My wife and I booked, last summer 2008, a 13 night Alaska "Cruise-tour" (package # 15) with Celebrity Cruises for 8/8-8/21/2009. Land portion first, than a 7 night south-bound from Seward cruise on board the Millenium. It was a wonderful two weeks. I will attempt to describe it in as much detail as possible:

We flew from Washington DC via Air Alaska to Seattle and then connecting their to Fairbanks, Alaska for arrival around 3:30 p.m. Alaska time on Saturday August 8 2009. We flew first class, because Air Alaska offered a real deal, only $950 each (one way) - and other airlines were offering Coach to Fairbanks from Washington DC for about $700 each (some with two plane changes). We did not use Celebrity's services for our plane arrangements, because we felt we had more control over our flight itinerary this way. However, coming back from Vancouver (where our ship disembarked all passengers on August 21) we flew in the back of the plane on NWA, connecting via Detroit (a less busy airport than Chicago or Minneapolis for those heading to the East Coast) to Washington National Airport - because first class one-way was a little more expensive out of Vancouver to DC ($2,500+ for each seat vs. only $434 each for a Coach seat!).

We stayed, in Fairbanks, for two nights at the "Sophie Station Suites", a former apartment complex for oil pipeline workers and now a hotel for (mostly) cruise-tour passengers. A modest facility, but with rooms that had a separate bedroom and kitchen (no central AC; a window unit in the bedroom), so there was a decent amount of space for two. Also, a Safeway supermarket is about a 6 minute walk from the hotel, as is a Fred Myer (kinda like a Target) store, where the wife and me bought a salad bar for dinner the night we arrived, and breakfast for the two mornings that we would be in Fairbanks. There is also a Taco Bell next to the Safeway. And there is a free "Trolley" (actually a bus with a blue outer shell to look like a trolley) that stops at the hotel doorstep every hour on the half-hour starting at 1 p.m. and running to 8:30 p.m. every day. It takes you on an a circle of Fairbanks (with many stops along the way) that takes about an hour, and includes a run up into the hills to the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus on the outskirts of F-Banks. The second day in Fairbanks you get a Celebrity Bus Tour that takes you to a gold mine tour, which the wife loved but I found a bit hokey. EVERYONE gets about $10-14 worth of gold in their pan, and if you can't find the gold, there is someone to help you pan it out. Read more