Diamond Princess Review
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Additional details
We flew to Fairbanks 2 days ahead of the start of our tour. We stayed at teh Alpine Lodge near the airport. Since most of what we wanted to do was in town, this wasn't the best choice for us - we ended up spending a lot on taxis. if we had a car it would have been a great location though. (see all my hotel reviews on tripadvisordotcom)
Tour: Our tour started from Fairbanks. There were some logistics issues with the buses and we ended up waiting for longer in town for the bus. But the bus did eventually come get us and we were on our way (the literature says be at the airport by 2 for a 3 pm departure. but if you arrive by 11 or so they will take you downtown and pick you up later, 2:15ish. it's nice if you don't want to spend your day at the airport). The buses we perfectly comfortable and were clean. When we boarded the bus we were given our first information packet. It included info about the Denali Princess Wilderness lodge, our room info & room keys, map, and already booked tour info. we had 2 nights there which is necessary to do the longer tours of Denali.
**** I highly suggest upgrading from the Natural History tour to the Denali Wilderness Explorer tour. the NHT only goes to mile 13 and lots of people did not see any wildlife. We took the longer tour, which goes to mile ~52, and saw a lot of animals. We had a great tour.***
Cabin Review
Balcony
Our room C702 was supposed to be able to accommodate a roll-away bed - it does if you push the other 2 beds together and push the roll-away against the others (3 mattresses making 1 solid bed). And it wouldn't allow for any maneuvering around the room. Luckily there was also an overhead bunk, so we used that instead of the roll-away. The ladder for the bunk does end up splitting the beds (good for us, but may be odd for a couple).
It was surprisingly quiet for being near an elevator.
I was worried about being cold in the room, but the room was very nice - we even kept the heat turned to as low as possible.