We did the cruise/land tour departing from Vancouver. The ship was attractive and the balcony cabin comfortable and spacious enough for our needs. It was well maintained by the steward. Not all staff were of the same level of competence on the ship. Service at the International cafe was a bit of a shambles at times and we were served the wrong meal a couple of times in the main dining room. We generally avoided dining on deck 16.

.Of the first seven days which were spent at sea only two involved ports of call. As other people have noted we missed Juneau and for what I believe were avoidable reasons. We enjoyed wandering around Ketchikan and in Skagway we organised our own travel to Emerald Lake. I understand the train broke down so we made a good choice.Both places are interesting, picturesque and entertaining for a few hours. The land tour involved a great deal of travel and I calculate that over seven days we spent about 26 hours in transit from one place to another which includes time sitting waiting for bus or train. It is worth noting that on this itinerary for the land portion you are largely "prisoners" of Princess in that once at the lodge there is often nowhere else to eat so, for example, expensive meals that were not particularly wonderful are inescapable. In Kenai through no fault of Princess excursions were cancelled so we spent a day at Seward; at Mt McKinley there was the feeling this was just an expensive stop in the journey to Denali. I cannot comment on Denali as I contracted the flu from passengers on the bus and thus missed all excursions.. In Fairbanks the day gold panning and travelling on the river was rather corny but good fun with entertaining commentary. We stayed on in Fairbanks for two more days so we could really experience the city and then flew to Anchorage for two days. Here we visited the Wildlife Refuge which was great and got excellent photos of the animals that we did not see anywhere else. Alaska is a wonderful place with beautiful scenery, wonderful people, great stories and we are immensely glad that we made this trip. We are just not enamoured of the way Princess constructed and conducted the trip.