My husband and I traveled with another couple. We are all in our 60's. We have cruised many times, mostly with Celebrity and Royal Caribbean although with have been on Norwegian, Carnival and this was our 3rd cruise with Princess.

We took the land tour first. We arrived in Anchorage around 8:30pm a day early, since we wanted to spend a day there and get acclimated to the time change. (We're from Florida, so it was a 4 hour difference). My tip is DO NOT opt for the Princess transfers from the airport to the ship. We arrived a bit tired and hungry.We ended up having to wait 2 hours for all the flights to come in before we could board the bus to the hotel. Of course that means there were about 4 or 5 different hotels to drop people off at. At least ours the Captain Cook, was the first drop off point. The young bus driver was so chipper and happy to show off Alaska, but no one on the bus cared about her cheery comments and jokes. We all were very weary travelers and just wanted to get to our hotels. We could have easily grabbed a cab at our convenience and got to our hotel at least an hour and a half earlier if we had not opted for the transfers.

The check in was smooth and we got to our room and crashed. We just ended up breaking into our stash of snacks we brought on the plane again because no one was in the mood to go to a restaurant or even grab any food. Read more