[00:00:00] Speaker A: Glacier Day should be a holiday in my opinion. This felt like a holiday.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean, any day you get trail waffles, I feel like is a holiday.
[00:00:22] Speaker C: Welcome back, everybody, to this week's live episode of the DCL Duo podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel and also our good friends over at the dc.
You hear us talking about them every week. We had them in the show last week. We adore the DCL magazine and if you have not subscribed already, now is your chance. Head over to dcl-magazine.com that's dcl-magazine.com and if you use code, all caps DCL Duo, that is all caps DCL Duo. You can take 10% off everything in the WDW magazine store, which includes the DCL magazine, the DLR magazine, subscriptions, calendars, merch, swag, just all kinds of stuff. Head over there, show them some love. Remember, showing our sponsors some love shows the show a little bit of love. And so could you head over there and check them out. And a big thanks to Stephanie, Danny, Tim, Tatiana, everybody over there at DCL Magazine for sponsoring our live and bonus episodes. We so appreciate and value their partnership and sponsorship.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Don't forget, don't forget cj, who's the one of the hosts of Parks and Pages podcast.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Yes, yes, that is right. They have their own podcast over there and they cover a lot more of the Disney universe than we can even begin to cover with day jobs. So head over there, check them out. Sam, I think I'm going to hand it over to you to preview our guest and our topic for today before I bring our fabulous guest on.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, we're super excited. We're going to be talking Alaska. I'm wearing, of course, my Alaska shirt because it's got, you know, we got to fit the topic if I can.
Alaska is one of our favorite experiences on Disney Cruise Line.
Of course, the Alaska season is up and running on both the magic and the wonder. So we're going to be doing a lot of coverage of it this summer. We've got our guest today, Rich, and we've got a guest next week as well, Kelly also talking about Alaska. And of course last week, if you saw us or two weeks ago, you saw us with Wesley, we were also talking about Alaska. So lots of great Alaska content, lots of great Europe content coming soon as well. But we are going to welcome back back to the show, Rich. Rich was just on talking about the Disney Adventure maiden voyage. Welcome back to the show, Rich.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Thank you guys. I appreciate you having me.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: We are so excited. Yeah, we're so excited. We knew right away, you're so good on that episode. We're like, we got to bring it back for a live episode. You've got actually a lot of cruises coming. A lot of great cruises coming up. I know you're headed back on the adventure soon, this time with your teens.
But we're going to talk Alaska today. But before we get there there, we've got a little bit of news to cover. Not nothing big, you guys, except for maybe the first ever female captain on Disney Cruise Line, besides Captain Minnie, of course.
So Maria Goder was just named captain of the Disney Wish.
It's unclear to me if this is a temporary or a permanent assignment. And the only reason I say that is because she announced it on her own Facebook page, I think maybe five or six days ago.
But I haven't seen, like, any official announcement from Disney Cruise Line, which is kind of surprising to me.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Very little fanfare.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Very surprising, because I feel like this is a big deal. Like, Captain Kate was the first female captain with Celebrity. She was actually, I think, an executive officer with Disney before she went to celebrity. And now she's, of course, with the Four Seasons Yacht, whatever they call that cruise line.
But I think it's pretty big news to have a female, a human, female captain on Disney Cruise Line. We don't have that many ships. There's only eight ships. But eight of all eight ships have been helmed by male captains until now. So anyway, maybe it's a temporary assignment. I don't care. It's something to celebrate. What do you guys think?
[00:04:13] Speaker C: I mean, I was excited enough to post it, so, yeah, I agree with you. I'm a little suspicious about what's going on here. Although interesting, you know, Disney hasn't. I don't think she's retracted it in any way or clarified it in any way. So hopefully it's a permanent, real promotion for this, for this new captain and not something temporary that it feels long overdue. Feels long overdue.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we're going to be on the Wish in about a year, so it'll be interesting to see if she's still the captain of the ship at that time. But, yeah, it should be big news and something to be celebrated for sure.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, a couple of other very minor things.
Toy Story 5 premiered at sea. Of course, it premiered on land, but as we know, they always do premieres at sea. They're really fun if you get to experience a Premiere at sea. Everybody's super excited. You're on a ship with all Disney fans. Sometimes there might be a special gift or even a special presentation. Not always. We had one when we saw Inside out too.
So we were on for a Zootopia 2 premiere, but there was no special gift or special presentation for that one. So it's just kind of sporadic. I think the Inside out two one was a DVC cruise, so it might be also because of that that they did a special gift. But that's fun.
Another small piece of news. New coffee cards. So everyone knows the buy five get one free deal for specialty coffees in Cove Cafe and the other specialty coffee bars.
Well, there's a new card that a friend of ours who's on board in the Alaska season since me a picture of. I had to post about it because.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Well, and the. The question that we immediately got is, man, I hope that those old coffee cards that I have stored up are still going to work.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: And I'll say the answer is yes.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Well, we don't know that. We don't know that.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: But we've always honored it before.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: Yeah, but maybe they changed up the complete design of the card so they could get out of doing that. But, like, I'll just hold on a second. Sam, I know you have an opinion here, but give you a second. Which is just. We've seen inconsistencies with like popcorn buckets and other things getting brought on board and whether Disney will or will not leverage those. And so I just say we will. I will be curious if you have feedback. If you have old coffee cards, you get on a ship that has the new one. I'd love to hear from you whether or not they honored the old one or they said, nope, sorry, we don't honor those anymore.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: So fair. I agree with you. As to popcorn buckets, there's inconsistency. But I will say this isn't the first time that they've changed the coffee card. And the last time they did this was, I want to say, in the COVID reopening times and they still honored the old coffee cards. This may be 2021, 2022. So that's why. And I've even had, like found one of the even older ones and brought it back on like one of our last cruises. And again, the baristas have always, you know, honored them. So I don't think we have too much to worry about there.
The other fun thing is just that the New York Times crossword new ads. Basically, Disney Cruise Line is doing A little crossword ad over in the New York Times on their. On their mob.
And so it's fun because you can do a crossword that includes a lot of Disney Cruise Line clues, and it's just. It's just another ad. I guess the other thing to mention is there are some new deals on Disney Cruise Line that have been released. In fact, there's lots of sales I have found across different sailings, even going into early next year, but even some unique sailings that you wouldn't think would be on discount. So if you are interested in booking a Disney cruise, of course you can reach out to our sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel, and we'll have the information in the show notes. But whatever you do, just reach out to a travel advisor because you're helping support a small business instead of giving whatever that percentage otherwise goes just to Disney themselves. So if you're. Whether you're using My Path Unwinding or another travel advisor, use a travel advisor. Help a small business out there.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: Sam, new merch? Is there new merch? I feel like I've been seeing lots of texts from our friends and you getting them to buy you stuff on the ship.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: That was last week.
That was last week, Brian. We already covered that.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: The Duffy thing was last week. The.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: No, the Duffy is not on the. The Duffy blind boxes are not on the cruise line. That's Disney Springs.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Boo.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: All right, there's a text exchange today about those Duffy blind boxes that are at Disney Springs right now.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: So before getting four, before we dive into this episode, I did have a quick update for folks out there. So for episodes, I think it's 690.
I think this is, I think 697 and 695.
For episode 697 that released over the weekend, I accidentally grabbed the audio from a wrong folder on my computer. And so it was the wrong show. So if you start listening, you're like, wow, I've heard this before. You have not heard that show before. It is just the wrong audio and I have updated it since. And so it should have populated out. But if you downloaded it to your device, make sure that you uncheck the download and either redownload it or rely on the online. The RSS version that's in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player because it doesn't automatically push an update down for anything that it's already downloaded. So if you want the right audio for that show, undownload it and redownload it. I apologize for that. There was A lot of podcast work happening this weekend and I just got a little too fast on that one. Same thing for episode. I think it's 695.
I will actually open up Apple Podcasts here and just verify that. But same thing happened there. The wrong show audio went out. And so just make sure that you update those two if you want to hear the great discussion that we had. It's actually episodes, sorry, 669 and 667. So it's the live show from last week with Stephanie and Danny and the show that we did with Sarah about her family's trip on the Destiny. So make sure you've got the right audio for those shows with that.
Alaska. We got Alaska. And I'm going to take our presentation view to get this one kicked off.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: So let's start. Rich, you are with Family Passport Travel. Tell us, like, how many cruises with Disney. Remind us. I know you were only on a few months ago, but remind our audience, like, how many cruises you've been on with Disney and your Disney background. Like the abbreviated version, version.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: We started cruising as a family in 2017, and this was as a family, our 11th Disney Cruise. My wife and I did, as you mentioned, the Maiden on the adventure and that got us to 12. So we've now completed 12. We're all as a family.
We're all in the platinum category. And yeah, this has been on the list for quite some time, so we were excited to get it done.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've been on all of the ships as well now, too, including the adventure, which I, I bow down to you because you've beaten you. We don't have as many cruises as Brian and I, but you have the perfect grand slam that we don't currently have. I will say we still have the, we still have the intergalactic one, but
[00:11:20] Speaker A: we have all, all eight. All eight accomplished. And so now we're making our rounds back through again and we'll see if we can do, do all of them at least twice. That'll be an interesting accomplishment.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Now, what made you choose Alaska? I'm going to make Brian go to the next slide, even though I love this gorgeous picture.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So we, we, this last holiday season, our family and I were fortunate to
[00:11:44] Speaker B: do
[00:11:47] Speaker A: a cruise down to Antarctica. And down in Antarctica, it's, it's obviously, it's breathtaking. It's like nothing you've ever seen before with the orca and the humpback whales and the seals and all of that. And our, it was by far the best trip we've ever done. And as a family, we decided that's kind of the cruise that we wanted to do next. And so as we're in Antarctica, we're kind of scheming and trying to figure out how we can do, you know, mix that wildlife and adventure kind of cruising with Disney. And we landed on this June Alaska itinerary.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Awesome. Who did you do Antarctica with? Did you do it with like an expedition cruise? Like, you know, one of the smaller ship expedition companies we did.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: It was a company called Quark Q U A R K out of Canada.
And they were fantastic.
It was 10 nights down in Antarctica. We were there over Christmas and spent five days down on the continent and a couple days back and forth on the Drake Passage. But it was, it was absolutely.
I cannot recommend it enough for those that, that haven't, haven't been down there yet.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Only because I was recently looking at whether we could do an expedition cruise for my sabbatical next summer.
Like, Cork, was it, like, how did it compare to like, was this a rustic experience or was it a really nice ship?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: And yeah, this was a really nice ship.
200 passenger max capacity. I think our sailing had 160 some odd passengers.
Crew to passenger ratio was really high. I would say the staff, the friendliness. It's again comparing to Disney. It's, it's right there. We had the same wait staff the entire trip again with only 200 passengers or less than.
Everybody knew each other by the end of the 10 days. And it was, it was, it was incredible. The ship itself has its own helicopter, actually two helicopters. So you're able to do excursions while you're down there. It's really, really well done. They, they really have their stuff together.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Quark noted. Quark.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Okay, we're, we're, we're after this show. We're going to, we're going to look up that up, but we got to talk about Alaska. Guns gone goozling.
You learned this term while in Alaska, right?
[00:14:08] Speaker A: While in Alaska we had different adventure guides. And very similar to what we did on some of our days in Alaska is they would do presentations and lectures. And the very first day we had somebody come up and talk to us about gungoozling. And it dates back to the 19th century northern England, just kind of idling idly watching ships pass by or watching nature.
But really the takeaway here was down in Antarctica. And I think the same applies to Alaska is if you're not outside, if you're not actively trying to find the wildlife, you're not going to see it.
So taking this as a little different approach than what we would in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, some of these other Disney cruises that we've done, we really tried to make an effort to be outside, kind of keep an eye out at all times. And as a result, we were fortunate to see some of the wildlife that we saw. It was really cool. But again, putting yourself in that position, I love this.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: I'm going to use this term, by the way. I think you all do it in Norway. You do a lot of gongoozling in Norway, in the fjords. But I even sometimes will do this in the Caribbean. I will stare out to sea and occasionally you might see some dolphins, you might see some humpback whales, even in the Caribbean as well.
Yeah, I'm going to do some more gonggoozling. I mean, we could do it here in the Pacific Northwest. We got lots of water. So I need to just go out and do this.
I can't say it.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: I think as a kid in school I spent a lot of time looking out the window. Gungoozling too. Like the flies all over.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: There you go. All right, Brian, let's go to the next slide. I love that word.
My new vocabulary.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: This, this is just a quick recap of our trip. It was a seven night left on a Monday, returned on a Monday.
We ended up coming in the day before on the Sunday and that ended up working pretty well. So nine nights or I'm sorry, nine days, eight nights total was the trip. So pretty quick.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Awesome. Perfect. Brian, next slide.
All right, day zero.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: Sushi is making my mouth water rich.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: It's dinner time around here and it was fantastic. There's a really great place, place we stayed at the Pan Pacific.
Just right around the corner from the Pan Pacific is the sushi place right on the water. We'd read a lot of reviews and heard a lot of great things about it and so that was a must do while we were there.
But for us again, we're Utah based. It was a two hour flight to get there.
Very, very easy. I wasn't sure we as a family we've driven to Canada, but we've never flown into Canada before. So this was new experience with immigration and customs, et cetera.
Very, very easy process. I think we were through with luggage maybe in 45 minutes at the most.
And we were out waiting for our car.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: But Vancouver, I got two questions for you. One, the name of the sushi restaurant and two, packing strategy. I want to know what your packing strategy was.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: I will have to get back to you on the name of the sushi place.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: If my wife is watching, drop it in the comments, please. I don't know off the top of my head what it's called, but it's right next to the Pan Pacific.
And then packing strategy. So the two things that were the hardest for us, I think, or the most difficult in preparation for this trip was understanding what we should pack, because there's a lot of advice out there. And then figuring out what we wanted to do for excursions.
Our packing strategy wasn't much of a strategy. We just heard layers. And in our mind, as we heard layers, we internalized that as more so. It almost looked like we were packing up our house, getting ready to move.
We had a ton of luggage going up there, and it turned out it just wasn't needed.
In hindsight, if I were to do this over again, we would have probably brought about half as much as we actually did.
The layers really go a long way.
Couple pair of jeans, some.
We call it hiking pants.
Maybe some. You know, I got this on the, on the ship, but like, quarter zips are always great. And maybe a puffy.
But we had rain gear. We had living in Utah. We had ski jackets and all kinds of things that just ended up being a waste and just took away from our souvenir space in our suitcases. Bringing stuff home.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one puffy layer. You don't have to have like a really thick jacket, but one puffy layer and a couple of like, thinner layers. Maybe like a, like a thin fleece layer, a regular cotton layer, or if you like Long John, something like that for underneath. Those are all good. But stuff, when I say layers, stuff that you can remove because the weather swings can be very extreme. It can be like in the 70s, you know, Fahrenheit for those listening over in Europe.
Or it can be, you know, in the 40s. Right. So you have these big swings of cold. And with weather, you do want to be prepared for rain.
But do you need like a full rain suit? Probably not. I think you got to have like a Gore Tex jacket and maybe like if at least an extra pair of shoes. If you don't have a pair of like waterproof shoes. Right. Because you might. If your feet get soaked through, there's nothing worse. Everybody knows there's nothing worse than walking around the next day in soaked through shoes.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah. In our family, we all had waterproof shoes. And I agree. I think in addition, we had some light gloves but we brought heavy gloves too. But the light gloves seemed to do just fine. We had beanies for colder days to keep our heads warm and those were great. But I think walking around the ship for the most part I was in maybe a hoodie like a light sweatshirt and a pair of jeans or a pair of pants. It was pretty, pretty basic.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Nice. Now what did you guys do in Vancouver besides eat sushi? Did you like have some time to do anything fun?
[00:20:17] Speaker A: That first day we just kind of walked around again. We'd never been, we'd heard a lot of great things. We wanted to get out and explore a little bit further.
The traffic was pretty bad around the area where you're at in Pan Pacific so we just kind of decided we were just going to start walking and we ended up walking down to the steam clock area. There's a lot of souvenir shops, ice cream shops, et cetera, restaurants down that way. So we just kind of walked around, bought a couple souvenirs, hung out and then actually called it a pretty early night that night and to get ready for the next morning.
And that brings us to day one
[00:20:53] Speaker B: and yeah, how, how early did your day start at the Pan Pacific? Like what time was your luggage being picked up? Because when you're at the Pan Pacific you can of course use their luggage pickup service where you. So you don't have to schlep stuff down yourself. You can if you want to, but you don't have to. And of course they are attached to Canada place where the port is.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, they, we started out, I actually Woke up at 6 so the picture for those that are watching the bottom left, we watched the wonder come in to port and kind of researching and trying to figure out what time it would be. It ended up being about 6:30 it actually started showing up. But I took that picture from our hotel window watching it come in fully dock and get ready. About 7 o' clock is when the luggage starts. So I think 7 to 10am If I remember correctly. You can call, they come right to your room, you have your Disney tags already on your luggage and they take them and the next time you see them is in your stateroom. It was pretty, pretty seamless, pretty awesome.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: And they do tell you what to expect in terms of tipping. I think it was about $5 a bag is sort of the standard. So if you've got four bag, like you're talking $20 for that for and it's a bellhop who's coming to get your stuff, it's not the porters like at, like at Port Canaveral, for example. By the way, Mackenzie's dropped it in the chat. It's Miku. Miku. Vancouver is the sushi restaurant. Thank you, MacKenzie. I love it.
Yeah. All right, so, yeah, so tell us about this. This morning you, you get up early, you watch the ship come in. When did you call for the luggage pickup? Did you guys grab breakfast before, did all that?
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we, so we called at seven and the guy came to our room and he was actually really. He was full of a lot of helpful information too about where to navigate, how to get to where, you know, check in is and all of that.
We ended up getting some breakfast and then we went to.
I call it Soarin. It's not sore.
[00:22:59] Speaker D: It's.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: It's on the page before. Brian, I'm sorry, it was. It's called Flyover Canada.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Oh yeah, we have one here called Wings Over Washington. And actually there's another one too in Seattle. There's a brand new one that opened, but so now there's like two Seattle ones as well.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: This was, this was great. It was a little bit more extreme than Soarin, right? Is, you know, your, your twists and your dips were a lot more aggressive. I guess there was also like some mist that came down and certain, certain parts of.
Was really, really cool to be able to kind of get of that kind like experience of seeing, seeing Canada, you know, as you're soaring through. And, and again, we started at, did that at 10.
It's 30 minutes. There's a 15 minute pre show and then 15 minute ride and it was about $40 a person. We were out of there. We started at 10, we were out at 10:30, no problem. And so as soon as we got done with that, we went back upstairs, grabbed our backpacks. We had left our backpacks up in our room, grabbed those, went back downstairs and we were ready to check in at the.
[00:24:02] Speaker D: For the cruise.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Awesome. Now this trip was the whole family, right? Not just you and your wife. Remind me how, how old the kids are.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Yeah, we have a 16 year old son and we have a 13 year old daughter.
So we, they came. And then some other cruising friends of ours came too, so a mom and daughter. So there were six of us total on this.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Nice. That's awesome. All right, Brian, jump ahead to the next slide or go back to day one, actually.
Okay, so you, you get to, you get to your rooms and you got the new castaway club gifts. I noticed you put those on there. What did you think of the Quality of those new gifts, I think they were good.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: We ended up using that backpack throughout the rest of the trip. On our excursion days, we weren't sure, again, waterproof wise, what to bring, what to have. So it was. It was nice to have a backpack that I had an inner lining that I could have used for camera gear and other things. So a dry bag. But it was good quality. It lasted. We still have it upstairs.
Yeah, I think it was great. The water bottle was a. Was a nice gift. And then the new lanyards I really like, so those were a nice addition.
[00:25:20] Speaker C: So Tracy's asking in the chat, is the water bottle, what's in the box in the upper right, correct?
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Yep. Sorry, I should probably. Should have taken that out for the picture. But yeah, that's the water bottle in the box.
[00:25:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Cool. I noticed you have on here the new wine limits as a callout. Did you experience some challenges around that or see others at the port experiencing some challenges?
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Well, it was more confusing, I think, because it was.
So this cruise was June 1st, and it was like mid May, they announced maybe end of May, they announced the not. Instead of two bottles of wine, it could only be one. And we decided. We have never brought wine on a cruise before, but a couple months ago, we decided this was the one we were going to do.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: It's local.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: We're going to bring some wine. We're going to try this whole wine experience out.
So we ended up bringing just one each per adult.
So with the three adults, there was three. Three bottles of wine.
But what was confusing was around the port, at least at this time, all the signs said still two bottles. So I don't know if the confusion between the two bottles. The one bottle, we played it safe with the one.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: I think the. I think it's because I think technically the policy went into effect on June 3rd.
So I actually think on your sailing, because you embarked. I remember from the announcement that it was something. It was like the announcement wasn't very clear, but I remember seeing it somewhere that it was June 3rd and so your embarkation day. If it was June 1st, then I think that's where. Where it fit in. So you could have.
You could have squeaked in. Two bottles per adult, but probably could have.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: We're breaking the rules. So. So yeah, we. We played it safe. We didn't want to get busted by the Disney police. But yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: And the only. The only thing will happen is they'll just confiscate. They'll just confiscate it and hold it until the end of the cruise. So it's that it just means you have to schlep it home with. With you.
Yeah. All right, well, let's go to. Let's go to the. Oh, your sail away party was late. Was 7:30pm that's because after you leave.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yeah, we had already left. We'd gone under the bridge, the Lionsgate Bridge. We were. We were well on our way before they had the. The sail away party. So that was. That was a little bit different.
Shops again were open at 6 o'. Clock. That was already done. And we had a sail away party. We had the later dinner. So we went straight from sail away to our 8:15. Seating nice.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Oh, you all. I see here you had an orca sighting during your muster drill. So here's a reason to have an outside muster station, I guess. And to not have a virtual monster.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: In the one time I didn't have my camera with us. It was terrible quality. That picture in the middle.
Mackenzie again, was able to get that picture with her phone. But yeah, that was our kind of. Our first sighting of the trip started out as a mustard drill. So instead of paying attention like you should have probably been doing, everybody was watching the orca in the background. It was pretty incredible.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: That's awesome. And I will say, when you're on an Alaska cruise, it's rarer to see orcas in general. You will more likely see humpbacks, like humpbacks aplenty in sort of Canada, Alaska, Pacific Northwest.
But seeing an orca is much more rare.
A really cool. It's a really cool sighting especially got our hopes up.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: We thought, we thought, okay, this is the beginning. We're going to see orca all the time. And it was. Unfortunately, it ended up being the only one, but it was. It was still a pretty cool experience to be able to see that during a mustard drill and. And just gone Goozling. You're out there watching it.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: There we go. That's the whole theme. Gone Goozling. All right, next day, Brian, slide two.
[00:29:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And for everyone at home who doesn't want to hear the advanced slides, then I would say, hey, go to YouTube and watch it and then it will make sense. Yes, keep going.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, so tell us about day two.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Day two is just a sea day. That's the day I get. I get very few steps in.
And it was awesome.
The seminars. They had two guests, husband and wife, that had two different seminars. Again, one was around the Alaskan state facts, learning more about Alaska and history and all of that, and then the other was more wildlife focused. But they did a fantastic job.
They were in the Walt Disney Theater. Plenty capacity to be able to go view those and listen there.
And that again, back to the Antarctica thing. That was a big highlight of our expedition trip. And that helped bring kind of that more expedition spirit to this trip, too, being able to listen to those seminars. The kids came in were able to learn some stuff along the way, too. So it was different, but really, really good.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: But speaking of the kids, what were their expectations or they take. I mean, obviously they went to Antarctica with you, is that. Is that right?
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah.
[00:30:13] Speaker C: Okay, so they're, like, ready to be, like, active. Yeah.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Expectations are way high.
We're gonna see whales all the time. We're gonna see orcas every 20 minutes.
Seals.
Where are the penguins? Why aren't there penguins here?
But no, they, they, they did a great job. They, they really. I think they understood, you know, there's. There's differences. We were really hoping to see a bear. We didn't see one on the trip.
That was kind of the gongoozling goal, if you will, with our binoculars and cameras and stuff. We were always trying to watch the shoreline to see if we could catch a bear.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: I'll tell you, the tip I'll give you for the bears is that we went up to Grouse Mountain the day before we embarked on the cruise, and they have two bears that they have kept in captivity because they can't release them back at this point. If they release them back, they would not survive. And so they've kept them and they were walking right up to the fence and you could just see them. And so now they are.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Those are grizzly bears, as opposed to maybe the black bears or brown bears you might see in the wild. I mean, you might see grizzlies in the wild, too. It's just a matter of where they are in. In nature, where they live.
But yeah, so we, we did. We did that on purpose. Went to Grouse Mountain on purpose in Vancouver because we knew one of Nathan's, like, goals for the trip was to see bears, right? And. And we were like, we can't guarantee we're going to see them in Alaska. Let's guarantee we'll see them in Vancouver. Even though it was a different variety of bear. The other tip I'll give, though, for seeing the bears in the wild is going in late August or September. And the reason I say that is because that's when they're feeding before they're going to be taking their long nap for the winter. Right. So they're feeding before hibernation. And so they are. Are out and about at like the, at the hatcheries, like more. More often. And so it's just a better timing for seeing bears out in the wild. That doesn't mean you won't see them earlier in the season, like in May, June, July. It's just a matter of where.
Where you're sort of almost guaranteed to see them or more guaranteed to see them. I also love the naturalist talks. I thought that was a great part of our cruise. I think that that's one of the. The things you want when you're going to Alaska. You want to hear about Alaska, you want to hear about the wildlife, you want to hear what to look for and maybe about the glaciers and all of that.
I notice here you have that they did the laundry special on day two, which is kind of interesting. I know they always. They tend to do that about halfway through the cruise. This is on the early end of the cruise.
The laundry special is 25 for 30 pieces, which is great if you don't want to spend your time dealing with, you know, going to the laundry room yourself, especially if you are going to be doing some stuff beforehand. As you mentioned, you brought lots of clothes that you might not have needed to do laundry. But it's, it's a nice little tip for people to know that you can, you can send out your laundry on a Disney cruise if you don't want. If you don't like to do laundry like on vacation, like I do, so.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Exactly. And I, to be honest, again, this was our 12th cruise. I don't recall ever seeing this before.
So again, a reason I wanted to call it out. But even with all of our packing, we still took advantage of it, tried to maximize, you know, the $25 and stuffed exactly 30 pieces of laundry in there. It's not dry cleaning, it's laundry. But it's, yeah, a great way to reduce your luggage space if, if you knew about that ahead of time.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I've only seen it on our Alaska cruise and maybe our Norway cruise. But again, it was like halfway through. I've never seen it on a Caribbean cruise on Disney. I have seen it actually on Royal. We got offered one of those kinds of deals on like a Caribbean cruise, I want to say. But yeah. All right, well, you had formal night, you had the Golden Mickeys, Disney tunes, live beer tasting, all the good things of a sea day. Let's move on to day number three, because we know that's the big day. But yeah, go ahead.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: That's right. I say the Comparing the Golden Mickeys with formal night. I thought it's been a while since we've done Golden Mickeys, but having those on the same night was really nice.
It's a reason to dress up, take some nice family pictures, go watch again. The Golden Mickeys. Feel like you're in Hollywood and that whole scene.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah, you get your picture in front of the step and repeat too. The Golden Mickey step and repeat.
[00:34:40] Speaker C: And I guess how were the naturalist talks that you got to participate in?
[00:34:45] Speaker A: I think they were really good. Each one was an hour long and they were interactive. They asked the audience questions, got people, you know, discussing different things, throwing out potential different answers, and there's a lot of pictures.
But these, these two individuals, they seem to be really well informed. And I mean, they live in Alaska. They live up close to Denali national park.
And yeah, they were, they were really good.
[00:35:14] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:35:18] Speaker D: 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 MyPath 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 Aulani, 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 password 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.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: All right, let's talk Glacier Day. We know that's the next Glacier Day
[00:36:19] Speaker A: should be a holiday. In my opinion, this felt like a holiday.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean any day you get TR waffles, I feel like is a holiday.
We ended up going to Dawes Glacier. I had heard before that there's kind of like three different options potentially depending on weather conditions, traffic, etc. But Dawes Glacier was the one that we ended up going to.
But I woke up again not counting calories on a cruise.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: I got into cabanas, got my churro waffles, and then a couple hours later we did Palo brunch.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: That's incredible.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: That was a great way to start glacier day in doing Palo brunch earlier in the. Well, it was like 10am the ship wasn't yet to the glacier, so we were able to sit on the backside of the wonder with all the windows around and watch the ship go in through the fjord and kind of get into position. So that was a nice touch too.
Apollo brunch. Real quick shout out to.
About a month ago, you had a guest on that's like a food and wine expert, Carly, and she recommended the balsamic martini.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Never seen this before. I'd never heard of it before. I don't know how it didn't register, but we tried it and she is spot on.
That's approach tip there.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: The.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Oh, I love that.
That's. That's Carly Caramana who runs Adventures by Carly. Or Adventures with Carly. Is that what it's called? Oh, my God. How am I. How am I like blanking on her. Her Instagram handle? Because I literally follow everything she does. But she is. Yeah, she's incredible. She's absolutely a. She writes a ton about Disney and theme parks, but her like niche is for sure like food and wine and so yeah, she is Adventures by Carly is what her handle is. And she's awesome. I'm going to tell her about this shout out unless she's listening. I'm not sure. She has her own podcast so she's busy.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: That was a great pro tip. So, yeah, we had those and enjoyed a nice Palo brunch before we got to the glacier. And all those pictures for those that are watching, those were taken on glacier day. We had to sea lions and seals and humpbacks. I tried to throw a couple pictures in there for perspective too, just to understand how close you get to the glacier.
It's kind of hard to tell. In the top picture in the very far back by the glacier is another cruise ship. Is actually the Ritz ship got really, really close.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's a much smaller ship.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: Yeah, much smaller ship. But it was really an awesome day.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I could see it's either Chip or Dale. I can't see the color of his nose in the picture, but it's either Chip or Dale is out there.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: No, they're both there. They're both there. I can see them both. Yeah, they're both there.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: I wanted to ask Rich. Now, you did choose to do Apollo brunch that morning, which meant you weren't out waiting in line for characters. Did you find time to wait in line for characters and take pictures with them on Glacier Day, or was that not on your sort of priority list? No judgment there, by the way. I think everybody has to choose their own adventure.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So choosing our adventure.
Once I got up on the 10th deck, we decided we weren't interested in sending in those lines, and so we went to brunch. I think our daughter got some pictures, but for the most part, we kind of navigated around deck four. For the most part on that day.
Deck four, you have the middle, the opening that you can go back and forth between port and starboard side. So we were looking at that. That our room also had a veranda view. So we were up in our room a lot again, gone goozling, doing different things. But really Deck 10 was. It was.
It was pretty busy, and so we decided to avoid it. But again, I felt like we were able to get the full experience.
Deck 4 still had the hot chocolate and cookies, the carts that would go around as the ship was positioning. You're able to. To again bounce back and forth between port and starboard and see anything that you wanted to pretty easily.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a pro tip. I actually think you're gonna have probably an easier time with just like, enjoying the views from Deck 4. It tends to get windier up, you know, up on Deck 10. And then, of course, you have the crowds of people waiting in line for characters. So some of the sort of area by the railing, depending upon where the characters are posted, is going to be sort of taken up by those lines of people. And so you might not have as much space for gongoozling. So if you're not interested in taking pictures with characters, then I would. I would definitely say deck four. And you're right. It is much easier to bounce from port to starboard, back and forth down on Deck 4, than it is to do so up top, because there you have to go kind of all the way around in order to get across because of the. Because of the pool below. Yeah. Awesome. Fantastic.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: I wanted to go back because Christy shared in our Facebook chat for this that they had the laundry, such the sort of laundry deal that you mentioned, Rich, on her sailing May 25 to June 1. She said they stagger it on days two, three, and four. And so she specifically Requested to move hers to day two to take advantage of it. So that's a great pro tip out there. Thank you, Christy, for sharing that.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know that because I think we got offered it on. I think it was day four when we were on our sailing. Or maybe it was day three.
[00:42:05] Speaker C: You had already done laundry, so we
[00:42:06] Speaker B: didn't done laundry, so I didn't take. Yeah, exactly. I had already done laundry, I think on. On day two. Because. Why not? All right, well, you mentioned, okay, long character lines. This, this is day three.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: So this is still glacier days.
We had resigned to the fact that we weren't going to. To do any character meet and greets. And so it wasn't until about 7:30 at night, just right before our dinner, we were about to go to dinner and we went down to the main atrium area to take some pictures and all of the characters were there and they weren't just standing there. Mickey was up on Deck 5, I believe, which is the upper deck of that atrium area.
But the other characters were actively wandering around and engaging with the passengers.
So it was really, really cool.
You see my daughter there with Chip and Dale and Minnie Mouse, our family. Just kind of a candid shot with
[00:43:04] Speaker B: is perfect. I mean, that's exactly what you would get on the top deck. You get the Alaska scenery behind you. It's not necessarily that you get the glacier, you just get the Alaska scenery.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Also. Deck 4, again, can't give enough love to Deck 4, I guess, but. But there's no crowds. We were able to go up, they were on the move. So they would stop, take a quick picture, but then Minnie Mouse would grab my daughter's hand and then let's go to the next place. And so they would go and it was just a lot of fun. You see the characters interact with each other as well.
It just felt.
It was very Disney magic, those character interactions at that time. And it didn't feel like it was just trying to get through a picture.
Next picture, next.
It was a lot more personalized, if that's the right term for it.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I love the two pictures of your daughter walking with Chip and Dale and then with Minnie. I think that's awesome.
You did end up going to an adult only game show, the Intuition game show.
Did you guys get to spend a lot of time in those adult only areas or was this. I mean, it's kind of hard. They're long days once you start hitting the ports.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Long days. We had the later dinner.
They were trying to test out some new games on this, on this ship. And then again, I had to sacrifice some things where we had the NBA finals going on.
We had some things. So. So I ended up not participating in as many adult games on this cruise as I really would have on a Bahamas, Caribbean, you know, another type of itinerary, again, going into it with that purpose in mind of I'm going to try to get as much from the scenery, from the wildlife.
But yeah, intuition was a new game that we hadn't experienced before. I hadn't seen it on other ships. I don't know if that's new to the fleet or if that's specific to.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: I have seen it. I have seen it listed before, but I honestly couldn't remember. I couldn't tell you which game it is. And I'm not sure that I've actually been to it. I do want to know, did they have the dueling pianos on board the Wonder? I know that they've been having them on the Wonder and the Magic this season. I just don't know if they're on all of the sailings.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: Yeah, they did. Yeah. And dueling pianos followed. So they would have like intuition at I believe 10 and then dueling pianos would be at 10:30 and they played a few nights.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: Love it. Love it. All right, Brian, let's hit day four.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: So day four, we're finally getting off the ship. We've been on the ship for a couple of days now and we chose. This was the only booking that we did again, trying to figure out what excursions would be best. This is the only one we booked through Disney directly, but we chose the Glacier Point Safari took us out. It was about an hour and 15 minute boat ride. Did a small hike, a little canoeing and we went up to Davidson Glacier. As you can see in the picture, we actually got a little closer than that.
But that was a long, I think seven hour excursion that day.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Awesome. I love, I mean, the different excursions. This one's in Skagway, but different excursions offer different glacier opportunities depending upon what you are, you know, what you're interested in.
Do you feel like this was a good value? You booked it through dcl, so of course it's going to be more expensive than something you'd book yourself.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: The value is hard. It was expensive. I think it was $370 a person.
So for a family of four, it adds up pretty quickly.
It was a long day. It got us out and that hour each way on a boat, we were able to see some whales and some wildlife. That way it's bald eagles. While we were up there, it was educational kind of. All excursions were pretty expensive in my opinion. Much more expensive than you would see in other places.
[00:47:03] Speaker C: I think I'm curious because we say this all the time on the show.
You know, look, you can quickly like a huge portion of your budget if you're going to Alaska needs to be set aside for excursions. If you looked at what you spent on excursions across the trip, not I'm not going to ask you how much you spent but like if you think about the cost of the cruise, like what percentage of that ended up being kind of your excursions?
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Probably 30, 35% I'm guessing.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a big portion. If you consider like if you go to the Caribbean you can get a 35 year old, not 35, but like an $80, 70, 80 excursion that takes you to a beach. You can do a PS on your own for 35 probably. But.
But yeah, you know your family across multiplied across those excursions. I mean that can get, that can add up pretty quickly. So I think I'll be listing out there. Like you need to like if you go to Alaska, it's a place where it's excursion heavy and you're going to want to plan for that.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: So yeah, it was a little sticker shock as we were, as we were trying to figure out which ones we wanted to do. There's not a lot that are under, like you said, under $100 per person. You can always walk again. Skagway, you can walk around town. That's free. Juno, you know, Ketchikan walking is free but a lot of the other excursions cost quite a bit on these.
[00:48:27] Speaker C: And I would say this is a place where booking through the cruise line can help you. Not on the cost side but like some of the excursions, like yeah, you can go find the helicopter company that's taking people out to a glacier and maybe save some money. But like when we were in Alaska and we took the helicopter, they were telling us stories about helicopters that got grounded on the glacier for hours waiting for a storm to pass to bring people back in. And like the ship ain't waiting for you if you didn't book it through the cruise line. So they're not taking you to like a beach on the other side of the island where you might reasonably be able to call attack to get you back to the ship. They are taking to the far flung wilds of Alaska sometimes and it's not easy to get back. So.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Now you got to see the Mandalorian and Grogu on board.
Was this a premiere at sea? Was this the first day or was it just.
Just a showing?
[00:49:18] Speaker A: I think, I think the. The. It wasn't a premiere. It released nationwide the week prior.
22nd it released in the US and this was June 1st was our sailing. So. But it was really new. So we had watched it once before going. And then to watch it in the Disney theater. I hadn't seen a movie in the Walt Disney Theater before and I was pretty blown away by the sound, how good the movie looked on the screen.
They really did a good job and that was a lot of fun.
Again, the special popcorn buckets and all of that. That was nice.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Did they have an animatronic Grogu anywhere on the ship for this?
[00:49:57] Speaker A: They didn't. They didn't. They should have. Maybe it was. Maybe it was somewhere else. It could have been on deck 10.
[00:50:02] Speaker C: There you go.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: I didn't go up there.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: There you go.
It was roaming around. Doug, deck 10 so that you could line up for pictures with the glitch. Just kidding. Just kidding.
This day you actually went to. You went to a couple different adult only activities. Yeah. That was a long day. Rich.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Seriously was a new game that we hadn't played before either.
It was matching answers. They took 14 couples up and they had to.
They had to match answers to be able to stay in the game. And it got down to the last couple and then. Yeah, the magician that had played in the theater the day before did an 18 over show later that night too.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:50:43] Speaker C: So I'm curious because we don't always have people on who are able to do this much of the adult entertainment on board.
What did you think about the offering overall for the adult entertainment and what were your favorites? What things would you say? I'd go back to that.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: There was a show on, I think it was day five or six. Pop Pop was a lot of fun.
This seriously game was a lot of fun.
The one before that I had mentioned on day three, I wouldn't do that one again.
That one felt a little off to me.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: But I thought overall.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Intuition. Yeah, it just didn't really fit it. I don't think that the Disney brand very well.
But these other ones were a lot of fun.
And I think again for having long excursion days and things, I was pretty surprised by the amount of things that they had offered.
They did a good job with that.
And again, just coming off the adventure, it was certainly a Lot more than what was available for adults on the adventure, too.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: Yeah, good point. There are no adult only activities on the Disney adventure. And they have. I know they didn't have any adult only areas even on the maiden voyage. They have since made that infinity pool adult only. But I don't remember if it's all the time or if it's after a certain time of day. I can't remember.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's after a certain time.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right. Are we heading on to day five now? Yeah, we are flying through this cruise. Oh, my gosh.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Crab.
[00:52:21] Speaker C: But you're making me so hungry. Rich. Look at those crab legs.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: I know. I mean, next time I have to post even more pictures of food.
Day five, we had a helicopter glacier excursion booked. We were going to get up to, I think it's Menenhall Glacier. We're going to land, climb. But the weather just wasn't going to have it. So we ended up hanging around Juneau. And again, it ended up saving quite a bit on excursion costs because that was completely refined.
But walking down, going to the Alaska Museum was nice. There's just a few dollars to get into that. Our most expensive thing by far was. That was Tracy's Crab Shack.
That set you back about 100 bucks a person to be able to sample that. But that was a lot of fun. Our kids were not really crab. Crabby people.
So it was fun to be able to crack crab and eat it. Obviously delicious.
But it ended up just being more of a chill day. And again with the cloud coverage.
A little drizzly outside.
Not downpour, but just enough to kind of keep you moving between shops. And then we ended up going back to the ship a little bit early after we explored what we needed to and again got into bingo, which that's always a must do for our family.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: Have you ever won?
Yeah.
[00:53:40] Speaker C: Have you ever won?
[00:53:41] Speaker B: Bingo.
Net.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Net. No net. I'm down.
[00:53:47] Speaker C: Down.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: We're down quite a few hundred dollars.
Our kids. I think it was on the destiny, the maiden destiny. Our kids, we had like three winners in one game.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: And I think each person got like 40 or 50 bucks.
That's. That's the most. But no, never have won. Never have seen anybody win the mega.
One of these days. We're going to keep trying.
[00:54:11] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: We're going to keep telling Betty to shake it up until we win.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: I will tell you, the couple times we went on Celebrity Cruise Line with Brian's parents. This was back in 2008 and 2010. I feel like, we went to, like, every bingo session. We never won.
Brian's parents were paying for it, so I wasn't really thinking about the money that we were spending on the bingo.
I'll call them cards, but they were. It was the machine bingo at the time as well, where you'd get the bonus ones that were paper. Right. So you get a couple of paper ones, and the rest were the machines.
So I never won.
And then since we sail on Disney Cruise Line, I just haven't played because I'm like, I know I'm just wasting my money. I'm never going to win bingo. It's just not going to happen. And then we, of course, have had people on the show who won, like, $5,000 in bingo, so. But I'm. It's not me. It's. I'm not that lucky. Lucky.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: It would be awesome if we won.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: I think.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: I think for us, it really. It's. It's something that my kids are at a certain age now where they'll be off doing different activities, and if we say, hey, bingo's at.
They come. And it's a time outside of dinner for us to. To hang out as a family.
So, yeah, we spend some money, you know, get a couple drinks, have some fun.
Inevitably, we always. We always stand. Right. Because you're one number away. So the excitement builds.
A little disappointment when you don't win. But it was.
It's always a fun time.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: I love that. I love that. That's the way you get your kids to hang out with you. Pro tip. Pro parenting tip. That's how you get your kids hang out.
[00:55:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
Families that gamble together stay together. So there you go.
That's right.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:55:57] Speaker C: I was going to give the. I know I think we said this on the last episode, but I think Tracy's is the place, Sam, where we said, you can go to the place across the street and pay a little less and get. Actually, I think the last time we were there, the place across the street was berating Tracy's because they're like, oh, they just shipped their crab in from anywhere we get ours from the local.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: Well, because it was. Because they were.
They had run out. Now they were telling us at. At the place we went to that Tracy's had run out of.
So this was at Twisted Fish Co. In Juneau.
They were telling us that Tracy's had run out of the Alaskan king crab. And so what they were serving to people at the time, this was, you know, on that particular date was actually Japanese, like, king Crab or whatever. Yeah. Not Alaskan king crab. So it had been, like, technically, you know, Frozen shipped it, all of that. But anyway, that doesn't mean always, but we went to Twisted Fish Company.
It was still expensive, but I don't think quite as expensive as Tracy's. It's not. You know, it doesn't have the fame Tracy's does.
I gotta ask you, you mentioned on here you went to the Frozen musical. I'm gonna set that aside. The Broadway star series.
[00:57:09] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. What have you done with my wife?
[00:57:11] Speaker B: Well, because I'm talking about the Broadway star series is more important than the Frozen musical. All right, tell me about it.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: I didn't go. So Mackenzie in the chat, she went.
NBA Finals were this night. So I was in the room watching NBA Finals. I was like, watching a tennis match. I had the TV here and I was looking out the veranda on this side kind of back and forth, but I was. I was watching. Watching NBA that night.
She went, though, and she said those were again, of the. The cruises that we've done that have had Broadway guests. Those were some of her absolute favorite.
And then this 18 in that show, it wasn't just Disney either. They'd come from different backgrounds and done different things. So there's like some Wicked thrown in there and some other musicals.
It wasn't just Disney focused where, again, some of them we've done. Have just been only Disney.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: Did they have the. I'm curious, did you see if they had the NBA Finals playing on the top deck on Funnel Vision? Probably too cold up there.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: But they didn't. They didn't. They had it in crowdfin.
[00:58:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: And. And then again, just. But Crown and Fin. Trying to look outside sometimes isn't the easiest if you're not in one of those. Those window booths. Um, so, yeah, we ended up. My son and I got some room service, watched, watched basketball and looked out the window. Yeah, that was our.
[00:58:32] Speaker C: We were doing the same. We were doing the same thing, but just in the comfort of our own home there, Rich. So there you go.
We have been hearing. For those interested, we have been hearing that the. The Caribbean itineraries have been playing World cup matches on.
Not all of them. Not all of them, but like, they had the usa.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: USA game.
[00:58:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, moving on to day six in Ketchikan. What'd you get up to?
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Ketchikan was a lot of fun. Again, free activity is going to Creek street, kind of checking out the shops down there. You passed the Lumberjack show. It's really easy to find. Ketchikan generally was really easy to navigate gate, walk around a lot of. A lot of shops, a lot of great deals. But we booked this fish fishing excursion outside of Disney through this company, Exclusive Alaska. And what they do is they take you on a private little boat.
So it was just our family of four. We went out, we fished for four or five hours.
And then whatever you catch, they take you back to this campsite, they cook it up, and you eat a meal right there, right by the water, right by a campfire.
They spoil you with some. Some apple cobbler at the end, too, but really a really cool experience.
Our family, again, loves the opportunity to get out and do this, like, wildlife, these wildlife encounters. We were able to see a lot of bald eagle while we're out there. It was fun for my daughter to spot the first one and then everybody to try to find a nest and do different things. Things. Obviously, who catches the most fish. We're a little competitive.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Ice cream, right?
[01:00:09] Speaker A: It's exactly, exactly.
[01:00:10] Speaker C: But it was.
[01:00:11] Speaker A: It was a really great day and a chance again to get out. The weather was perfect. You're out there in those.
I guess it's a fjord, so the water's really calm.
We were worried about that on the. Being on a smaller boat, but it was great.
It was very glassy.
[01:00:30] Speaker C: What were you fishing for, Rich? Because my memory of Alaska is like, the salmon and the king salmon are all in the rivers. And so were you catching, like, halibut or, like, what were you going. What were you going after this?
[01:00:41] Speaker A: This was a rock fish that we were. We were fishing for. Okay, so we're fishing for rockfish. The other couple that were with us in our traveling group, they went and did halibut. They caught some halibut out there. But you're right, Brian. It was a little bit early in the season, too, for sand salmon.
[01:00:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:58] Speaker A: I've been up to Alaska before on other trips. Salmon fishing. It's incredible, but just a little bit too early in the year for. For that this time.
[01:01:06] Speaker B: The.
[01:01:06] Speaker C: The thing I would love to find for this, because I'd love to take Nathan on it, is. So when I went to Alaska for. For fishing with my dad, like, we. We. We did it all. We did king salmon, sockeye salmon, halibut, and then. But what I loved at the end is whatever you caught, you could trade with the local fishery and they would, you know, even you out in terms of, like, what the price per pound is on king salmon versus, you know, if you want some scallops or some smoked salmon or whatever it was. And then basically they just took all your haul from you and flash froze what you wanted and shipped it to your house. And. And then you end up with these like, great vacuum sealed flash frozen fish that last a long time in your freezer. And you could just pull one of those things out and, you know, grill it up or eat it. And so I'd love. I'd love to find an excursion that does that, you know, for the cruise ship folks who are visiting. Because, you know, we came home with like tens of smoked salmon or whatever, but it was not as good.
[01:02:00] Speaker B: Saying they would allow you to if you wanted it. Yeah.
[01:02:04] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, you could ship.
[01:02:05] Speaker D: And then.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: And then our friends that were with us that went halibut fishing ended up doing exactly that. A few days after they got home from the cruise, a box showed up with a. With a bunch of vacuum sealed frozen halibut. Halibut that they had caught.
[01:02:17] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:02:18] Speaker C: Nice.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: All right, that's what we're gonna do next.
[01:02:21] Speaker C: It saves you the trip through customs too, when you're trying to bring in all this sort of stuff. So. Yeah, that's great. That's great.
[01:02:26] Speaker B: I absolutely love halibut. So, like, I don't. I'm not a big salmon eater. I like smoked salmon and I'll eat salmon every once in a while. Like, and I love crab, but I like halibut is my fish. I'm not a big fish eater, but that's the one fish that I am kind of obsessed with that and Chilean sea bass, actually. But I would totally do go halibut. I don't touching fish, I'll be honest. But I would go fishing just to get.
Just to get help. I don't like fish to touch me in the ocean either. My friend Tracy knows this. She's in the chat. She's gonna laugh.
She says that I threw her between like me and a sea turtle. I maintain I just swam around her, but I don't want. I don't want wildlife to touch me in the water either. So I want to ask about you at the Broadway series. I want to pull. Pull up from the chat that MacKenzie is saying that the 18 plus version was the highlight. Broadway spotlights, not Disney. And so casual and personal. Go early. All the seats were full even 30 minutes before they started for the adult only version. But I want to ask you, Rich, about the family version.
Did they sing? I mean, they mostly sing. Broadway or Disney? Broadway.
[01:03:41] Speaker A: That one was definitely more Disney focused. Where the adult one kind of veered outside of the Disney music environment. But the family one was Disney exclusive.
[01:03:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:03:53] Speaker A: I think, to mackenzie's point, this one. And then on other cruises that we've been on, where they bring in the Broadway guests.
Those are packed, as you guys remember. Probably even on the Destiny. They had those Broadway stars on the maiden.
Do you think, to be there early to be able to get a good seat?
[01:04:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, Absolutely.
[01:04:13] Speaker C: All right. Well, we reached the last day.
[01:04:18] Speaker A: The last day.
Again, keeping it easy. We woke up early for our churro waffles.
Got to keep the tradition going.
More bingo. Some champagne tasting. Something new that we hadn't done before was this towel folding class.
They had that in. Oh, I'm spacing the name of it now.
The big open where they have D Lounge.
[01:04:41] Speaker C: D Lounge, Yeah.
[01:04:41] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, it was delaunch area. It was. And people had towels strung out all over the place. But it was a lot of fun and a whole new appreciation for, you know, the cast members that take care of your stateroom, hosts that take care of your room, and the towel animals that they. They put in there. It's. It's a lot harder than it looks, actually.
[01:05:02] Speaker C: I'm going to correct myself really fast from the photo background. I think this is actually. I can't remember if it's az or azure.
[01:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Similar to the d lounge space, but it's azure. Yeah. That's where the bingo and the towel folding anyone can cook was over in the d lounge area.
And that one was interesting, too.
I don't know that that class gets a lot of love, but I think it's a little understated.
They had three different ones. They had sea bass as the adults. Family, anyone can cook. They had a lobster ravioli, and then they did an apple strudel.
So a. Of fun with. With anyone can cook. Majority minds, sometimes that's adults. This one was. Was family.
And then mackenzie and I went to Paulo dinner to kind of to wrap up the. The cruise.
[01:05:51] Speaker C: So how did that go for you on the last night? Because, like, we've done.
I do enjoy doing the adult dining on the first night because that tends to be a night that most people haven't booked. How was it for you on the last night?
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it was something we. We actually discussed trying to figure out logistically with the suitcases. We wanted to make sure we.
To change into some comfortable clothes and have our suitcases outside. But what we decided was we were just going to do the express walk off. Even with our multiple suitcases and so it ended up not being an issue.
It was actually pretty busy.
The whole all of Paula was full but it was nice. It was a little bit earlier dinner too. I think we started at 6:30, um, and then. But by the time we were, we were done again, all the seats were full.
[01:06:41] Speaker B: So yes, I think it's a nice way to end the cruise. The only negative is not getting to say goodbye to your servers. But if you're out in time, which you probably were, you probably got to pop by to say goodbye. Or you might see them in the morning for breakfast. If you're planning on, you know, if you're planning on doing breakfast but with express walk off, I think it's less likely you would schlep all your stuff to breakfast in the morning and more likely you're going to run to two cabanas, grab something, you know, back to the room.
But yeah, I think if you have time to go say goodbye to them, it's always a nice thing to do. On that last night, yeah, to your
[01:07:20] Speaker A: point, it was it. The timing ended up being perfect. If we started at 6:30 at Palo, we had an 8:15 seating and our last night was at Animators. So by the time we got done we were texting the kids, they were just getting their entrees. So we ran down and at Animators, the show had just started and we were able. To your point, say goodbye to our servers who were fantastic. They were some of the best servers we've had on all of our trips.
They were great.
[01:07:51] Speaker C: So Rich, as we wind down here, I want to ask one last question. And for those watching or listening afterwards, I've got a slide up with Rich's details. He is a travel specialist and so we'll have him give those details to you over the air here in a moment minute and we'll also have them in the show notes. But Rich, I'm curious. You have sailed, obviously a very. You sailed the full fleet on Disney. You've done, you know, an adventure expedition kind of cruise with a different cruise line. Like would looking at Disney Cruise Line for Alaska and the Wonder specifically, would you do that sailing again? Would you look at doing something different in Alaska? Maybe more like a small ship expedition cruise or going with a different cruise line. Like what's your thought on, on doing Disney for Alaska?
[01:08:40] Speaker A: Yes, to all of that,
[01:08:44] Speaker C: all the cruises, all the cruises.
[01:08:47] Speaker B: A million times.
[01:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, keep it going.
I think doing it on a smaller expedition would be different.
Again, not necessarily we would do Ritz, but just seeing The Ritz ship up close to the glacier. It reminded us a lot of again, that Antarctic experience where it's a smaller ship, you get out in the little Zodiacs. It's a little more intimate with the wildlife and the scenery. We did miss that aspect of it, but going and I think Disney did such a great job with that Glacier Day.
The stops are probably agnostic to whatever cruise line. Again, Ketchikan is Ketchikan, depending no matter what ship took you there.
But just having I think that Glacier day. I don't know of any other cruise line that does that. Well, kind of bringing out the magic of the day and the wonder of the setting that you're in.
They really, really did a great job. And yeah, we were looking at maybe jumping back on another one in June. We were trying to figure out how to make it work again. You know, some of the agent rates that are out there.
[01:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And one of the things you can do to get a little closer to the glacier is you can do that Glacier Explorer add on excurs on Glacier Day. So the larger ships can only get so close to the glacier.
Smaller ships can get even closer. Not just smaller cruise ships, but smaller sort of like you mentioned, like Zodiacs or other sort of smaller ships. And so if you do the glacier excursion, I think it's called Glacier Explorer that Disney Cruise Line offers, it's a vendor, but you have to book it through Disney Cruise Line. And so you can get quite a bit closer. But it is expensive. I mean it's over $300 a person from my memory. So that adds up very quickly.
[01:10:36] Speaker A: Fifteen hundred dollars for our family. So we decided, yeah, again, because we had seen some glaciers, we had some other glacier activities planned, that one didn't make the cut. But you're exactly right. Those ships. And by the way, those, the people that went on the earlier sailing of those smaller ships, they saw a bear.
So there's your reason to do it next time. But they have an adults only one later in the afternoon too. So they did, did a kind of general admission, you know, to start and then adults only later in the afternoon. So two different bookings.
[01:11:11] Speaker C: I wanted to call out before I throw it over you, Rich, to give kind of your, your plug here. I want to call out. Holly Franklin has a great, great comment in the chat about the Disney excursion for fishing. She said the men in our group did fishing through Disney and Ketchikan and it was catch and release.
They were really, they were a little disappointed. I, I would be like I'm not a sport fisher. I want to go fish the fish to bring the fish home to eat it.
[01:11:35] Speaker B: So.
[01:11:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rich, as I mentioned earlier, you are a travel specialist. You want to let folks know where they can find you if they want to book a fabulous vacation.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So MacKenzie, who's been in the chat, and I have family passport adventures.
We love doing Disney. We love doing all things Disney. That's kind of. Kind of our focus. But Antarctica and some of these other places, we've done all wonders of the world except for one. We've got one. One left to go.
[01:12:04] Speaker B: Is that the pyramids?
[01:12:06] Speaker A: Petra.
Petra in Jordan is our last place. But we've been everywhere else. We've been all seven continents as a family. So trying to understand not just how to get places, but how to do it effectively as a family.
We love helping friends and family and those interested in those types of trips. Have you done passport adventures on Instagram?
[01:12:26] Speaker C: Have you done an adventures by Disney before, Rich?
[01:12:29] Speaker A: We have not.
That's high on our list.
My son's really been asking. He's 16.
For his graduation trip, he wants to do Germany. So we thought about maybe doing the ABD for Germany for his graduation present.
[01:12:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Nice.
[01:12:45] Speaker B: Awesome. Fantastic. Well, Rich, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate great pictures, great presentation. I just want to put a plug out there. We've had a lot of guests, both for live shows and for recorded shows. Ask about doing presentations, PowerPoint presentations. Currently, we don't have the ability to do it for our recorded shows. The platform that we use just doesn't allow it. So if you're going to be on one of our recorded shows, don't prepare a presentation. It's not that we don't want one, it's just we can't do it right now. Maybe that will come in the future if you are a guest on our live show. Not recording required, but we certainly encourage it because we know that these great visuals help folks really see what the experience is and connect with the experience. So we really appreciate. I got to give a shout out to Ashley Norton because I think she's sort of the. The start of the PowerPoint presentation live show.
[01:13:39] Speaker C: I think it might have been CT. Actually.
[01:13:41] Speaker B: No, I. I think it was Ashley who started it. But CT has. CT is another great generator of PowerPoints. But Rich, your PowerPoint was awesome. We very much appreciate it.
For those watching, we will be back in just two days. We'll be back at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. So just a Half hour earlier than our normal Monday live show. And we're going to be talking with ct. He just got back from, I believe it was the Rhine River Cruise on Adventures by Disney, so on AMA Waterways. And so we're going to be covering his Adventures by Disney river cruise in just a couple days. And then next week we will be talking Alaska again. We'll have Kelly Maples joining us and we're excited to talk to both of those folks. And then after that we'll be on hiatus for a little bit because we
[01:14:33] Speaker C: will be hiatus from our live shows. There will be.
[01:14:35] Speaker B: That's what I mean. Yes, there will be plenty of shows. Don't worry. We've got like, we've been putting out like Brian's been putting out like three
[01:14:41] Speaker C: shows content for days on this side of the equation.
[01:14:45] Speaker B: Lots, lots and lots of shows and he's been prepping all of these shows to go out while we're gone, while we're, while we're over in Europe. So we'll be flying out next week in the middle of the week. And so we will be on hiatus for the live show for just, I think we're just going to miss one Monday. But anyway, so we're making it up by putting out a Wednesday live show this week. So please tune in. Thanks again to everybody watching and listening.
[01:15:12] Speaker C: One last plug before I take us out, which is if you are not already, you know, following us over on Instagram for any reason, please head over there because when we travel we use that to push out kind of real time photos, videos, reels and things like that of the experience. And I expect we'll be doing very much the same when we leave for Europe next week. And across our Adventures by Disney Cruise, which is of course podcast Cruise version 2.0, we will have several, several cabins of listeners with 10 cabins of listeners with us, I think think it is. And so we are very excited to share that experience with them and we really want to, you know, have you follow along and share the experience with us as well. So please head to Instagram, you can find us at DCLDUO over there.
[01:15:53] Speaker B: And plus I can't get my sponsorship with Topo Chico unless I have enough followers on Instagram, guys, so help me out.
[01:16:00] Speaker C: All right, all right, all right, all right. With that I'll say thank you for watching, thank you for listening. We will see you here in a couple days apparently for another live show with ct and thanks for hanging in out there as our live audience and, and we will see you next. See you in two days, I guess.
[01:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:23] Speaker D: Well thanks everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. 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 live, 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. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com dclduo or email them at dclduomypathunwinding.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 links 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. We sell some fun Facebook 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 DCLDUO.com 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 402-411-35590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL Dual 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 Disney vacation, please contact the great folks over at My Path Unwinding Travel or Disney directly, or your own travel agent.
[01:18:19] Speaker C: Thanks again for listening, and we'll see
[01:18:21] Speaker D: you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
[01:18:24] Speaker C: Good night.
