Need help with first time cruising. Need to travel May 23,24,or 25, 2009. My husband and I are in our 50's but active. We are wanting an Alaskan cruise with good viewing from ship for Glaciers. Choices: 1.Diamond Princess May 23; 2.Island Princess May 25. Princess ships are Vancouver to Whittier.
3.Holland America Zuiderdam on May 23. The Zuiderdam is round trip Vancouver, but to have a good experience we are willing to fly from Vancouver to Anchorage after cruise to finish our own land touring. We like to do our own land touring when traveling.
We like a good bed, good food, and cleanliness. Important note: We plan to have an inside cabin so we can do more excursions and land touring in Alaska.

This was my first time writing on any forum. Sorry for not separating our possible choices better.
Thank you for any help you can give.

I imagine that the viewing from either Princess or HAL would be pretty much the same. (If I were going south to north, I'd go for a starboard cabin--however, when they view glaciers, they do a 360 so everyone can see.)

However, to get the maximum glacier viewing, RT is not the way to go. My first trip was one-way to Seward and there were many beautiful glaciers to see north of Glacier Bay. That said, my last three trips have been RT to simplify my travel to and from ships.

If you are going to Anchorage anyway, I'd surely take the ship. We loved the Volendam, which I think is only doing the one-ways now.

Thanks LVSue for your help. Your negative on RT for glaciers is helpful. I wanted to take the Volendam one-way, but the date did not match my husband's vacation from work.
We thought it would be better to take the cruise first, and a week on land during first week of June after the cruise. Thought Alaska would be warmer and ofter better viewing even though it is only one week later.

I have seen several bad reviews regarding Princess' food,so I was concerned about the Island Princess and Diamond.

I hope someone gives me some feed- back regarding these 2 ships.

Also: We did the Icefields in Canada and went up on glacier. Is it worth the money to do again in Alaska?

you might want to go to cruisecritic.com and click on each
line's ships to view what past passengers have to say.
Both lines have very happy return customers. Good luck w/your quest.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

We have just about decided to take the Island Princess due to timing with work.

Maybe we can take the Alaska round trip in the future on another cruise line.

vacationstogo.com often has good prices.

I think HAL is a notch above Princess, though both are very good, and you'll have a fine time on either.

I was on Princess in 2001, and thought the food was excellent. However, after going on HAL last summer, my wife and I booked it (while still on board) for a cruise this summer to Alaska.

I would make sure you get a balcony, and if you have the time do one week cruise and one week on the ground (in either direction, just don't try to fly from the southern terminus back up north -- huge waste of time and logistically difficult). Both Vancouver and Seattle are interesting cities, though Seattle mandates at least one stop in Canada (usually Victoria).

Pilgrim,

Someone else gave me vacationstogo.

Have you ever tried them or has anyone else? I have been looking at them for years for inf, but have always been afraid to use someone on line.

Shared your concern about on-line travel agents. We are going to Alaska on Princess in 4 weeks - at suggestion of those here we used cruisecompete website. It basically sends your cruise out to bid and you get emails with prices.

Upside - we got a great price (booked 6 months ago) and the cabins we wanted. I spoke several times with very ehlpful person at on-line TA and got all my questions answered prior to booking. Any concern I had about doing busin ess this way was relieved by going to Princess website and seeing my name and payment received on their websigte.

Downside - when we needed to add transfers to our reservation, Princess would nto speak with me since I used TA and I had some difficulty getting real person to speak with - turns out original person had left. Now have new person I speak with and everything is fine.

Cruise food. Everyone wants something to complain about. If you compare cruise food to your local bistro that cooks for 100 people per night, I do not think that is fair comparison. Cruises cook for a few thousand people multiple times per day - we have cruised RCCL, NCL, Celebrity and had some great meals, some only good. If you read food complaints in detail, in my opinion some of the complaints are trivial. On our 3 cruises we have always found waitstaff extremely willing to resolve any issue we may have.

Don't know when you are booking, but we return end of June and will post trip report (Coral Princess)

Gail,

Thanks for information.

How do I see cruise reports such as yours that you plan to post?

What would I click on this site?

I would enjoy reading what others have to say regarding their cruise to Alaska.

We were on the Diamond last year and it was great. The food variety is better than most. It's not the best crusie line food, but definitely not the worse. It's above average. They have 4 themed dining room with different theme specials (Chinese/Mexican etc).

The Daimond is a beautiful ship. Go check out the pictures. The tile work at the pool is something else. The ship was built in 2004 and some area may be a bit tired.

Pick a cruise that will spend scenic crusing at Glacier Bay National Park. It is a Must See in my opinion.

You will have the same view from any ship, even with an inside cabin. You just spend your time in a public area, get there early and get a great seat (and vew).

Spend some time on first sea day to walk around ALL the public area and find out where is the best place to hang around and view the scenery. There are surprise places that you might not think about. Hint: get a deck plan and find all the doors.

Diamond has "wind breaks" at the open deck up top which makes it less windy. Bring a water proof wind breaker and dress in layers to be sure. You want to be outside.

If you must go with Princess, pick Diamond over Island.

Round trips are inside passage cruises. Not the same experience.