Royal Caribbean - Radiance of the Seas Alaska Review

My Review of the Radiance of the Seas Alaskan cruise, September 2006

We left Labor Day weekend for Vancouver, BC with another couple for our week long cruise north to Seward, AK.

The pre-cruise hotel

We booked the hotel through RC cruise line about 3 weeks before the cruise.  The hotel was very nice and the price was comprable to anything else we had checked in the area.  The location was just around the corner of the main shopping street in Vancouver.  This was a good choice, since staying there meant we had transportation to the ship when it first opened to passangers.  The check in took less than 15 minutes for the 4 of us to check in and get through security.

The cold weather cruise experience:

We left Vancouver in shorts and t-shirts.  The first day a sea was very overcast and rather cool.  We spent the day watching dahl's porpoise, whales and sea birds outside of our balcony.  Everyone on the ship was excited to point out where the latest Sea Life was appearing.  That was the first clue that the people who were on this cruise are in a different mind set than when you are on a Caribbean or European cruise.

This cruise was the most casual of 7 day cruises that I have been on.  Formal dinners are still elegant, but everyone is relaxed and a little bit underdressed by Caribbean standards and very underdressed by European standards.  I think it had something to do with the life styles we were seeing at the ports. 

Excursions:

The Alaskan cruise is not a cheap cruise experience.  At least for our group it wasn't.  We are all in our early 30s and we wanted to experience as many things that we can't do in the lower 48 as we could.  We hunted online for non-ship sponsored excursions, and what we found was that they were exactly the same tour and price as the ship offered ones, but without the guarantee that the ship wont leave without you if your tour runs late.  So we booked all our excursions through the ship.  I won't lie, it's not cheap, but it was worth the cost.  (If you don't want to spend a lot of money on a cruise excursions, most often you'll be shopping at tourist friendly stores or grabbing a bite to eat at a local bar.  At a few places you can hike up into the mountains, but being city folk we were happy to have guides that explained what you should do when you see a bear and what you shouldn't do when you see a moose.)

Our excursions included: helicopter tours that landed on glaciers, Juneau, Train tours that included a guided hike, Skagway, a Bike and Hike or Whale watching tour in Sitka and Bear watching tour, Icy Straight.  All tours delivered an experience none of us will forget.  We did have time to shop at each location, because our tours were only ½ day tours.  So if shopping is your thing you'll have time to do both, since these towns are pretty small and easily walkable in 2-3 hours.

Wildlife and Scenic Photography. 

You can't have enough memory!  Our friends' boarder on photography professionals and came armed with HD-Video cameras and special lenses.  I will admit the pictures they took are amazing and worth the extra they spent on camera equipment for this trip.  Eagles, Whales, Bears, Waterfalls and even slugs came out it great numbers for us to photograph.  Actually by the end of our cruise we were a little tired of tour guides stopping to let us photograph Eagles.

The Weather:

Alaska is a temperate rain forest.  The key term is ‘rain' forest.  The only time I was really annoyed with someone on this cruise is when a lady was complaining about the rainy weather in Alaska.  I told her that if you wanted sunny hot days you were on the wrong trip.  We had prepared for the weather, we dressed in layers and didn't let the rain get to us, in fact we actually thought the weather was nice, we expected more rain, so we were happily surprised.  At one point we were hiking in Skagway in jeans and t-shirts because it was really nice weather for hiking.  So if you don't like rain, cold, and aren't easy going when it comes to doing things in the rain, stay home, Alaska isn't for you.

Final Overall Thoughts.

I'm so glad to have seen Alaska while young enough to experience what we did.  I had the impression that there were going to be a lot of ‘Seniors' on this cruise, and there were, but this cruise is really for the younger 30 somethings who want to experience a taste of the Alaskan adventure.  This cruise didn't have many children on it, but we figure this was because we went right at the start of school for most grade/high schools. 

After the cruise ended we rented a car for an additional week to experience inland Alaska and Denali.  It was worth our time to plan a trip extension since the fligts to AK take so long, and we didn't know at the time if we would be back.  I can say after going up there, we'll go again, it was just that good.