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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
~*Borski2b*~
I saw on the travel board you booked an Alaskan cruise. I would love some more detail if you care to share. We are looking to do a family vaca next August. Thanks!
Re: ~*Borski2b*~
Yes! We are very excited.
We are going on Holland America's Oosterdam roundtrip from Seattle next month. This is my second cruise and my husband's first, but my first one was when I was 15 so I'm really quite new to the planning/booking process.
I've used the cruisecritic.com boards for a lot of info. They recommend choosing your Alaska cruise based on the itinerary you want. Hubbard Glacier and Glacier Bay National Park are two of the most highly recommended sights. We decided we wanted to see Glacier Bay National Park and then just picked the cruise that worked for our dates and price range. My second choice was Princess, but it was a little more expensive and it was getting to the point that every dollar more mattered.
If you have multiple family members going, consider booking a balcony room and a nearby inside room if budget is a concern. I'm sure a travel agent could help you arrange that. You'd have to book a specific room instead of a guarantee category though. I used vacationstogo.com to watch for deals and had the added sense of security to be speaking with someone when booking. They are a national company, but based in Houston and I felt good about using them.
I have always heard that if you go on an Alaska cruise, you have to have a balcony. Some people on cruise critic disagree, and say that having an inside room is just fine because there are so many public spaces to enjoy the scenery from. I think some of the negatives of paying extra for a balcony room are: cutting into your excursion budget (there's a TON of cool stuff to do in the ports!); being too cold and windy to really spend a lot of time out there; not being able to look from both sides of the ship as you might be able to on deck (missing scenery or wildlife because you're just looking from one angle on your balcony). That being said, we could swing it, so we booked a Balcony Guarantee room. That means that we will def. get a room with a balcony, but we don't know which category. We may not find out until our sailing date. There are minor differences like solid steel railings in the most basic rooms instead of transparent fiber/plexiglass ones in the higher categories. Obviously I'd like to have the nicer ones, but we'll settle with whatever we get.
The whole trip is panning out to be more expensive than we had hoped, but we're okay with it considering what we are getting. Our cruise price ended up being $999 per person, but once we add tax and service charges and flights to Seattle, a pre and post cruise hotel night in Seattle (my DH loves Seattle and this was one way to get two vacations in one!) and a couple EXPENSIVE excursions in Alaska, it adds up. We are doing a boating wildlife tour in one port for about $150 pp, a glacier hike for $180 pp and then plan to sort of explore the other two ports on our own.
Plan for rain and gloomy days. As a sunshine lover, I'm worried it will rain our whole time there, but I've never heard anyone complain that rain ruined their Alaska vacation.
I guess I don't know too much else right now until we go! I should post a review when we return... feel free to message me again if you don't see anything. Or let me know now if you have any other questions! Happy Travels!
Wow! Thanks for the great info! I will for sure be forwarding this along to Fh's family.
I'm wondering if excursions are necessary (I know they are not required but you know what I mean.) I know this will be kind of expensive, but I am cutting my trip to London/Scotland in June 2012 short to help pay for it.
Can I just call vacationstogo and they will just send over a quote? I've never really done anything through an agent before. Also, there are so many people going and they put me in charge of looking so do you think they can give me a few different itineraries? I will probably call them tomorrow so if you don't feel like answering these it's ok I'm kind of rambling. But I do think going through an agent will be very helpful since we live far away and all the travel arrangements to get there.
I would prefer a balcony and I'm sure most the family will to, but I just graduated and am looking for an adult job so we may be the ones stuck in the inside room.
I guess I will have more questions once we have more set plans thanks for the help so far!