Alaska is the most gorgeous place I have been to on this earth. DH and I decided to do a cruise there, and ended up having four friends go with us. We were on RCCL's Radiance of the Seas. It is not their biggest class ship, but it is lovely.
Trip review includes time in Vancouver and Anchorage. We had a long trip and I have a lot to say, so I am breaking this review into various parts: Cruise (general, good and bad), Vancouver, ports: Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Icy Strait and Seward, and, finally, Anchorage.
We made our plans and then sent a mass email to friends about our plans and, to our delight, had 4 friends who decided to go with us. We have cruised before with Royal Caribbean and so we picked a 7-night cruise on Radiance of the Seas (Radiance Class) leaving Vancouver, BC one-way to Seward, which is 2 hours south of Anchorage. We tacked on some time in Vancouver and Anchorage on either end. FWIW, I highly recommend this as a group trip. More and more people are going to Alaska and there were other people in our age group on the boat, but compared with a Caribbean cruise, this was an older crowd. So...having a ready-made group of our peers to hang with was great...although we did not always do everything together.