This was an Alaskan Cruise-Tour to places and ports we did not see in 1997
Golden Princess Cruise Review by Kapuna2U
- Sail Date: Jun 2018
- Destination: Alaska
- Cabin Type: Mini-Suite with Balcony
This was our second Alaskan Cruise-Tour and our 18th Princess Cruise. We took this Cruise-Tour so we could see Alaska again and visit places on the land tour and ports on the cruise that we did not visit on our first Princess cruise in 1997. Our Cruise-Tour in 1997 was a special one to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Gold Rush and included stops in Dawson City and Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory of Canada. This recent Cruise-Tour was an escorted land tour of 8 days followed by a 7 day cruise. Chris Colle was our tour guide on the land portion and he made a great land tour even greater!! This time we wanted to see the other places we did not get to see before like Copper River and Kenai and also revisit Denali and Fairbanks and we thoroughly enjoyed all the land excursions we took.
On this cruise we stopped in Skagway, Juneau, and Kitichikan and took the White-Pass Railroad again and also saw the new suspension bridge. We normally don’t like 7 day cruises, but adding the land tour makes it better. Our cruise was a pretty normal one, except we had no time to take part in some of the ship activities due to the short cruise and our port excursions. We missed a few of the shows, but the big production shows were great. The food on this cruise was just okay and we had some issues in our cabin bathroom with the toilet and the shower that were serviced promptly when we called, but were never fully resolved. We also noticed water leaks at different places on the ship, which might be due to an aging ship. I also was surprised that the public laundry rooms were closed for 3 days due to environmental reasons that were never explained and the postings on when they would reopen were misleading. When they finally opened (20 minutes late) there were many people waiting to do laundry. I would not say that this was our best cruise, but we still had a good time and the issues that we had didn’t affect our enjoyment of this Alaskan Cruise.
Cabin Review
We enjoy having a mini-suite and our cabin steward Nilo was very good. The only problem we had in our cabin was in the bathroom with the toilet and the shower. We had to call for service on the toilet 5 or 6 times due to it either stopping up or not flushing and it overflowed a little one time. Other times there would be no water and it would make a loud sucking noise that would not stop until someone came to service it. We had to call sometimes very late at night, but they always sent someone to fix it right away. We never put anything in the toilet except for their thin toilet paper, so not sure what was causing the problem. In the shower the handle that is used to regulate if the water would flow into the tub or from the shower never worked. The water only flowed from the shower until they came to fix it and then it flowed from both. Also the temperature regulator on the shower did not work properly. Turning it only minutely one way or the other made the water either freezing cold or scalding hot. When we finally got it once in an area where it was sort of lukewarm, we left it at that place. I am not sure if they ever fixed it, but the last shower we took without adjusting it, was actually a nice temperature.