We had never been to Alaska before, so we went with a 14 day cruise. To be clear, this is really two 7-day one-way cruises, 7 days from Vancouver to Whittier, 7 days back to Vancouver. While this sounds redundant, it's not. On the way north the ships tours College fjord near Whittier, on the way back we tour Yakutat Bar/Hubbard glacier. It does stop at Glacier Bay NP both ways, and also Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. For us this just meant a different shore excursion at each port.

While the Grand Princess is one of the older ships in the Princess fleet, it's been refurbished in 2019. It's showing it's age a bit in places like the balcony, but for the most part is fresh, clean and modern looking. We found the food very good, the standard restaurants (Da Vinci, Botticelli) provide multi course meals with varying menus each day. The extra charge Crown Room was very good. We didn't care for the meal at the other extra charge restaurant Sabatini's. If you don't need or want a full 5 course sit down meal, the buffet is quite good, and we also enjoyed Alfredo's pizza. Snacks/desserts are available 24/7 at the International café.

The medallion is great, it knows when you are at your stateroom and unlocks the door, and you can track other travel companions. That said, the phone app needs work. It works part of the time, but is prone to freezing up and very clunky. We made dinner reservations using interface on the TV monitors in our room.