This is our 5th Alaska cruise. We love going to cool and beautiful places in the hot summers back home. We usually go up and back from Vancouver, which is wonderful. This time we flew to Anchorage, spend a week there and in Seward and took the Noordam south to Vancouver. it was a wonderful experience, the best we have had. The ship was comfortable and very enjoyable. We upgraded to a Signature Suite for the first time and that gave us a larger cabin (we previously only stayed in a Veranda cabin) that we really enjoyed: 2 sinks in the bath, more cabin room, larger veranda, etc. We found that eating breakfast and dinner in the dining room was great, more personal, better food, and kept us out of the highly competitive Lido dining. We asked for and got the same table each evening so that meant our serving staff got to know us and we got to know them too. We loved the fact that HAL gave us a full wrap-around walking deck that we could enjoy each day. Three times around the deck was one mile, and the beauty of the surroundings made walking a few miles really easy.

We love going to Glacier Bay with the National Park rangers on board and that is something everyone who cruises this way should enjoy. This was the first time we had stopped in Haines, instead of Skagway, and that too was a surprising joy. We rented a car from Captains Choice rental cars and struck out on our own day of discovery. We saw lots of whales and wildlife on our shore excursion out of Juneau, and suffered through another required day in Ketchikan. Every cruise stops there and it is crazy busy.

The Noordam needs a bit of refitting and I understand that is planned. But overall, this was a great ship and a great cruise.