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Island Princess Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,228 reviews

Cruise/Land trip to Alaska with kids and was fantastic!

Review for Alaska Cruise on Island Princess
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Cruise for four
First Time Cruiser • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Jul 2009
Traveled with children

Let me start with saying this was our kids (ages 8yr and 10yrs) 5th cruise and me and my husband's 15th. I will give as much detail as I can about the ports in the sections below. Here is a basic review of the ship and ports as a whole. We stayed in a mini-suite with a balcony and it was great since we have four of us in one room. I read from many reviews that the standard rooms have very tiny showers (even for cruise ship standards). We had a bath/shower so plenty of room. The balcony was nice for sailing past the glaciers. The ship holds 1900 which is smaller than we are used to and that was REALLY nice. It never felt crowded like on many other ships. The downside was that the kids area wasn't big and the older kids were combined with the younger kids. Ages 8-12 are usually in a separate room with more big kids stuff. After seeing the room neither of my kids cared to go. They loved in two months ago on the Crown Princess because it's a much better space for older kids. Dining- Bayou Steakhouse was great. We didn't go to Sabatini's but have gone on other ships and is usually very good. The anytime dining worked great for us especially since some of these ports are LATE. The singers and dancers are excellent on this ship. But they don't have as much variety as other ships we've been on. Packing: I wish I could have found this info somewhere. We wore layers everyday with long sleeve and tshirt under and sometimes a jacket. I'm always cold so I wore by jacket every day. I never wore shorts even though I've heard other say to pack shorts. It was never warm enough for that and they said they were having warm weather. Now onto some basic info regarding ports. Ketchikan and Juneau were my favorites. Skagway was ok but we didn't see much of it. The glaciers are amazing. The land portion is great. IMPORTANT: DO LAND PORTION FIRST. We did the cruise first and then the land portion. We were exhausted when it was time to come home. For the land portions since they weren't a cruise port so I can't give detailed info below so I'll do it here. Talkeetna is a GREAT place to salmon fish. We used Talkeetna Adventure Tours. We caught 50 salmon between the 6 of us. It was the best excursion. We then went to Denali and we were of the lucky 7% who actually saw all of Denali(AKA Mt. McKinley). It was amazing. We did the natural History tour. In Fairbanks we panned for gold at El Dorado Goldmine. I would say go there if you have kids. Mine loved it. The riverboat tour is AWESOME. I highly recommend that. Fairbanks was my least favorite city I think. Not as pretty as the other more wilderness settings. My only complaint with Princess would be that our time in the airports and flying time was 15hours from Fairbanks to Austin, TX. They have direct flights from Seattle to Austin. Instead Princess gave us two (2 1/2 hour layovers) at midnight and 4am with small kids. That was the worst part of our trip. I will never book air through Princess again.

Cabin Review

Our cabin was C708 - loved being right near the laundry. There is only one per floor. We were near the back. But our cabin was great. Plenty of room for a family of four.

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