I found very little information on NCL Cruisetours (the land portion), so I'm including that in the trip. The four of us -- my parents (age 72 and 74), my nephew (barely 14) and myself (51) had a wonderful time on the Denali Express Cruisetour, but the logistics leave a lot to be desired. Unless they get their act together, I'd recommend you put together your own land tour - you can do it yourself.

The short story is: NCL outsources the management of the land tour to Premier Alaska (or most of them, anyway). No one at NCL can answer questions directly, and if there are any problems, it will take you (or in our case, your Travel Agent) hours to sort it out. I could list all of the issues, but I won't bore you. Suffice to say that the communication between NCL and Premier Alaska is lacking, Premier Alaska may or may not put you up in a "hotel" that is really just a decent room in what is otherwise a campground (complete with RV's and tents), and the Tour Director may not be familiar with the property at which you are staying or some of the possible upgrades you may be interested in. All of the problems we had on the ground could have been easily avoided, and were made worse because of the hours spent in advance of the tour unsuccessfully trying to sort things out in advance.

That said, the Denali Express starts in Anchorage. We enjoyed the Clarion Suites as a perfectly acceptable 3 star hotel -- with a really responsive and helpful staff. We loved the glass domed train from Talkeetna to Denali National Park, and even saw Mt. McKinley aka Denali clearly from the train (apparently only 30% of visitors even see it through the clouds!). Read more