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We are looking at doing an inside passage cruise in June, one-way from Vancouver, drop off point is dependent on which cruise line we go with, but lets say Whittier for discussion sake. Then our plan is to spend one more week on the main land doing our own sight seeing.
We are traveling with my parents who are in their early 60's and are still very active. My husband I also have three boys: ages 12, 11, 9. They are great travelers and are always up for adventure. For most of us this will be our first trip.
For those of you who recommend the cruise... will you please give recommendations for specific cruise lines. I've researched some of the different cheap student airline tickets cruises and it would be wonderful to take the smaller cruises, but I would rather not spend $5,000+ per person.
You will receive many different answers to your planned trip to Alaska. We went on Holland America 3 years ago and loved it. The reason I decided on HAL was because of the ship's size (1200 passengers) and being able to get so close to seeing the glaciers.) I did a lot of planning and research to give me ideas of what to do in the ports. I got a good deal (not $5,000 pp) on HAL that included a two night stay along with the cruise. The two nights were definitely not long enough so if you are planning a cruise and land tour that would give you plenty of time to explore. We flew to Fairbanks and then boarded the open top train (think your boys would love this ride, u see wildlife, etc. along the way) to Denali. We stayed at a Princess lodge as part of the package and loved it. Our day in Denali was spectacular and our favorite (we were 6 "seniors" on this trip). We took the bus tour, the Tundra Wilderness Tour (TWT) and this was an 8 hr. trip into Denali. Absolutely positively highly recommended. We saw all kinds of wildlife into the park and actually did get a glimpse of Mt. McKinley. Sometimes it is not visible. I am sure others will give you definite itinerary ideas.
The advantage to a cruise is that you get a lot of inclusions in your price - all the food your boys can eat and then some (lol); wonderful shows, guest lecturers, etc. Think your parents would love it also. You can get so close to the glaciers you can almost touch them and your boys would definitely love that. Scenery is spectacular as well. We loved our day in Juneau as there is lots to do there - we took the bus out to see the Mendenhall Glacier and that was a wonderful cheap student airline tickets experience! We also took the tram to top of Mt. Roberts and explored up there, hiking trails, etc. Think you would love a day in Juneau.
There is much to do in each of the ports stops. Whatever cruise line you choose will have a list of the port excursions that you can sign up for. You can also opt to get off the ship and explore the particular port. This is what we did in a couple of the ports. The big thing we did was to book a float plane excursion (I booked on my own) in Ketchikan. It is expensive to do this so u may not want this option. You can find lots of info on this if you are interested.
There is so much to do for your boys that they won't be bored. This ended up being one of our favorite cruises and we have taken many wonderful European cheap student airline tickets cruises. Do your planning well in advance of your trip and scan the boards for info from others who have gone. As I noted, I am not an expert on the land portion of your trip so you would need to get ideas from others. Maybe sit down and work up an itinerary for your group and fine tune it w/ recommendations from the others. This is what I usually do when planning our cruises. As I said, I am definitely not an expert on Alaska but given you our perspective cheap student airline tickets of our cruise. You need to decide what your budget cheap student airline tickets will be and go from there. Good luck and keep us posted.
Alaska is an enormous state, with a number of very distinct regions - from the rain-forested cheap student airline tickets southeast panhandle (where the Inside Passage is located - along with parts of coastal British Columbia) cheap student airline tickets to the mountainous southcentral region, to subarctic forests, the tundra of the far west and arctic north, even the wild and remote volcanic Aleutian Islands. Most of this area (by a wide margin) is inaccessible by road.
Each of these regions has incredible natural beauty, wildlife, and human history that are also very distinctive. Polar bears to Orcas, Yupik Eskimos out on the Yukon Delta that have more in common (culturally, linguistically) with Siberia than with Tlingit natives in the southeast.
The answer is that you have to choose, because nobody (short cheap student airline tickets of someone with many years and many thousands of dollars to spend) will see more than a tiny fraction of this diversity in the space of one or two visits.
The cruises focus almost exclusively on the southeast panhandle and its Inside Passage scenery and towns. These are historic and interesting places, to be sure, with plenty to see, even if one doesn't participate in the costly "excursions" the ships offer (and which is one of their major sources of operating profits.) There are glaciers, totem poles, whales, salmon to be fished, the ancient cheap student airline tickets native practice of zip-lining and lots of shore-based jewelry stores selling Tanzanite, just like you can buy on St. Croix. And the cruise ships definitely have an impact: on some days there can be five 2000+ passenger cruise ships visiting Skagway, a town with a population of about 800. You can do the math.
If you take a one-way cruise, they'll still focus mainly on SE Alaska, but then will charge across the Gulf of Alaska (usually at night so that the open ocean, which can be bumpy, doesn't result in sick passengers) to their ports of Whittier cheap student airline tickets or Seward.
Whittier and Seward give you access to southcentral Alaska and to the main body of the road system, from which you can explore such areas as Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, the Mat-Su Valleys, Denali NP, or head further to Fairbanks or the Wrangell-St. Elias mountains, or Prince William Sound and Valdez.
Again, cheap student airline tickets there's an infinity of things to see in these areas, too, so more choices are needed. Visiting Denali NP needs at least three days (one to get there, one to penetrate the park's interior - no private cars allowed most of the summer - and one to return or move on.) The roads are good but the distances are very long and accommodations thin on the ground. Certain areas like the entrance to Denali Park and the settlements all around it tend to be impacted heavily by tour bus groups.
The cruises are easy, and amazingly cheap all things considered. You get transportation, decent food, entertainment, and a water-view hotel room (and what a view!) all for a pretty cheap price. You unpack once and don't worry about schlepping bags around for a week. There are kids programs, baby sitters, unlimited room service, gyms, pools, a casino, lots of bars, schlunky art auctions, ice carving, cheap student airline tickets movies... or you can sit on the deck or your balcony and watch the scenery slide by. Not too shabby. But it's mainly a cruise ship experience, not an Alaska one. It's not all that different cheap student airline tickets from a Caribbean cruise, except for the glaciers and mountains that take the place of palm trees.
If you drive around cheap student airline tickets for a couple of weeks you'll see more on land but won't see much of the watery forested landscapes of SE Alaska. Logistics will be more complicated, but still very doable. Because of the long distances, you'll need big enough vehicles for everybody to sit comfortably, and things to amuse the kids for hours at a crack. With the size of your group, you'll probably have to rent two cars and use a walkie-talkie to communicate, as cell phone coverage might be spotty outside the towns.
cheap student airline tickets I'd probably combine a cruise with a week on land. Depending on where you're coming from (an issue is jetlag - Alaska is four hours earlier than the east coast) I'd probably start in Vancouver and cruise north - use the easy days on the boat to overcome the time change.
Then when you get to southcentral Alaska I'd rent a couple of cars and focus mainly on the Kenai Peninsula - Seward, Homer, etc. and not so much on Denali. Save your "excursion" money on the cruise and allocate it instead to two activities once you're off the boat.
Second, rather than spending hours on the road to visit Denali, then more hours sitting on the shuttle bus into the park (which can be boring for many, not all, kids) splurge with a flightseeing tour of Denali, either from Anchorage or Talkeetna. Personally I'd recommend doing it from Anchorage, because it will give you the added benefit of seeing some of the vastness of the state that you can't see from the car OR from the cruise ship.
In my view, getting up into the air at some point is crucial, and I promise cheap student airline tickets it will be life-changing for the kids. The experience itself is unique, and the chance to see amazing sights, wildlife from the air, and to see what real wilderness looks like... worth every penny, but be warned - it's highly addictive.
The cost of the flightseeing can be mitigated by locating affordable accommodations in Anchorage - maybe a hotel with cooking facilities so you can pack lunches for excursion days, or one that includes breakfast, whatever. Utterly worth it.
But again, you're only seeing a tiny fraction of the state. Plan a return visit - maybe to Barrow or Kotzebue in the arctic, or to Anchorage for Fur Rendezvous ("Rondy") in the late winter, combined with the Iditarod start. Or out to Lake Clark to see bears and go fishing, or (a real adventure) ride the state ferry out the Aleutian chain to Unalaska. Or head to Fairbanks in February to see the northern lights, or to Sitka for its music festival... See what I mean?
I am interested in the answers to this thread, as I am just starting to plan a trip to Alaska for early next year - early in the Alask