Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Royal Caribbean Alaska Cruise

As any readers I have can see, I'm playing catch up on my blogging today. I've been meaning to post some stuff but, I just didn't give off my procrastinating butt and post. This post concerns my upcoming 7 day Alaska cruise with Royal Caribbean.
I think it was last winter that I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do travel wise for this summer. I wanted to return to Iceland and finish all the sightseeing I'd like to do there but, it turned out I didn't see any reasonably affordable package deals I liked. My friend Harvey was interested in doing an Alaska cruise. My travel agent Joel raved about it saying the sights were stunning. I decided to look into it and to my surprise, I found a nice deal with Royal Caribbean for a cruise in late May. I subsequently booked it then, Royal Caribbean decided to put the ship in dry dock for some renovations during the month of May. They offered me a deal where they would give me a $400 ship board credit, a more expensive date in June 2011 and pay the fee to change my airplane tickets. I readily agreed to the offer. So, next month, I'll fly out to Vancouver, Canada and board the Radiance of the Seas for a 7 day Alaska cruise.

The cruise will stop in Ketchikan, Icy Strait Point, Juneau and Skagway. I should get to do a number of Alaska type things like salmon fishing, see a glacier and hopefully see some whales. The ship itself will be a new one to me as I've never cruised on a Radiance class ship before. The ship is smaller than the Adventure or Navigator of the Seas. It holds a max of 2,500 passengers. Still, it should be a nice ship and, I look forward to exploring it when I board for my cruise. This will be my third cruise with Royal Caribbean. This time, I should definitely know all the ropes with them. I've already got my boarding paperwork done and my cruise luggage tags are en-route to my home. They should arrive in plenty of time so I'll be able to attach them to my 1 bag. Also, I've booked in advance all my shore excursions and prepaid for their unlimited soda refills. I know I have to drink a lot of soda to make that worth-whiled but, I prefer that to Royal Caribbean charging $2 to my ship account for every soda I drink. Another nice thing about prepaying on the sodas is that the icon they put on your ship pass is made into the pass vice them attaching a sticker to it. Stickers can come off and, I prefer the icon being part of my ship pass.

I plan to use Royal Caribbean's WiFi again. I was impressed with it last time. One nice difference Internet wise on this cruise is I should be able to post stuff while at the various ports in Alaska. My Sprint USB modem should work in those towns. We'll see on that.

That's all for now. Stay tune for some interesting travel posts coming in the future. Soon, I'll get to play the world traveler again. I can't wait. It seems like ages since I traveled to Peru. Good travels to you all.

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