We took the train from July 13th thru the 19th. Our Tour Director, Kate, was amazing and so was our Coach driver, Elizabeth. There is a lot to see and learn on the train. The food is excellent and slightly higher than expected, but learned quickly, that is the way it is in Alaska. Each Lodge or Hotel we spent the night in were excellent. I will give one piece of advice, pack all you need for the train in one suitcase per person and keep it that way. I started putting things in my husband's that were mine, and vise versa, then next night had to search, so learned not to do that. My husband is handicapped, uses forearm crutches and a scooter, each stop was completely accommodating. We were traveling with two of my husband's cousins, so we did have lots of fun.

I will suggest one thing, if you want to do a Flight seeing tour of Mt. McKinley, wait until you are at Talkeetna and choose Talkeetna Air Taxi. We had a flight scheduled for 8:00am pick-up on the second day in Talkeetna. Our Tour Director called them and due to weather changes on the day we scheduled, they were able to take us at 6:00 the day we arrived. We had an excellent young man for a Pilot, a husband, wife, two daughters and a Grandfather, me, our cousin and a young couple. We went over Mt. McKinley, got beautiful pictures, even wearing our oxygen masks, since we went up to 20,000 ft. Landed on a glacier, after our Pilot explained "If I say load up, do it safely, but quickly". It started to cloud in after a little over 10 minutes, loaded up and took off. When the young couple got in I noticed she was crying, I asked her if she was ok, and she held out her left hand and said "I just got engaged". So we had excitement on the glacier! Since we were not on the glacier very long, our pilot felt her short changed us. Another pilot talked to him and suggested landing where he was on the Ruth Glacier. So, we got to land on another glacier, next to a Sheldon flight seeing little plane, it was really little.

Later in the Lounge we were talking to everyone who we knew booked flights with KS and Sheldon and all said they were cancelled. I mentioned that there was a Sheldon plane on the Glacier and the couple was surprised. We had a terrific flight tour, great pictures of Mt. McKinley, don't know why the others cancelled, but glad we went with TAT, excellent company, friendly and very professional. Believe me, I do not do little planes, was not thrilled with the idea of oxygen masks and going over the highest mountain, but I was completely at ease and SO glad I went. Read more