Planning- Background

Before we get into all the details, I should probably introduce us to those who haven’t read my reviews before.  We are a family of 3, including myself, my husband Jason, and our son Ian, who turned 4 in June.  This will be Ian’s 3rd cruise, but despite our best efforts to explain it to him, he has zero appreciation for how lucky he is to take 3 cruises in 4 years.

In general, I love warm weather and sunshine.  So why am I taking a cruise to Alaska?!  Well, it just intrigued me.  The scenery, the wildlife, the glaciers.  It just felt like it was time to finally see what the fuss is all about.  Ian’s daycare camp ended on July 18, and then he had two weeks off before the new school year started, so this was the ideal time for us to travel.  Plus, the idea of escaping Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat sounded like a fantastic plan!  I spent a long time looking up all the itineraries on every cruise line going to Alaska this season.  I definitely wanted a roundtrip itinerary out of Seattle because airfare to/from Vancouver and Anchorage were very high.  That narrowed the options down quite a bit.  NCL had an amazing 9-day itinerary, but unfortunately it ended on Monday, August 4, which was Ian’s first day of school so obviously we couldn’t take that cruise.  I strongly considered the cruise on Royal Princess because it goes to Glacier Bay, but because of the configuration of the cabins on Princess, we needed at least a Premium Balcony to fit the 3 of us (there was no way I would let my 4 year old sleep on an overhead pull-down bunk, which meant we would need a Premium Balcony cabin to get a pull out couch for him), and those priced out to more than double what we ended up paying on Carnival.  Even before taking this cruise, I had a feeling we would do another Alaska cruise in a few years when Ian is old enough to take some more adventurous excursions, so it was hard to justify the very expensive Princess cruise right now when there’s always another opportunity to visit Glacier Bay in the future.

When I found this cruise on the Carnival Luminosa, I knew it was perfect for us.  There’s not much variety between the 7-day Seattle roundtrip itineraries, so that wasn’t much of a factor.  The dates were exactly aligned with when we were available to travel.  We would fly to Seattle on Wednesday, board the ship on Thursday, and when we returned to Seattle the following Thursday, we would have 3 whole days to explore Seattle before flying home on Sunday. 

Planning- Itinerary and Cabin

Originally when I booked this cruise, I selected a 4K interior cabin with an obstructed view.  On most ships, I only considered a balcony cabin because the interior cabins were too small for 3 of us.  The balcony cabins on all of the cruises I looked at were way out of budget, and I couldn’t justify the cost.  These category 4K cabins were priced the same as a regular interior cabin, but they were way bigger and had the same configuration as a standard balcony, only instead of a balcony door, there is a floor-to-ceiling window.  The view is looking out over the lifeboats, but that didn’t bother me because I doubted we would sit in the cabin looking out the window.  The cabins were located one deck above the wrap-around promenade deck, so I could totally see us hanging out down there to watch all of the scenery, or we could go to any of the other public spaces around the ship.  I know a lot of people say they will only cruise with a balcony to Alaska, but with the potential to be cold or raining, there was a risk we would never want to sit on the balcony and then we spent all of that money for nothing.  These 4K cabins were significantly cheaper than any other cabin on other ships sailing in Alaska, and it was even a lot cheaper than the Mexican Riviera cruises we took in 2023 and 2024, so it was just too good of a deal to pass up!  Plus, with the money saved by not getting a balcony, that opened up a lot more options for excursions!

I booked this cruise way back in April of 2024, a year and 3 months in advance.  Around that same time, my mom told me about the travel agent she used for several cruises.  My mom had some issues pop up while she was already on one of the trips, and the travel agent was very helpful in getting things sorted out and resolved, allowing my parents to enjoy their cruise.  My mom also mentioned that this travel agent gave her lots of money in onboard credit for each of her cruises.  I have always done all of the work with planning and booking my cruises by myself, and I have never considered using a travel agent before.  I guess I assumed that it would cost me money to use a travel agent, or that I would have to give up control over my cruise and hope the travel agent didn’t mess things up for me when dealing with my booking.  I really prefer to be 100% in control of things so I know they are done correctly, and I was very hesitant to have someone else in charge and risk that they made a mistake or something that would create more work for me in the long run.  Since my mom had worked with this travel agent for a while and had nothing but good things to say about her, I decided to give her a call.  Since Carnival gives you 90 days to transfer a booking to a travel agent after booking a cruise, I was still within the window and she was able to take over the booking and give us $100 in onboard credit.  It wasn’t a huge amount, but she explained that it is based on the base fare of the cruise, and since our taxes and port fees were one third of the cost of our cruise, the base fare wasn’t very much.  Of course, I wasn’t upset that we booked an inexpensive cruise, but obviously I would have liked more OBC!  Haha!  Regardless, $100 is $100 and I decided to go ahead with transferring our booking to her.  

Over the next 5 months, the price of our 4K cabin incrementally dropped by $225, so each time it went down, I was able to take advantage of price protection with the Early Saver fare and match to the lower price.  In late September, Jason closed a huge deal at work (the biggest deal of his career thus far!) which earned him a generous commission and he wanted to allocate some of those earnings towards our vacation.  Sounds good to me!  At first, I assumed we would upgrade to a balcony cabin, because while I was perfectly happy in our 4K interior cabin, a balcony is always better than no balcony, right?!  I looked closely at the deck plans and there were plenty of balcony cabins available to book, but then I saw the aft-facing balconies.  Oooh, those would be amazing for an Alaska cruise!  Unfortunately, there were only 4 aft-facing cabins on the entire ship with a 3-passenger capacity, and they were already booked for our cruise.  Then, I noticed there was a small section of cabins near the mid-ship elevators that were categorized as Premium Balconies, and there were a few left which could accommodate 3 passengers.  The balconies on these cabins are a little deeper, which I hoped meant that if it was raining, we could stay somewhat dry if we sat at the back of the balcony.  What really intrigued me about these cabins was their interior was bigger than a standard balcony.  There was a lot more space between the couch and the bed, so that would give us more space from Ian while we slept.  There was also a second desk between the couch and the bed, giving us even more space to stash our stuff.  The shower in these cabins had a glass door, so that was another nice benefit (although it was definitely not a deal breaker if we had the standard shower curtain).

The Premium Balconies were all located on decks 4 and 5 in a bumped out section of the ship, right near the mid-ship elevators.  Deck 3 is open to the atrium and lobby bar on deck 2, so I was afraid deck 4 cabins in that area would hear the music from below.  That left deck 5 as our best option, but there were only 3 premium balconies available which would allow for 3 passengers.  Two of those 3 cabins were at the back end of the bumped out section, and the side of their balcony was open on the side.  This meant that they wouldn’t have much privacy since everyone in a balcony along the section of cabins to their aft could see into the balcony.  It also risked having wind and/or rain blowing in from the side.  The only other cabin left was cabin 5312.  It was located very close to the opening into the elevator bank, and I usually try to avoid that location in case noise drifts up from the atrium a few decks below, or in case people are being noisy while waiting for their elevators, but the temptation to have this bigger cabin with a better layout and deeper balcony was just too much to resist.  I cleared the idea with Jason, and then called our travel agent to update the booking.  Since the cabin cost more than our original cabin, she could now offer us more money in OBC.  That didn’t quite make the upgrade pay for itself, but it did take the edge off, and Jason’s commission covered the rest.  We were officially booked in a premium balcony cabin for our Alaska cruise!!!  

In the midst of all that cabin research, I was also researching our tours and excursions.  Figuring out what to do in each port was quite daunting at first.  I mean, it’s ALASKA!  That’s a huge bucket list destination for so many people, and while it honestly was not really on my radar until relatively recently, I quickly learned all that our 49th state had to offer.  There are so many incredible options for people interested in more adventurous tours, but we had to keep Ian’s interests and safety in mind.  I will get into more details when we get to those days of the trip, but just as a quick summary, this is our itinerary map and what we had planned for each day:

Wednesday, July 23- Fly to Seattle

Thursday, July 24- Embarkation Day

Friday, July 25- Sea Day

Saturday, July 26- Tracy Arm Fjord and Glacier Explorer small boat excursion

Sunday, July 27- Emerald Lake Tour with Dyea Dave in Skagway

Monday, July 28- Jayleen’s Whale Watching Tour in Juneau

Tuesday, July 29- Tide Pools and Totem Poles with Alaska Puddle Jumpers in Ketchikan

Wednesday, July 30- Sea Day, then brief evening waterfront walk in Victoria

Thursday, July 31- Disembarkation, then Outback Kangaroo Farm in Seattle

Friday, August 1- Pike Place Market food tour, ferry to Bainbridge Island, dinner at Ivar’s

Saturday, August 2- walk along the waterfront, dinner with Jason’s friends from when he lived in Seattle

Sunday, August 3- Fly back to Phoenix

To break up all of the text from this post, here are a few of my favorite photos that I edited with special effects…

Planning- Airfare and Hotel

Our original plan for airfare to/from Seattle was to use some of the Southwest Airlines points that Jason has accrued on his work trips.  Unfortunately, Southwest released their flight schedule long after most other airlines so I based my decision on the 2024 schedule.  Southwest only had 2 direct flights per day from Phoenix to Seattle- one at 6am and the other at 6pm.  Both of those times seemed horrible and left me in search of an alternative.  I found a promotion through Alaska Airlines where if you opened their credit card and met the minimum spending requirements, you would get 50,000 points and a free companion pass.  Alaska Airlines has several direct flights between Phoenix and Seattle, so it would be easy to pick a flight with convenient timing, and we could use a combination of points and the companion ticket to cover the cost of airfare for all 3 of us.  Plus, everyone booked on a reservation with a credit card holder can check one piece of luggage for free, so I knew we would take advantage of that considering all the layers I would need to pack for an Alaska cruise!

When considering a hotel to stay at on the night before the cruise, I was very focused on our logistics.  One option was to stay up near Pier 91 to make a short drive to the cruise port for embarkation day, but there weren’t many options of hotels or things to do up there, so I didn’t love that idea.  Another option was to stay downtown in Seattle near all of the tourist spots, but since we were staying in Seattle for 3 days post-cruise, we could save our touring for then.  Our third option was to stay close to the airport.  While I was looking into airport hotel options, I noticed that there was a huge shopping center and mall located 4 miles east of the airport.  We planned to arrive in Seattle in the early afternoon, so all we needed from our hotel was a place to sleep and a location nearby restaurants for dinner that night and hopefully somewhere we could buy our bottles of wine to take on the ship.  

There were several hotels located within walking distance of this huge shopping center, so we decided to book a room at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Seattle South Tukwila.  I was able to book the hotel using the Chase travel portal, so that allowed me to use up the $300 travel credit I received as a sign up bonus for my credit card.  I had no other use for this travel credit as most of my travel bookings are not done through the Chase portal, so I decided to splurge on the room type to use up our entire credit.  In theory, I could have booked a less expensive room and saved the rest of the credit for something else, but that didn’t seem likely.  The reason I picked this hotel was they had a suite that included one king-sized bed in its own room with a door that closed, then in the living room area there was a queen-sized bed plus a pull-out couch, and the bathroom door was in the living room too.  My plan was to let Ian sleep in the king-sized bed because we could close his door and let him go to sleep early while Jason and I watched TV in the living room and eventually went to sleep on the queen-sized bed.  Obviously we would have preferred to sleep in the bigger bed, but letting Ian have his own room was well worth the trade off.  This hotel included a free hot breakfast, a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel, and it was a one mile walk to the shopping center (although I hoped the shuttle could drop us off and save us the walk).  This seemed like the perfect place for us to stay the night before the cruise, and we could take an Uber up to the ship the following morning.

As I mentioned, we stayed in Seattle for 3 nights after the cruise.  We disembarked on Thursday, so it only made sense to stick around in Seattle through the weekend to extend our time away from the Phoenix heat.  We opted to book an AirBNB for the 3-night stay to have more space to spread out, and to have access to a kitchen for quick breakfasts.  After a quick search, I found the perfect spot!  It was a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom private unit on the ground floor of a duplex, where the hosts/owners live upstairs in case we have any issues or need them for anything.  The rental is just a 5 minute walk from the Space Needle in Uptown Queen Anne, with tons of restaurants within walking distance, and the price was cheaper than most decent hotels nearby!  We booked the AirBNB over a year in advance, which turned out to be very wise because I noticed sometime this winter that they were fully booked for all of June, July, and August so obviously this is a popular rental!

Up next: flying to Seattle… but first, a few more fun edited photos!