I booked a minisuite guarantee for the cruise. On Friday evening before the cruise on Sunday I got a call from Princess that they had oversold the minisuites and that they wanted us to take a handicapped balcony room instead. The minisuites were 325 sq ft and the handicapped room was about 100 sq ft larger. She said it was a very nice room. They gave us $1499 to change rooms. When we arrived in the room we were very disappointed. The room was kind of shabby and the trim on the vanity and night stands was all beat up. The room smelled very musty. When our suitcases arrived, my daughter's carry on was all wet. She said it smelled like mouthwash. A lot of her clothes were wet and some of them were stained, so we were not off to a good start. We stopped at the customer service desk to see what could be done. They said they would look into finding us a different room, but decided to do a spring cleaning instead. We found out that the exhaust fan in the bathroom was not working properly and that it had a shutoff if the balcony door was open. We kept it open most of the time so in a couple of days the smell was back. We decided that we could be glad we were on a cruise where they cooked for us and we did not have to make the bed or do dishes, so we decided to make the best of it. The room steward offered to have her clothes sent to the laundry, but she just washed them out in the sink and was able to get the spots out.

We booked a fishing trip in Ketchikan, and talked to the tour desk about an hour before we were to depart and she said that some of the fishing tours were cancelled due to the rain and wind, but ours was on. We got out to the dock and found we were cancelled so we booked the duck tour. Because of the Weather conditions they could not go out on the water so we just had the ground portion of the tour at half price. We took The Bus to a state park to see the totem poles and then went back to the ship.

The next stop was Juneau where we went to the Mendenhall Glacier and Whale watching. We were on the way back to the tour bus going down the ramp and a black bear walked right in front of my daughter. She followed it with the video camera and got some good footage. When she yelled bear to me the bear got scared and walked away and came about 10 feet from me. I tried to get a photo but he disappeared behind a wall before I could catch him. Whale watching was great. We saw lots of orcas. The captain said it was the best whale watching cruise he had ever had. Read more