My wife and I took this same cruise ten years ago to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We promised ourselves if we ever got the opportunity, we would return to Alaska. True to our word, we booked our Alaskan cruise for June 5-12, 2010 with the same itinerary as before, but this time bringing along our two sons, ages 17 and 22. We have only cruised twice, the first time on the Ocean Princess' inaugural voyage to Alaska; this time on the Diamond Princess.

Booking our Cruise We booked our cruise and air through Princess; I probably wouldn't do that again as I'm sure I could have saved some serious money booking the air myself and flying into Vancouver a day early. However, since we had limited time due to work schedules, we opted to let Princess handle all of the arrangements. As I've already alluded, we flew from Tulsa, OK to Vancouver (via Dallas, TX) on Saturday morning, leaving the Tulsa airport around 8:00AM and arriving at Canada One Pier a little after 3:00PM. Our transfers and brief encounter with immigration at the Vancouver airport were uneventful. We were on the ship before 4:00PM.

Stateroom The Diamond Princess was fully booked for this cruise—2600+ passengers plus crew, but the ship never felt crowded...well maybe a little during the feeding frenzies at the Horizon Court Buffet. Because we wanted to spend a little more money on shore excursions, we opted for an inside cabin for both my wife and I and our sons. We booked them a separate room adjacent to ours after considering the logistics of four adults living in less than 200 square feet for a week! That turned out to be a wise decision on our part, which allowed the boys to come and go as they wished without disturbing us. They tend to be more nightowls than we are. Read more