, stuff isn't the same. The other reason we didn't is because we had. We had one Palo dinner for the two of us, and we really kind of wanted to go experience the restaurant and the service team because we think that really makes the experience.
And then we had one brunch, the three of us. And Sam's mom's never been to Palo before. We wanted her to experience the restaurant. We could have ordered another night of Palo, but let me just be perfectly honest. We were stuffed to the gills with food that it was like I couldn't even. There were nights I was like, I can't even eat dinner. So. So we didn't do it. It is a benefit and we've heard some good reviews, some okay reviews of it from the suite, but it is a benefit that you can do. We just. We. That was one that we didn't take advantage of.
All right, let's move on. We're going to move on to focus on our port experiences. Really. There's. There's three ports, but there's four days that we're going to talk about. So we're start up top with Glacier Day.
So on Glacier Day, the Disney Wonder kind of your. Your time here varies. So they have to get enter the fjord from the local authorities. They have to take a pilot on who navigates the fjord. For the Disney crew and for the Wonder I don't know how close the ship ended up getting.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: We were pretty close.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: We were five miles out from the glacier when we did our glacier day boat experience.
But I think the ship got closer than that. I think that ship probably got within a couple, three miles of the glacier face itself. And when you're on the ship, ship, that glacier looks huge from the ship. Even when you're five miles out, you're like, this thing is massive.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Yeah, they got closer on our sailing. They got closer than they had gotten all season as we got to go to the Dawes Glacier. So we actually entered, believe it was the Endicott Arm. We entered at about noon or just after. And then between like 1 and 2pm we were allowed to have the kind of, one of the experts on board kind of come over the speakers and talk to us about the fjord that we were entering. Um, it was, we got to go up to the Dawes Glacier as Brian mentioned. Um, and so the boat we were on, we booked one of the glacier excursions which it started at 3:15. I think we were on that boat by, I don't know, 3:30, 3, 45. That was a couple hour excursion.
And we got a quarter mile away from the glacier. I think the ship might have gotten within a couple of miles. They got, like I said, they got pretty close after we had sort of left and there was another glacier excursion before us, an earlier one in the day that essentially got picked up when we were entering the bar basically of the Endicott Arm. And so they went off and went ahead of the boat essentially. And so they got close earlier in the day. We got close later in the day, I would say the glacier excursion, the boat was a really wonderful experience. It's a little bit long for Nathan. He was a little bit bored by the end of it, but it was, I think, a great experience. I don't think it's a necessary because you definitely can see the glacier well from the, from the ship. But if you want to get those really closer shots and get closer, I'm going to. It's wonderful.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: It's. It's. Well, I'm going to slightly disagree here. One thing I wanted to call out first because we were in concierge. We also got a very special experience on glacier day. We were taken through the crew area and into basically the captain's viewing deck, which is right below the bridge. And it's an open deck and they had, you know, hot cocoa and blankets and all this stuff to keep us warm. We were standing at the front of the ship as it approached the glacier and just had an amazing view of this glacier. And at the end of the experience, some special friends joined us. Mickey and Minnie came out. And so we got to take pictures with both Mickey and Minnie together and their special Alaska cruise outfits. That is a concierge benefit. And I kind of want to pause for a second. I know, yeah, there's. Sam's going to show you what they kind of look like. That's what. That's what they look like. And so we got this nice pictures of family. I. I know I have been very vocal about the price of concierge with Disney. And. And look, I'm gonna be frank and say this didn't change my mind about it. What it did change my mind about is there may be cruises where that premium holds more value. And I absolutely think. Think Alaska is one of them. For some of the special experiences that we were able to get and some.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Of the concierge, not just to answer.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: Alicia's question, and for the experiences we got to have, the special experiences we got to have, and for the excursions that we were able to book that even some Pearl folks would not have had the opportunity to book. The glacier boat that we went on, Pearl probably was able to book that. There were enough slots there. It was not exclusively concierge, but it was heavily concierge, I think. I agree with Sam. It's not necessary.
But it really opened my eyes to, like, the size and magnitude of this glacier that we were sitting in front of. Like I said, it looked big on the ship. From five miles out, when you're sitting in front of it, it looks like the white wall from Game of Thrones. I mean, you could see every nook and cranny of it. The ice cave.
Get a pair of binoculars out, you could just explore that glacier. I had a new appreciation for what a glacier really was. After getting within a quarter of a mile of one, it was unbelievable.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: The other thing I'll say to piggyback on this is about the character experience, right? We. It was very quick. There was no autographs or anything like that.
It was very quick. Just a picture with the two characters. But the lines for Mickey and Minnie that morning, if you wanted to wait on deck and take and wait for a picture with them, you're gonna be. You might not get. Be able to get both of them because they were only, I think, a half hour apart. You were gonna wait. And I know this because we waited for Donald and Daisy a little later in the morning. But they were, you know, a good hour waiting before the line even opened up. And then unless you were at the very front of the line another, you know, 20 minutes before you actually got your picture taken with the character.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Did you want.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: You only got to take with one. One character at a time. And again, no signatures when. If you wanted to autographs and stuff, you could get them on different days, just not on glacier day.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And you want the photos on glacier day because you have the back. They're up on deck, and you get the backdrop of the Alaska scenery behind them. The characters are out in their outfits at other times during the cruise, but they were generally indoors, like outside the theater or something like that. And it's just. It is. It is so stunning to have the photo with the backdrop. It's really hard to get them all on that day just because of how long the lines are and how long it takes to wait. So it was really special for us to not have to go wait in Mickey and Minnie line and get them both together, which you can't do at all on the cruise unless you're in concierge and have that experience.
So, anyway, it made it special. The glacier boat. I tend to agree with Nathan. I love the experience of going up to see the glacier. After that, I would have been more than perfectly happy to have been dropped back on the wonder for the day. The rest of the.
What happens then is the boat takes you from the glacier and starts to meander down some of the other fjords, and they try to spot wildlife, but we didn't really see any. And what they need is for the boat.
Yeah. What they do then is they take you back out to where the boat entered and they wait for the boat to come.
I thought this was going to be a slow lumbering that. I have a new appreciation for how fast the Disney Wonder can move when she wants to move. Because she came sailing up and I was like, a minute later, there she is. We're getting on board. So.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: So fabulous, fabulous day. I really enjoyed the day. It could have been shorter, and I would have been fine.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: There was a little bit of glacier. We have a question about glacier calving. We did see some. We didn't see any big chunks, but we did see some smaller chunks fall off. So we definitely got to see a little bit of that.
Other things I just want to mention real quick about the characters.
Lots of people bound to dress, meaning dressing like the characters. You absolutely can do that, but you're probably not going to be able to go in between and change outfits if you want to get as many characters as possible.
Goofy has two Alaska outfits. On Glacier Day, he is wearing his ski outfit only. And then on Ketchikan Day, he wears his lumberjack outfit. So the days that you will see, at least on the itinerary, we. We were on the days that they were in their Alaska outfits were Glacier Day and Keshakan Day. The other days, they were in different outfits or, you know, regular cruise line outfits. They're formal outfits, that sort of thing. So if you want those pictures in those outfits, you are going to have to see them on one of those two days. And if you want to see Goofy in both outfits, you're going to have to wait in line for him. For both days. We did not get a goofy picture. I was able to get some video of him, but I did not get any pictures with him.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: So we got a question earlier about accessibility of some of this stuff. And then CT is asking about, did your mom go? So Sam's mom did go on the glacier boat with us. It was a. You know, as a smooth, it would be like a tender. I mean, it was. It was close to a tender.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: If you can transfer to a tender, you can transfer.
It is.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: It is not accessible for those who are not mobile, who can't transfer from a wheelchair or something like that. And then once you're on the small boat, you'd be pretty much limited to the bottom deck, even if. I'm not even sure that. I'm not even sure that they let, like, wheelchairs on that boat, to be perfectly honest. But most of it was small. There was a first floor deck completely enclosed. Upstairs was partially enclosed in the front and then open in the back. And then. Then when the boat was stopped in front of the glacier, they opened up a third deck. That was the highest deck, and it was completely open on top. And those are all stairs. There was all stairs. So. So. And I'll make sure to mention the accessibility of these other port adventures. We did, too. So. All right, that's Glacier Day.
Next up, we have. Skagway was our first port of call. Skagway is a.
It's a small, ish town.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: It's the furthest north we went. So basically we went all the way up to Skagway, and then we came back down to Juneau and Ketchikan and then back to Vancouver. Just to give you a frame of reference.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. And so we stopped in Skagway on this day. We had booked the White Pass railway and Gold Panning adventure. And so we got off the ship, we wandered around. So one of the nice things about Alaska, like some other. Other ports we've been to, the ship was in most of these ports for a hefty amount of. Of time, with kind of one exception that we'll. We'll talk about. But in Skagway, we got in in the morning, and our port adventure was not until the aft. Well, like 11 o' clock in the morning, I think was when our port adventure started.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Maybe it was 12:15.
Just to give the exact names, if people are interested, it was called White Pass Railway and Trail Camp. That was the one we were on. And it was a 5 hour and 15 minutes according to the. According to the ask.
I screenshot it just in case people need it.
Sorry, go ahead, Brian.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And so we got off the boat in the morning and the train was right there at the. I mean, literally right there. There's a picture. I'm sorry, we don't have. I want to say this. I'm sorry we don't have photos for tonight. We got back yesterday, we unpacked. We all had to get to work in school today for the first time. So I did not get a chance to put together a PowerPoint. That said, we have a lot of stuff over on our Instagram stories. Sam, we should see if we can save the Alaska story so people can go back and see them after the show.
And we have a ton of footage from each excursion. We didn't cover the whole cruise. We just really tried to cover the excursions. And so I'm going to be putting those into videos and reels over the course of the next week to 10 days, maybe two weeks, and posting those over on Instagram so you can see kind of what the excursions were. Were like. So those will be coming as well.
We got off in the morning and decided to wander around town, buy some souvenirs. The train was sitting right there. We have this great photo of the wonder looking back at the ship. The wonder sitting there parked in the train and the steam coming off of it. Like, literally, right. Looks like it's right next to the ship. When we got off for the excursion, bizarrely, they were like, okay, everyone get on this bus. And we're like, I thought we were going to the railroad. It's like, right.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Right there, there.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: And they're like, well, we have. Yeah, but we didn't board there. We boarded at the terminal. That was like, literally, it was across town five minutes. So they got us all on a bus.
Took us over to the train station.
We were. Each bus was assigned a car, which was nice because then it didn't feel like, well, our buses are late or we're in the back of the bus so we're not going to get good seats. Each bus was. Or each bus was assigned a train car. So we got on, we found some seats. We were first off the bus and so we got some nice seats right in the middle of the carriage, board the carriage and then they take off. And it's about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minute train ride up the mountain.
Lots of announcements and sightseeing tips along the way. They'd always tell you well in advance, is coming up on the right, this is coming up on the left. So everyone get their cameras ready. They did have the platforms on either end of the car. Open air platforms open. So you could walk out and stand on the platform and, you know, get the fresh air and see the scenery. That way people would kind of trade places and stuff. You were not allowed to move between cars. You could stay within the confines of your car.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: And there was a bathroom in each car, which was a nice benefit. I will say one thing about going out on the platform, when you went on the platform, that train is really moving.
And so unless you have like a GoPro or something that has like an attachment to your wrist, I would say risky to have your phone out filming, right? So unless. So if you have something that attaches your phone to your wrist, that is what I would recommend for the train. If you'd like to go outside, if you take shots from sitting in the train, you're going to get some reflection, of course, off of the window. We had. Somebody's asking in the chat about our weather.
We had. I cannot even tell you the warmest, sunniest weather I have ever heard of in my entire life. In Alaska, we had not a single drop of rain our entire cruise.
Not a single cloud in the sky. We had some fog one morning, I think the first morning we were at sea. So we heard the fog horn a little bit that early in the morning until the fog burned off for the day. But basically we had nothing but sunny skies and dry air. It was the most gorgeous. And like I said, I got sunburned because of it really badly. In fact, I'm still peeling.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Our experience is apparently ab normal.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: This is not normal.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: Every port we rolled into, like I, I checked the weather the week before and it was all showing like cloudy, drizzly rain. So I was prepared for that. We rolled into every port. Sunshine, blue sky, not a cloud in sight. This will become more important in Juneau when we get there in a second. So.
So we rode the train up the mountain. A lot of the White Pass railway excursions will then kind of turn around and take you back down the mountain. We got up. We got up to the top of the mountain, got off the train and I don't even remember the name of the town.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Fraser, British Columbia, Canada.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Fraser, B.C. which is really just exists. It's homes for the. The Canadian border officials who staff the border up there. The Americans all live down in Skagway. The Canadians live up there. Apparently it's like two hours to Costco for them.
And in the winter it's brutal. It's. The vegetation is all bare on one side because of how whipping the winds get. It was a little windy up there for us too, but. Yeah. Yeah. So we get off. There's nothing to do there other than board the tour bus for us that's going to take us back down the mountain to Liarsville, which is the.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: We got to stop at the big sign that said welcome to Alaska. It was really cool. So we got a really nice picture in front of us.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: We did have to go through border at the US but basically they don't check passports there. They. The bus driver just basically vouches for everybody and they let you roll in because there's really. There's no one else getting on these buses. There's no. Yeah. So the bus is coming through, are all picking people up from the train and everyone on the train came off of the cruise ship and is coming up. So.
So we, we drove back down. Down. There was a question about wildlife. I will say one thing that was really interesting was I saw very little wildlife on the train.
Nothing on the bus ride down. We saw very. We saw none on the boat excursion after the glacier, that was part of why they took us around to the other fjords, was to see if we could spot bears in the wild or bald eagles.
Very. No bears.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: We saw a couple of bald eagles. Oh, but we forgot to mention the whales. Oh. Glacier day before we even got into Endicott Arm, which normally you might see whales near the bar for Endicott Arm, but it was hours earlier. I want to say around 10 o' clock in the morning, 9 o' clock in the morning, we're out on our balcony and we just kept seeing whale after whale after whale. Now mostly we just see the blowhole spurt, right. But then occasionally we'd see like one of the dorsal fins and then occasionally we'd see a tail. Occasionally. I got one video of one of the whales kind of doing that jumping thing out of the water and so.
Really? Yeah, we got breaching. Yeah, we got some really great whale watching from the ship. Not on a whale watching excursion, but yeah, fantastic even. But we didn't on, on the glacier excursion. We didn't on the train. Other save for a couple of bald eagles that we saw.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Accessibility for the train we have, it is not, not accessible. They. They ask a car. There's. Yes, but they ask a ton of questions about your ability to transfer and to go upstairs. So like if there is an accessible car, it's limited and they're really expecting to be able to get up and climb the stairs to the train and walk through the. The car to get to your seat. The aisle is not wide enough for a wheelchair.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a separate excursion. You have to book it. There is a specific, I believe, accessible White Pass railway excursion. And I believe it's just the one. And so you have to book that one.
The one booked was. Is not an accessible one. If you do have somebody who uses a wheelchair some of the time but is able to get up and down stairs because it's not a lot of walking or anything because you're sitting on the train, you're sitting on a bus. Right. It's. If you have somebody like that, they could certainly do it. But yeah.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Yep. Vanessa. So if you need the accessibility, you need to book that in advance.
And we heard from folks, Disney asks a lot of questions around this to make sure that you're going to be able to do. Do the excursion. So, okay, so we boarded the bus, we drove back down the mountain and just like right outside of Skagway there's a, there's a gold mining camp called Liarsville. That's the name of it. They have the famous Liarsville players. Anyway, you roll into this place. We put a video up on Instagram. At one point, like a guy borders, boards the bus and just starts hooting. It gives you a yeehaw and starts screaming and yelling. And it's, it's, it's actors who have come on, they're playing the parts of gold panners and drunkards and you know, and they're telling ladies evening.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: They tell you the story of the gold rush in Alaska. Because that's obviously how all of these towns, they would not exist if not for the gold rush. And so it's the kind of cute, hokey little show they put on for maybe 30 minutes. Then they take you over to these troughs where you do gold panning. Each person is handed a pan.
Spoiler alert. They make sure that every pan has some flakes in it.
So you will, in fact, if you do the gold panning, as they tell you, you will, in fact strike gold, and they give you a little plastic baggie to put your gold in. So I have to say, Nathan thought the train was cool, but it was a little too long for him.
But he. This. He actually put as his. He says this is his favorite excursion because he loved the gold panning part so much.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: I think he loved all of these. I think he loved them all equally, was kind of what he was trying to say.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he loved them all, but he loves gems and things like that, and so, like, rocks, you know, and. And all that kind of stuff. And so he loved the gold panning. He thought that was so cool. And he loved being able to leave with some gold. That was like, a highlight for him.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: Yep. And after that, we boarded the bus, and it basically took us back to. It would either drop you off in town or take you back to the ship. We actually got off in town and walked around a bit. We did learn something new this cruise. I just. We hadn't fully understood, like, Nathan wanted to go back to the ship. And so the first in Skagway, we took him back on, and then I think we. Or no, it was Juno.
I forget which one. Anyway, one of the ports we took him on and then. And then walked back off ourselves, like, almost immediately, which was kind of a pain. And we learned he can actually reboard the ship on his own. It's only exiting the ship that one of us needs to be with him. I instinctually kind of knew that, but we were nervous to test it out. But he did get back on in one of the ports on. On his own so we could wander around the town. So that was. That was a nice option to have.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: He was not interested in doing any of the shopping that we wanted to. But both of. For that day, we had. We had plenty of time to still go. We. You know, our ship wasn't leaving port until, I think, 4:45 or, sorry, 6:45. And so we had plenty of time to go and walk around the port. And it's this cute little town. I will have to say, I think Skagway was my favorite of the towns that we visited of the three, because it was just, like, so adorably, adorably adorable. So cute. Loved it.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And so I just want to highlight Skagway is like a one street town, like for the tourists. So it's, you know, all of these ports, all of these ports were chocked full of jewelry stores. The bus driver made a, made a joke about like, and here's the, you know, here on this corner is a jewelry store followed by a jewelry store followed by a jewelry store, you know. And so it, it had that kind of Caribbean feel. But then there were, you could find the spots that were local artists. Alaska made goods. Ask if you want something made in Alaska. Ask. I learned that lesson because I was going to buy a little totem pole that looks hand carved and hand painted. It was made in Indonesia. And so I ended up going to another store and sort of saying like, do you have some that are made locally? And they did and I bought one of those. They're much more expensive than the other stuff. But if you want something local, ask and make sure you get confirmation that it is made locally.
But otherwise it's a kind of a one street town. If you go off the side streets, there's some coffee shops and restaurants and bars kind of off the side streets. But if you go one full street over, you're basically. And like there's a gas station and some apartment buildings and things like that. So Gagway, very small.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Rizzo the rat. We're going to get to your question on wildlife after we hit catch a can. So don't worry, we'll, we'll get there.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: Are you listening to our show because you want to make the most out of your next vacation. Great news. The fabulous team over at My Path Unwinding Travel can help guide you so you don't miss a thing. Their team of professional travel advisors are caring, knowledgeable and experienced. It's why we use them to book our own travel. My Path Unwinding Travel is an authorized Disney vacation planner, which means they are recognized by Disney for their expertise and service. They have sailed on all the Disney ships, including in concierge, visited the theme parks, Adventured with Disney, Relaxed at Alani, and so much more. Whether it's a Disney cruise, a theme park vacation, or adventures by Disney, or if you are looking to expand beyond the mouse, My Path Unwinding Travel will elevate your next vacation planning experience. Even if you have already booked, reach out for a complimentary consultation to make your vacation even more magical. Ready to talk to the experts? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. Thanks, my path unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
All right, so next. Next port after Skagway was just Juneau. And in Juneau, we booked a very special and very expensive port excursion. We booked a helicopter out to the Norris Glacier with a sled dog experience.
And I will not pretend this is not something that you have to do to make your cruise.
We did it because we had done a helicopter tour in Norway that we absolutely adored and so decided to do the same kind of experience on this cruise. It was roughly, call it 900 a person to do this excursion. The only excursion that beats it was a private airplane tour that we did not do.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And this one, only the three of us did. So this was called Dog Sled Adventure by Helicopter. And there are two different ones that look very similar. One goes to the Mendenhall Glacier, one goes to the Norris Glacier. We booked the one that went to the Norris Glacier. And like the three of us meeting myself, Brian and Nathan, my mom was not wanting to do helicopter. She could have done it. She is mobile enough to do it, but I think it was the right call for her.
She does not. The idea of getting into a helicopter did not sound appealing to her.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: And I want to flag a couple things. We did not book Menden hall because there were some concerns about staffing when we were doing our. Our. Our port adventure booking. And so Menden hall is. Was open and was fine, but we booked Norris because it wasn't dependent on the staffing. The camp up there is manned by a private company. And so we booked the Norris Glacier for that reason.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: We.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: The. The experience is you get off the ship, they take in a little bus. I mean, the whole excursion was what, maybe like 14 people? 14 people. And they do it a couple times a day.
This excursion.
This excursion does not run this. This season. It ran less than half of the time because of weather.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: I think less than 30% this season, actually.
[00:54:49] Speaker A: They said whatever the number was, your chances of doing it are less than your chances of it getting canceled. And the bus driver we had said it's not unusual. They drive out there and they find out it's canceled, and then he's got a busload of people he's hauling back to the ship who couldn't even do the excursion. So it is. It is expensive.
You know, you can't book two excursions with Disney, so you won't have a backup plan.
And they don't find out really until the day of. Sometimes the moment of the weather changes so fast and so drastically. They actually told us a story of a group that went up to the glacier. Glacier got trapped on the glacier for four hours while weather rolled through. And then they were able to get a helicopter up to get them off. They were actually trying to figure out if they had enough bunks up there for people to sleep overnight if they needed to. And so basically you go to the helicopter place, they give you the safety briefings, get you all decked out, they give you some booties to put over your shoes for the snow walking, get you in the helicopter, they take you up the glacier. It's a 20 minute ride up and they kind of meander around to show you a bunch of other glaciers in the area, try and spot some wildlife. Again, we definitely not see any, but they fly you over several different glaciers and they kind of bring you down and set you down on the Norris Glacier at a dog sled camp that's up there.
It's a no trace camp. So everything is hauled up at the beginning of the season, including all the dogs. I have this image in my mind of all the dogs sitting in the helicopter with a little seat belt on, you know, to ride the glacier. It's not how they do it, but, but they haul everything up there and at the end of the season they tear it all down, bring all the dogs down, everybody comes down and they, they, you know, groom the glacier so it looks like they were never ever there.
We landed at the glacier, we were met by some guides who gave us.
[00:56:24] Speaker B: A little, let's tell them. Also the helicopter went back to bring more people. So the helicopter is basically doing back and forth and when they come to pick you up, they are bringing the next group of people. Yeah, so they're doing like seven trips for a day or seven groups a day.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: This is a quick excursion. So like you get 20 minutes up in the helicopter, probably about 45 minutes on the ground with the dogs, and then you're back in the helicopter and they take you back, back in a 10 minute direct flight back to the airport. So there was no, there was no flying over the cruise ship or sightseeing on the, on the way back on the glacier itself, we met some guides who then assigned us each to a musher. The mushers up there all own, own all the dogs. They're up there for training and exercise and all that sort of stuff. So they bring their own dogs up. The musher we had owned like 34 dogs 34 dogs. The dogs are all out there and they have their dog kennels and houses and they're having a.
All huskies. And then they. They put you on a tandem dog sled. So it's actually a dog sled attached to the dogs and then another attached to a rope to another sled. So there's four seats and then two driver positions. The musher takes the forward driver position so he can guide the dogs. Nathan sat right up front in the beginning. Sam was sitting in the back and I was standing in the other sort of driver position, having absolutely no role in steering where we were going.
And we basically did like a quick, like 1 1/2 mile loop, I think is what they said. We went out around and then back to the camp, stopped a couple times along the way to let the dogs rest and also swap positions and swap seats and let the dogs rest and get some water. They just eat the snow.
We got back to the camp, we all got off. And he said, you're welcome to go up and down the line and pet any of the dogs. Are all. They're all friendly. Not all of the crews are like that. Some of the dogs don't love strangers.
And so they, they told us to listen very carefully to the instructions of the musher over which dogs you can pet and which dogs you can't. And if any dog starts to react negatively, just walk away.
They were all, all of our dogs. We walked up and down the line just petting the dogs. They loved it.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Louie was our musher. And all of Louie's dogs are super friendly. You don't even have to, like, let them smell you first. He's like, they don't even know what that is. He's like. Because they get sort of manhandled. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just part of the way that they are interacted with every day because they're working dogs, right? But you can just go right up to them and start petting them and loving on them. They're all laying down on the snow to cool their bodies off.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: We thought they were sleeping, they were.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: Cooling off their body temperature. But these dogs, I mean, these dogs are beautiful. They, like. Brian said they were all really friendly. Some of them were real snuggly. Some of them were like, I just want to run, like. And they like, I don't want to rest, I want to run more. And so you could tell they were like. They start like making noises and kind of, you know, it was just really a really Amazing, amazing thing to.
[00:59:13] Speaker A: 2. Two things to note. One is when they tell you to go to the bathroom at the helicopter port.
Go to the bathroom. There is no bathroom up on the glacier. Like, they. They go out and they just, you know, they pee in the snow, whatever, and then they.
[00:59:25] Speaker B: They have to pocket. They poop in a bucket.
[00:59:28] Speaker A: They pee in the snow because they leave no trace. They want to leave no trace.
And so.
So no bathroom up on the glacier. So they sell. You go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom. The second thing is things can get a little ripe on the glacier. So the dogs, you know, they're not. They're not like big and fluffy. They're.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: The guides are a little stinky.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Well, yeah, the guides don't have access to a shower up there. So they, you know, they come back down. I think they said for every few days. Every few days they shower, get supplies, go back up.
So just know that. Know that going in. We. We diligently washed our hands when we got back to the helicopter airport after petting all the dogs and loving on them. They did have some puppies up on the glacier. So some dogs are born on the glacier.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: These dogs have never seen dirt, the puppies that we saw.
[01:00:10] Speaker A: And so they were all snuggled up in a pin together to keep them away from the other dogs and just loving life. And they'll get hauled down at the end of the season. They're being trained to run the Iditarod, is what we heard. And they have their own Instagram account that you can follow. Maybe we can dig that up and put it in the show notes. But anyway, so we saw puppies. Then we flew back.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: The helicopters came back with those puppies. Those puppies were not.
They were behind a fence, so we got to see them. Although the funniest part was when one of the regular dogs got loose and started running around the puppy on the outside of the puppy pen. And the puppies all woke up and started barking and they.
[01:00:45] Speaker A: Well, every dog in the camp is like. They told us they're all tattletails. They're all like, there's a dog loose. And I was like.
[01:00:50] Speaker B: It was.
[01:00:50] Speaker A: I thought they were like, up there's Attica. Attica.
[01:00:53] Speaker B: It was hilarious. But apparently those dogs won't go far because they know where their bread is buttered. They know where they get fed. And yeah, they're not going anywhere, but they just love to run at the end excursion.
[01:01:02] Speaker A: Flew back down to the airport, got out of our gear, hopped a bus. Back at the. Back at the Cruise ship. No time flat. I think they also did a. I think they also did.
I think they also did a stop in town and a stop at the ship, if I'm remembering correctly. But yes, Nathan dubbed this the best day ever. Yes. So we asked him at the end what you. What he thought of it, and he just looked at us and said, best day ever. So it was a fabulous experience. Worth the price was worth it alone for that statement. But the experience was actually well worth the cost in my. I. I don't know any place else that I would get to do that for any less.
[01:01:36] Speaker B: So is a once in a lifetime type of experience. One of. That's one of those things where Alaska, you save up your pennies excursions. So if you're gonna. If you're gonna, like, spend anywhere, you know, and let's say if you are trying to budget and you're like, oh, I kind of want to stay concierge, but I really want to do these excursions. I'm gonna say do those excursions if you can, if. Because honestly, these are once in a lifetime experiences. Fantastic.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it was.
[01:02:02] Speaker B: Nathan is now super spoiled.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: He was spoiled before, but he's spoiled now.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: So.
[01:02:07] Speaker A: Okay, so that was our day. And after we got back to the show ship, we had plenty. Because this is like a. I don't know, it was like a two hour.
[01:02:14] Speaker B: Three and a half. Three hours and 15 minutes.
[01:02:16] Speaker A: I just didn't feel like that, though. Anyway.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: No, it didn't feel like that. But remember, we had the safety briefing and the bus ride and the meetup on the ship and all of that. So all of that included. It was three hours and 15 minutes. But yes, it only felt like maybe two hours.
[01:02:28] Speaker A: Juneau is the capital city of Alaska, and it is a major city by Alaska standards. And so there was plenty by mainland standards. Yeah, that's why I said Alaska standards.
There was plenty to do and see in Alaska or in Juneau. Plenty of shops and stores. You did have to take a shuttle bus from the port down into town. We did get a tip. Tracy's Crab Shack is like the rage, and everyone wants to go have crab there. Our bus driver told us there's a spot across the street called Twisted Fish. Served the exact same crab, is cheaper and has no weight. And so we took the bus in to. That's where they drop you off, basically, is right there at Tracy's Crab Shack. So we took the bus, we walked across, walked in immediately, seated a tank table.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Twisted fish.
[01:03:11] Speaker A: Twisted fish. And we had two pounds of Crab legs, and they were delicious.
That was.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: I highly recommend twisted fish over Tracy's crab shack. We actually walked by Tracy's, and I will say our crab looked way better than their crab.
[01:03:27] Speaker A: Our server told us. Our server told us if we had come last week, they would have been out of crab. But she said she thinks Tracy's is serving Japanese crab right now because they didn't have any Alaskan crab to serve. And. And so we walk by, and I was like, that crab looks very different than the crab we just ate. So it looked like it had been frozen and reheated. So I. Not to disparage Tracy's. If you're serving real Alaska crab, more power to you. But that was just the information we were given to. Given by our server. So we wander around Juneau. We had. We had lunch, and then we. We got back on the ship.
Next day, we had our last port, which was catching Japan, and we did.
[01:04:06] Speaker B: The black bear and wildlife exploration.
[01:04:09] Speaker A: Yes. And so in Ketchikan, we got off the boat with the excursion. It was a big bus took us well outside of town into the. The forest and got off. There were two excursions on our bus. One was doing ziplining. The other was doing sort of black bear viewing. These are black bears. We did not see brown bears or any other. It was black bears. Grizzlies, specifically.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah. This is near Herring Cove, for those who know. Who know Ketchikan.
[01:04:36] Speaker A: Yep. And so got off the bus, met some guides, and we had a little hike down to see bear viewing. On the point about accessibility for this excursion, I. I honestly don't know. I don't think it's accessible because you're wandering some forest trails, so you kind of want. There's. These are not technical trails. They're not steep. They're groomed.
Ultimately, you're going out on these boardwalks that they have built, and they place their camp right across from three hatcheries, basically.
And so there's a river and the hatcheries, you're on the other side on elevated boardwalks.
And essentially we had.
The weather was one thing. It was fantastic. But the bear viewing was apparently phenomenal.
[01:05:23] Speaker B: The best they had all season. We saw seven bears total.
There was one short viewing of two bears, a mother and her cub that we. I got a very quick video of, but almost didn't even catch them because they were kind of in the distance. And they were the ones we saw for the shortest period of time. The other five bears that we ended up seeing sort of throughout the couple of hours that we were there.
Some of them we literally could watch for like an hour. I mean, it was just. They would just sort of move around this area from the water to kind of the shoreside onto some rocks, onto the grass. Like, it was incredible viewing. These bears were, were just amazing to watch. We mostly watched them eat and fish, basically, and fishing for them is like super easy. There is like plentiful salmon, as Brian mentioned. The hatcheries are right there. You could actually see the salmon trying to jump into this culvert, but against the current in this one location, we even saw some of the fish, like, smack into the wall and fall down, which is kind of funny but also kind of sad. But yeah, it was. Was like. It was like fish in a barrel. The way these bears, they could just grab in and pull out a fish and then eat the whole, you know, and just tear it apart. It was really cool to watch. We did see this one really cool bear interaction between what we think were maybe a male and a female. Though we know one of them was a female bear. She was eating. The reason we know is because she peed when the other bear approached her.
And they didn't fight. And she even shared some of her fish, which was very unusual bear behavior. The guide said that was very strange.
So they thought it's possible maybe those two bears were siblings or like that knew each other. And so that's why they didn't like, cause a confrontation because it was a very odd interaction. But really, really cool.
[01:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah, the bear viewing was amazing. I just want to call out if your kiddos are not attuned to the circle of life. This may not be the excursion to take them on because the bears are just picking fish up out of the river and devouring them. So just know that going, you are going to see, see blood and guts.
And so Nathan was fine with it. I've seen it before because I went fishing in Alaska ages ago and that's something you see. But if. If you're not ready for your kids to learn about the circle of life, this may not be the excursion for you. Yeah.
[01:07:44] Speaker B: And I will say to them, I'm going to go back to Rizzo. The rat's question, which was asking, did we feel like we got enough wildlife on this trip? Because I know that Karen was saying if you want to see a lot of wildlife, she was saying in the chat, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, that, um, if you want to see wildlife, you might have a better experience doing a land and sea Combination. And I think that's true because if you want to like certain wildlife, you're going to have a better chance if you're going to go into Denali, for example. And the cruises that Disney does, they just don't go one that far. You, you can't go that far inland. Right. Unless you go before and then you have to travel back down to Vancouver. So it's a bit of a schlep. Some other cruise lines, like Princess, for example, do a land and sea combination where you do Denali first and then you get on the ship in Anchorage and they travel all the way.
I feel like because we did this bear excursion, because we saw the whales at the beginning and because we saw some of the bald eagles, of course, I've mentioned this on the show. We have seen bald eagles quite a bit before because we have some that live like really close to where we live. But I feel like we did get to see enough wildlife and I was like more than satisfied with what we got to see. I will say we made sure to go to Grouse Mountain before we got on the ship in Vancouver in part because we knew that Nathan really wanted to see bears. And we, we knew that if even though we were doing a bear focused excursion in Ketchikan, there is always a chance that you not see a bear on that trip. They cannot guarantee that you will see bear. And if we went to Grand Mountain, he would at least see those two rescued grizzly bears.
And so that was for us, certainly that was sort of our fail safe.
But I do think it's true if you want more wildlife, then the land and sea option is probably the best option. But I still felt like we had plenty. I was super satisfied and so it was really just incredible. It was really just wonderful.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Tracy. No, we did not see the lumberjack show because we saw one on Grouse Mountain. I think we failed to mention that we saw the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain, which was fun and kitschy and, and I'm glad I saw it. But no, we did not see it. The lumberjack show is literally right there at the port. You could walk off the ship and be at the lumberjack show because we.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: In Ketchikan. Yeah.
[01:09:58] Speaker A: As we got off, we wandered around. I will say a lot of the stores in Ketchikan were closed on a Saturday, sunny Saturday, because they're giving. Seemed like they were giving staff time away to go enjoy the weather. Totally fine and so, so catch. Ketchikan was also a small town, bigger than Skagway much smaller than Juneau.
Fun little place to wander around. It was the only place I was unable to get my cup of coffee because literally every coffee shop was closed that day except for one. And when we walked up to that, when the person was, like, off on.
[01:10:26] Speaker B: A break, using the restroom.
[01:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, yeah, so the bears excursion was fun. We wandered around looking at bears for probably about 90 minutes. And then they took us up to a totem pole.
[01:10:40] Speaker B: A sawmill, too. Yeah, sawmill. And it was the totem park. Basically. There's this guy whose uncle carved most of the totems. He's basically revived the art of totem pole carving. His uncle, who's now passed away, so the nephew Kevin, is now basically the premier totem carver in Ketchikan and probably the premier totem carver in Alaska. And so there's this park that has a whole bunch of different totems right there. This is right outside of where we finished the bear excursion. So it's like, basically the same location. And there's, of course, a gift shop that you can buy bear stuff in as well. But, like, the totems, we got to ask him questions, and he sort of explained, you know, his process and where he draws inspiration. He's working on a totem that is actually an honor piece for his uncle who passed. So super cool to hear him talk about what that's going to look like. It's very much in the beginning stages. So he's just sort of hollowing out the back of that totem. He hasn't started carving the front of it. But, yeah, it was a really, I think, a really cool educational experience in addition to the bear sighting. And so that was maybe the last 30 to 45 minutes of that excursion. I think Brian's right. I think it was probably 90 minutes of bear viewing, and then another maybe 30 to 45 minutes of kind of.
[01:12:02] Speaker A: It was really just a way to keep you entertained while they waited for the bus to get back to pick you up.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, but. So I thought that was a great. A great part of the excursion as well.
[01:12:11] Speaker A: All right, so that.
That's the excursion experience. I think we have covered most things that we wanted to cover about the experience. I did want to talk briefly about disembarkation then. Sam, if you have any final thoughts or questions that didn't get answered that you want to answer, I'll turn it over to you. You.
I will say disembarkation was even smoother than embarcation for us. This was a function of concierge 100%. There was a huge line, like any other ship to disembark that day.
We were able to take advantage of the express disembarkation through Coner Shipping. So we meet at the lounge, they bring us down an elevator, put us in a special line. We were probably the last concierge guest to take advantage of it and get off the ship. But once we stepped off the ship ship, it was almost bang on three hours from the moment my foot hit the gangway to when my foot hit the door at home driving. So.
[01:13:01] Speaker B: And that includes a stop at Starbucks and McDonald's, by the way.
[01:13:04] Speaker A: And so we, we got off the ship.
Basically, we walked in, we. We went to customs. We did buy some fish in Ketchikan. And I decided to be the right. Do the right thing. I declared it.
She just looks at me and said, all right, great. Like, I mean, there was. There was no. Nothing. Not even like a weird. I just said, like, we declared some fish. It's smoked fish. And I, like, had the bag there. I was going to show her. And she was like, come on in. All right, so. So we, we walked in. We were expecting to have to go through, you know, CBP border protection. And as we were walking out, they were like pointing people parking this way, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay. And I was like, well, how do I get to the parking garage? She's like, that elevator right over there. And I'm like, like, we haven't even gone through what. What's happening right now. Like, I just walked into Canada and no one checked my passport.
And so we went down in the garage, literally put us on the second floor where we were parked, walked out, walked five spaces over, packed the luggage up in the trunk. We're out of Canada place in like about 15 minutes from gangway to car and out the front.
Drove out of Vancouver, hopped on the highway. Highway. We, because of our NEXUS passes, we cleared the border in the US in under five minutes and we're home. So one of the smoothest disembarkation processes I have also had off the ship. All of our luggage was there. Everything was fine. We did buy an ULU knife in. I forget which port. Juno I think it was. We bought the ULU knife.
And so we bought it. We bought an ULU knife, which is a. For those who don't know, it's a special Alaskan and knife and herbs and.
[01:14:41] Speaker B: Use it for, like vegetables and herbs. And so when we got back on the ship, we, you know, we told them but then they put it through the.
The belt, you know, the detector, and then they, you know, put a tag on it. They take it. And then when we got back to the port in Vancouver, we go to a desk and pick it up. And I actually had lost my claim tag, but they were able to still give it to me because I knew one. What number it was. But also with my ID and remember number they were like, yep, you match everything works.
[01:15:08] Speaker A: So overall, I'll just. I'll wrap up with a couple of things I'll hand over to you, Sam. I'll just say, like, look, this cruise, 15 out of 10, I mean, it was just from end to end, one of the best Disney cruise line experiences I've had. For me, it easily cracks the top five. It may. It may be my number two. After Norway, I just. I loved everything about this cruise. Did I get to see as much wildlife as I wanted to to see?
No, but I saw plenty, right? I mean, the bear viewing, the. The sled dogs, the bears we got to see in Grouse Mountain. We did spot some whales. Like, I got to see enough to keep me happy. Not as much as I was expecting.
But the experience overall, 15 out of 10, easily one of my top three cruises right now.
Such to the point that we are. We are absolutely. Kaylee, if you're listening to this, I know Karen's here. We are absolutely, absolutely waiting for the 2027 summer itinera. We can book this cruise again.
Someone asked us would. Whether we would book the Magic this the next time around instead of the Wonder. Nope. I love the Wonder. The Wonder is by far my favorite Magic class ship. I think some of the upgrades that they've done to the Magic just haven't been, like, fully developed yet in the way that they were on the Wonder.
And also we've had some. We've had some difficult challenges with the Magic in terms of mechanical operation when we've been on her a few times and so prefer the Wonder. So we will. Absolutely. We are fingers crossed, gonna book this Cruise again in 2027 on the Wonder. Loved it. Just absolutely loved it.
[01:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I gotta jump in and say, hands down, this was my favorite cruise. I think it even beat Norway. I mean, Norway was hard to beat. Southern Caribbean is hard to beat. But I think Alaska puts them all to shame. I mean, the beauty of. I mean, we got lucky with weather. We got lucky with the bears. Like, we got lucky with the helicop excursion. Right. So there was a lot of luck involved as well. So I can't I can. I have to acknowledge that. But this was.
I mean, this was so magical from start to finish. It was such an incredible cruise. And I gotta say that Nathan, I asked him about where this cruise sort of ranks and all the cruises that he's been on. Now, he has not been to Norway. That one we did without him.
But he said, while the Treasure is still his favorite, favorite ship, he says this cruise was his favorite cruise. And he said it was a combination of the suite. I have to say, he did mention the suite. He loved the saying in the. In the Roy Disney suite. The excursions. He loved every single one of them. He says all of them were a 10 out of 10.
And then he had a great experience in Edge with the counselors, with the other kids. He just had a fabulous time. So he. Yeah, for him. He said, number one cruise, we want to do it again. I would be willing to do it on. On the Magic, on the Wonder. I'd be willing to do it on Virgin, on the Brilliant lady, but I have to get back to Alaska. Honestly, this was just. It is the most magical place in the world.
I know that we get a lot of the beauty of Alaska here, similarly here in Washington, but Alaska just.
It just tops it all.
[01:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Just so, one thing I want to point out, Karen saying DCL duo podcast cruise 3.0 in Alaska.
Yeah, I'm gonna go on record. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on record right now. That's what's happening.
Subject to Sam's approval. But. But I'm gonna go on. We're definitely booking it. So if anyone wants to come join us, we will let you know when we're gonna go to Alaska and you can join us. We may try to shift the season. We're trying to debate whether or not we try to do it just the two of us while Nathan's at his sleepaway camp or if we do a repeat kind of August visit.
And. And I will say this too, now that we've done it with the kind of weather that we had, I am fully prepared to go back and have it be that rainy, drizzly weather.
[01:19:10] Speaker B: I never put the raincoat out, by the way. We had Gore Tex raincoats. We never took them out.
[01:19:15] Speaker A: I wore my Helly Hansen. I wore my Disney cruise on Helly Hansen.
[01:19:17] Speaker B: I did wear it as. Yeah, but.
[01:19:18] Speaker A: But I'm like, fully prepared to go back now because I've seen the. The stuff that was really. I feel like, weather dependent. And now I'm ready to kind of go back and see something different. And I would love to see the scenery, you know, enmeshed in clouds and you know, all of that sort of stuff. So.
[01:19:30] Speaker B: And we would do different excursions. You know, the gold panning is a one and done. It was fun and Nathan loved it. But that' and done excursion. Right. Like, there's some things I would, I mean, I would repeat. The helicopter with the sled dogs. No lie. But not every, every excursion is repeatable. I'd want to do different ones. One thing I wanted to answer, I forgot to answer the question about accessibility. While I will say none of our excursions were really accessible, but the ports were very accessible. So absolutely would, I don't think would be a problem other than obviously the glacier excursion, that boat, but all three of the actual land ports we went to, very much accessible for transferring on and off ship. No question. And there are accessible excursions, you just have to look for them. It's just the ones that we chose were not. So I just want to put that out there because I know we had a lot of questions about accessibility in the chat.
[01:20:20] Speaker A: All right, I have two final comments because one, I just want to say this cruise is active. It was very active for us. The pool deck, while it was being used on some of the days it was, it was chilly to be swimming. The hot tubs were getting a lot of use and the sea days were cooler. So like this was not, not a. People were using the pool. But I would say this was not like a hop in the pool. And even on the days you're, you're at sea or like Glacier day, which is really kind of a special sea day, like you're running all over the deck, you're trying to get photos and.
[01:20:50] Speaker B: It'S really cold with Glacier Day, really cold out on deck.
[01:20:54] Speaker A: But this is, this is not Caribbean cruising with lots of relaxation and beach. This was, this. I, I was tired going into work today from all of the activity that we got to do over the, the last week.
It, it's one of those cruises where you get off, you come home and you're, you're like, okay, now I need some relaxation time.
So just know that going in, this is, this is not going to be like a Caribbean cruise. I think that could be especially hard on kids and choose your excursions wisely. Nathan was tuckered out, you know, many days I could tell he was just tired.
So just know that going in.
[01:21:28] Speaker B: And my mom was tired. People ask, how, what did your mom think of the cruise? My mom, Mom Absolutely loved the cruise. My mom is not a cruise person. She is not a beach person. She is not a Caribbean or Bahamas person. This is her second cruise ever. The first one was on the Fantasy with us, a seven night Eastern Caribbean.
She loved this cruise. She did a whale watching excursion and sort of trail hike thing that was a short, not a long hike.
She is not a hiker but she did an excursion on Juneau Day that was different than our excursion that was sort of a nature and science focused one. And so that's what she did. She loved that excursion and she of course loved the railway. But I think the biggest joy for her, well, she loved seeing the scenery. I think one of the biggest joys for her was being able to spend it with our family and being able to see Nathan enjoying all of what Alaska has to offer.
[01:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. So two other things I was trying to get to. One is, one is Alan mentioned the northern lights. You can see the northern lights on this cruise and in fact I'm kicking myself because we didn't think about it and we discovered that the crew member told us the best time to see them is actually when you sail from Juneau to Ketchikan and they were visible that night and we just, we didn't even think about it. She also said that the Milky Way was out one night. I mean that's all going to be very weather dependent. If you're in heavy clouds and fog, of course you're not going to see anything. But because of the weather we had, that stuff was visible. We just completely spaced on seeing it. So if we do this cruise again and there's a clear night, I'm going to, to be out there on the deck trying to catch them.
[01:23:01] Speaker B: We might be able to see them tonight here.
[01:23:04] Speaker A: Okay, well we'll, I'm not sure I'm going to get up at 3am on a work night to go do that, but you can.
And then the, the last thing I want to say is someone made a comment. July is so expensive. I, I, I do want to acknowledge Alaska cruising is much more expensive than just about any other Disney cruise out there. I will say we chose the cruise we did because it was the last sailing before our son went back to school and most of the rest of the country was back in school.
That knocked for the suite we were in, it knocked close to $15,000 off the price of the room.
And for other staterooms there was a similar kind of percentage decline. So if you can get into Alaska in the shoulder seasons when school still in session, you can save a ton of money. Now on the front end of that, it may mean potentially worse weather than what we had, although our weather was abnormal on the back end of that kind of same thing. The shoulder seasons tend to be a little bit more difficult. There were plenty of kids on our cruise though, so I don't want to say that there it was like an adult cruise. It wasn't. There were plenty of kids on board. But those shoulder se seasons can save you quite a bit. So I always say look at the early and the late and you know, yes, right in the smack dab of the summer, it's the height of Alaska season. It will be interesting to see what Disney Cruises line does with its pricing when it puts two ships up there because we are hearing some things about like even on the Destiny Maiden concierge rooms becoming available, I think a lot of that had to do with executives probably saying we're not going to sail so you can release the room.
But still we're hearing some interesting things about concierge availability around the fleet. So putting two ships up in Alaska, the prices, you know that Disney's charging for those at the height of the summer there, there could be a bit, little bit of a, a little bit discount going on there. I don't, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. But all right, with that, we're going to wrap it up here. Plenty more we could say. But we really just wanted to cover the room experience, support experience. I think we've done that. I think we've answered most of the questions in the chat.
[01:25:02] Speaker B: Answer that other question.
[01:25:04] Speaker A: Say that again.
[01:25:05] Speaker B: The food was great. Somebody asked a dining on board. Food was great.
[01:25:07] Speaker A: Food was great.
[01:25:09] Speaker B: No trivia wins. Linda, sorry.
[01:25:11] Speaker A: Came close.
[01:25:12] Speaker B: Second place.
[01:25:12] Speaker A: We came close on theme song trivia. Music, movie theme or movie song trivia within one point.
[01:25:19] Speaker B: Any brain teasers? Skip brain teasers to give other people a chance.
[01:25:23] Speaker A: All right, so with that we are going to wrap up now and so want to highlight. We will be back next week on our regular time Monday night, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern. We will have the incomparable Ashley Norton with us to talk about her European Disney cruise line sailing. We did get some requests while we were gone about like, hey, can you guys talk a bit more about the dream? We have some episodes coming out and Ashley will be on live with us to talk a bit about actually the fantasy in Europe this year. Sorry I said the dream. The fantasy in Europe and so be on to talk about that. But with that we will just say thank you for everyone for hanging in for us with this extra long live episode. We appreciate you, hope you found it helpful and we will see you next time.
[01:26:07] Speaker B: Bye from the Pacific Northwest.
[01:26:13] Speaker A: Well thanks to everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you you can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact, twice a week we publish shows so be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us alive, we have a live show now every week, Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern over on YouTube.com DCLDUO so be sure to head over and check that out. If you want help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple Podcasts. And if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel. If you want to book your next Disney vacation, head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email them at DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best way to do that is to head over to DCLDUO.com it's got link to all of our things full catalog of the podcast episodes including a searchable catalog for the podcast links off to our vlog, a link to our Etsy store where we sell some fun fan inspired magnets. Link to our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also has a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on a few blog articles that we've written. So DCL is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email
[email protected] or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 402-413-5590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL Duo podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company, or the Disney Family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflective. Use the Disney Company or Disney Cruise Line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or a Disney vacation, please contact the great folks over at MyPath unwinding travel or Disney directly or your own travel agent. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL duo.
Sam.
