The Jones Act, or Merchant Marine Act of 1920, says that cruise ships operating between U.S. ports must be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, and U.S.-crewed.  As far as I know, the only cruise ship currently sailing to meet this requirement is NCL’s Pride of America which sails week-long cruises through the Hawaiian islands.  As a work-around, the cruise lines utilize foreign-flagged vessels and make stops at foreign ports of call to avoid violating the law when traveling between U.S. ports.  But what about cruise ships sailing out of Seattle and visiting Alaska?  All of those places are in America, so they must also include a stop in Canada to qualify as a foreign port, even if they only stop there for a few hours.  Ideally, that stop would have more traditional port times, but because of the time it takes to travel from Ketchikan back south to Victoria, our ship (and most other 7-day Seattle round trip itineraries) wouldn’t dock until 8pm, with an all-aboard time of 11:30pm. 

When I originally booked this cruise, I assumed we would just stay on the ship when it docked in Victoria.  This was the last night of the cruise when we would need to finish packing, and we didn’t think there would be any activity we could do with Ian so late in the evening.  Even after we were on the ship, I intended for us to skip this port.  At some point yesterday, Jason mentioned the idea of leaving Ian in camp and just him and I getting off the ship for a few minutes to walk around.  We decided to leave our options open and see how we felt after dinner.  If we were able to pack up our big suitcases during the day, and Ian was content with spending another night at Camp Ocean, then perhaps we could get off the ship and walk around just for a few minutes.

Since we weren’t docking until 8pm, today really just felt like any normal sea day at the end of a cruise.  We didn’t have anything specific on the agenda, so we left our alarm clocks off and slept in until Ian woke us up at 8am.  Unfortunately, “slept in” wasn’t fully accurate as I woke up a bunch of times throughout the night and never once entered deep sleep.  I don’t think I have ever gone so many consecutive nights with such poor sleep!

Once we were all awake and dressed, I requested a table for sea day brunch and it was ready almost immediately!  I guess everyone else on the ship opted to sleep in too!  We sat in the very back of the dining room with a view of the wake, but it was so foggy we could barely see anything.  It was hard to complain though considering we had such great weather when it mattered most!

Remembering how painfully slow our service was on the first sea day brunch, we were impressed at how fast it was today!  I ordered my usual bagel with lox and cream cheese so I could eat the lox and Ian could eat the bagel.

I also ordered the skillet cake again, and it was equally as fresh as earlier in the week.

I usually also order 2 fried eggs but decided to skip that today because I wanted to be hungry when it was lunch time.  Even though we were eating at 8:30am, I find that I usually eat way too much at sea day brunch and then I’m not hungry a few hours later when it’s time for lunch.  This was our last opportunity to try some of the lunch options at the buffet, so I wanted to make sure I was at least a little hungry!

Side note: As I mentioned earlier, the Luminosa only has one dining room.  This morning, they had the “Thing 1 and Thing 2 Birthday Party” which I have seen them host on other ships in a different location from sea day brunch.  That works great on ships that have at least two MDRs, but on the Luminosa, they held both things in the same location.  We were seated downstairs on deck 2 for sea day brunch, and the “Thing 1 and Thing 2 Birthday Party” was held upstairs on deck 3, with a huge open space between the 2 decks.  That meant that we could hear all of the music from the birthday party while we ate brunch.  At first, I couldn’t figure out why we were listening to the Hokey Pokey and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, but when I heard them play the Happy Birthday song, I finally realized what was happening.  I checked the Fun Times and realized our mistake… we should have waited until 9am for brunch so we could eat after the birthday breakfast was over and it would have been a lot more relaxing!

We left brunch at 9:10am, so we were there for about 40 minutes… a huge improvement over the brunch on our other sea day!  Daryth’s final lecture, titled Whales Alive, started in the theater at 9am, so we knew we missed the beginning of it but we still went to catch the second half.  We sat at the back so we wouldn’t disturb her or anyone else as we entered, but it wasn’t all that crowded anyway.

When the lecture was over, we took Ian upstairs to Camp Ocean when they opened at 10am, then we went back to the cabin to tackle the daunting task of packing.  Sigit had yet to clean our cabin, so we put up the do not disturb sign because once we pulled out the 2 big suitcases and started folding all the clothes back into their packing cubes, there was no way he could get in to clean the cabin.  We spent a solid 2 hours packing as much as we could, but we weren’t quite finished by the time we wanted to pick up Ian for lunch.  We left the do not disturb sign on our door when we left, but then we ran into Sigit in the hallway.  We explained that we did not need him to clean our cabin today, and he said that was fine with him but was there anything else we needed to get through the rest of today and tomorrow morning, like towels or soap or anything.  We were fully stocked, but I asked if he could quickly make a towel animal to leave for Ian because I knew he would miss it if we didn’t have one today.  Sigit did us one better:  He gave us the towel animal that was decorating his cleaning cart!  I know on my previous Carnival cruises, the stewards usually leave us a towel heart on the last day, so this puppy was definitely an improvement and would be much more exciting for Ian.  We brought it back to the cabin and put it on Ian’s bed as a little surprise for nap time.

We picked up Ian at 12:15pm and went to the Lido buffet for our last lunch on the ship.  Ian wanted the meatball sandwich again from the deli, so Jason went to get him that plus a sandwich for himself, while I went to Chopstix to pick out a few things that looked good.  My last few Carnival cruises have had the Mongolian Wok, and as much as I enjoy that, it was nice to have a full Chinese food station with lots of options since that is one of my favorite cuisines.

After lunch, we took Ian back to the cabin for his nap.  He was thrilled when he found the towel puppy waiting on his bed!

We told Ian it was time to start packing up his toys in preparation to get off the ship tomorrow.  All week, he stored his toys in the cabinet under his nightstand.  I also hung this collapsible organizer for some of his clothes, books, toys, and crafts that he brought back from Camp Ocean (notice King Ian’s crown still on display!)

As he was packing up his toys, he lined up all of his new duckies from the dinner waiter so I could take a photo.  He is definitely my child in wanting to document everything with a photo!

When Ian and Jason laid down for their naps, I wanted to sit outside on the balcony but it was a complete white out from fog and everything was very wet.  Last night, we had a sign hanging on our door to notify us that they would be cleaning our balcony today and we would not have access to it during that time.  I found it annoying that they opted to clean our balcony on a “sea day” as opposed to while most passengers were off the ship on a port day.  As it turned out, today was way too cold, wet, and foggy to use the balcony anyway so it didn’t matter in the end.  In fact, even if they did clean the balcony today, it probably looked dirty again soon thereafter given the bad weather.

I considered taking my iPad somewhere else on the ship to edit some photos, but decided to just do it in the cabin and sit at the desk/vanity area instead.  At some point, Zach made an announcement that the casino and the shops would be closing today at 3pm as we exited international waters and entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  I was afraid his announcement would wake up Ian, but luckily, he slept through it and didn’t wake up until 4:15pm  Since he got in such a long nap, Jason and I decided we would plan to get off the ship in Victoria after all.  Had he skipped his nap, he might have been too cranky to leave at camp, but we thought he would be good to go now that he caught up on some sleep

It was nice to see that the skies were starting to clear and the fog had mostly lifted as it was now 4:30pm and we were getting closer to Victoria.

We spent a few more minutes packing everything except what we would need for tonight and tomorrow morning, but opted not to put the 2 big suitcases out in the hall quite yet.  The paperwork said we should put it out between 9-11pm, so we kept it inside the cabin, assuming we would be back around 10pm when camp closed and could throw in today’s clothing before putting out the bags.

We went down to the MDR for our final dinner at 5:15pm.  There was hardly anyone else eating in the dining room tonight, so perhaps they were all planning to go out to dinner somewhere in Victoria?  Ian asked to bring his blue baby duckie from last night when we went to dinner.  We got to the table and saw that the waiter brought him two new duckies tonight, so now he had a duckie family to watch him eat!

For Ian’s dinner tonight, I ordered him the adult appetizer portion of penne mariscos.  I always order this dish on Carnival ships and I knew when Ian saw my pasta, that he would end up eating most of it and I wouldn’t have any left for me.  Thinking ahead, I ordered him a dish of his own, assuming that I would eat the shellfish and leave him the pasta.  Imagine my surprise when Ian ate all of the shrimp from his dish!  We were so proud of him for trying so many new foods and experiences throughout this vacation!  Too bad that adventurous spirit stayed behind when we flew back to Phoenix, as he’s now back to his old ways of wanting Mac and Cheese for every meal!

None of the daily appetizers appealed to me tonight, so I just ordered the shrimp cocktail and caesar salad.

I forgot to take a photo of Ian with his dish, but this was my entree portion of the penne mariscos.

After dinner, we went back to the cabin to grab our hoodies because it was getting chilly as we approached Victoria.  We took a peek outside on the balcony and were greeted with clear blue skies, even if the air felt cooler than when we were in Alaska!  It was going to be a lovely night in Victoria!

There was still some time before Camp Ocean opened for the evening session, so we went to Ocean Plaza to listen to the band Beauty and the Beat.  We hadn’t seen them perform yet this week, so it was fun to listen to something new.  

We took Ian up to Camp Ocean when they opened at 7pm, and we let them know we planned to get off the ship for just a short walk, but we would be back long before the 10pm pick up time. We appreciated that it was no problem to leave him on the ship while we got off.  I don’t know if I would have felt comfortable getting off the ship without him if we planned to venture further into the city, but we planned to stay in walking distance and only be gone a short while.

We still had some time before the ship was docked and we were cleared to get off, so we went to the comedy showcase in the main theater at 7:30pm.  It was kind of ironic that they used the big main theater for this show tonight when hardly anyone showed up, and the smaller Limelight Lounge throughout the week when many more people wanted to see the shows, but that probably had more to do with the production show and headliner act schedules than anything else.  

As always, Jem Jem took the stage first as an opening act and to lay out the rules of the show.  She really did an excellent job as comedy club host all week.

Each of the two comedians did a short 15 minute set.  Up first was Kier:

…then Chris Cope:

They were both funny as always, but what made it even funnier was that the entire time, the ship kept vibrating as we docked in Victoria.  They are used to performing when the ship is out at sea in the evenings, so the noise and vibrations from docking made for some good side jokes.

The comedy showcase ended at 8:05pm, so we went back to the cabin while we waited for the initial rush to get off the ship.  We spent a few minutes out on the balcony, watching our final approach into Victoria.  It was the perfect timing to catch the sunset and golden hour!

By the time we went downstairs, the crowds had thinned and there was no line to get off the ship.  

For the second time this week, we were in Canada!  

There isn’t much to do in the port itself, so we followed the clearly marked path out to the street, turned left, and just kept walking.  

Since I had not planned to get off the ship in Victoria, I did zero research on exactly where we should go, or what would be a good destination for our walk.  

I knew I wanted to get far enough from the buildings near the port that I would have a clear view of the ship.  Less than 10 minutes after leaving the ship, I found the perfect view!

The Luminosa looked stunning as it reflected the orange sunset hues.

We kept walking until we reached Fisherman’s Wharf.

By now, it was after 8:30pm so it was very quiet with no one around aside from the people from our ship.  It was so pretty seeing all of the boats tied up for the night.

We considered walking further towards downtown, but decided against it.  I didn’t want to be gone from the ship for too long, remembering that we had left Ian on board.  Also, it was surprisingly cold outside!  I really wish I knew it would be this cold because I certainly had a whole wardrobe of warmer jackets and pants sitting unworn inside our cabin!  

Not that there was any chance we could get lost, but I appreciated the clear signage for the return walk.

A few more photos on the walk back to the ship…

When we got back to the unobstructed view towards the Luminosa, the skies were so pretty that I couldn’t resist taking a few more photos.

While I was taking photos, this pick up truck drove down the boat ramp.  It looked like he might drive right into the water, but he just stopped and parked.  I was glad we arrived a moment ahead of him so I could take my unobstructed photos!

There were signs all along the path so you really couldn’t get lost.

All of these people were waiting to board the shuttles to downtown.  It was almost 9pm, so I hope they didn’t have to wait too long for the next shuttle!

The path back to the ship had these pretty flowers painted on it.

The building behind that sign with the red awning was a souvenir shop.  We didn’t think to bring our wallets off the ship because we thought we were just going for a walk, so we didn’t have any money to buy anything, but we looked around inside for a few minutes (and secretly reveled in the warmth because we were both freezing at that point!).  We only stayed for about 5 minutes because it was very crowded in there, then we headed back to board the ship.

We were back onboard at 9:10pm, and Jason said he was hungry, so we went to the deli to get him one last sandwich for the cruise.  When he finished eating, we picked up Ian from camp.  I honestly don’t even think he knew we had gotten off the ship without him!  The counselors gave him a drawstring Camp Ocean branded backpack filled with a coloring book, crayons, a bubble wand, and a blow up microphone.  He also got a medal because apparently he had won a dance contest.  Now, if you know my child, there was very little chance he won a dance contest, so I suspect that was more of a participation medal than a winners trophy, but that’s okay.  He had a wonderful time at Camp Ocean all week, and we profusely thanked his counselors for all of their work.  

When we got back to the cabin, we changed into pajamas so we could put today’s clothes in the checked bags, then put them out in the hallway before the 11pm deadline.  Fingers crossed we had space for all our remaining stuff to fit in our carry on bags tomorrow morning!

Up next: Debarkation Day back in Seattle

One of the biggest downsides to most 7-day roundtrip Seattle to Alaska cruises is that they only get a few hours to spend in Ketchikan.  Like many other ships, we would only be in port for a half day from 7am until 1pm, with an all-aboard time of 12:30pm.  That didn’t leave much time to explore, especially when I had no intentions of getting off the ship right at 7am when we docked.  My original plan was that we would just spend the morning walking around on Creek Street and shopping for souvenirs as this would be our last few hours in Alaska before returning south to end the cruise.  

One day last summer, I was fiddling around on Viator’s website and I noticed an excursion that sounded really interesting.  Alaska Puddle Jumpers offered a tour that would take us out to explore some nearby tide pools, and I couldn’t believe the unique marine life shown in the photos of people who reviewed the tour.  We’re talking purple starfish, sea urchin, crabs, and a gigantic starfish that must have been 2 feet wide!  After that, they would take us to Totem Bight State Park to learn about the totem poles.  The tour was 2 and a half hours long, leaving us an hour or two to walk around on Creek Street after the tour.  This sounded like such a unique experience that would also be child-friendly for Ian.  The one question was: what time is low tide on the day we will be in Ketchikan?  Looking at their calendar on Viator’s website, they had only posted the schedule for the 2024 cruising season, and it looked like they operated the tour at different times based on when low tide happened that day.  There were many days that had no availability at all, so I assumed that meant low tide was in the middle of the night.  The Alaska Puddle Jumpers website had very few details, and it said you must book the tour using Viator, so I sent a message through their website to ask when they expected to post the 2025 schedule.  That was in mid-August, and I never got a reply, so I made it part of my morning routine to check every day on Viator for when they expanded their schedule.  

It occurred to me that I could look up the tide schedule for Ketchikan, because the only way we could take the tour was if low tide fell in the late morning on the day we were in port.  If low tide fell early in the morning or overnight, we would be out of luck.  Imagine my delight when I learned that on July 29, 2025, low tide in Ketchikan was at 10:22am!  That was perfect, and gave me confidence that eventually I would be able to book this tour.  Finally, in mid-February, 6 months after I discovered this tour, Alaska Puddle Jumpers updated their bookings on Viator.  They would only be running this tour 7 times in the month of July, and one of those times was at 8:30am on July 29!!  It could not have worked out any better than that, so I immediately booked our tickets.

My alarm woke me up at 6:15am, and I finally felt as though I had a decent night’s sleep.  It still wasn’t perfect, but at least the moments when I woke up were brief and I always fell back asleep.

I quietly got ready in the bathroom, then woke the boys up at 6:30am.  As had become my routine on this cruise, I went out on the balcony to see how the weather looked.  We were just about to tie up to the dock in Ketchikan, but sadly our perfect weather streak had ended as it was currently raining.  Ketchikan is known for having lots of rainy days, so I wasn’t all that surprised that we were here on one of them.  I kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be a total wash out and we would have some breaks in the rain, even if the sun never fully came out.

I took my packable raincoat out of its pouch for the first time all week, and grabbed jackets for Ian and Jason, and we headed up to the Lido buffet for our usual port day breakfast.

By now, the ship had finished docking and the gangways were open for passengers to head off the ship.  We sat at a table by the window so we could watch all the action while we ate.

I got up to get a cup of water, and noticed the stewards were busy this morning setting up towels on all the lounge chairs.  I always think it is so fun when they do this, but I never thought to look for it on our hectic port day mornings, so I got lucky that I happened to walk by this morning.

By the time we finished breakfast and got off the ship at 7:50am, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.  That was more tolerable since we still had a bit of a walk to reach our meeting spot for our tour.

We were docked at Berth 1, so we started walking towards the visitors near Berth 2.  We didn’t need to meet our guide until 8:30am, but this gave us a few minutes to get our bearings.   Ian liked looking at the Rain Gauge.  We showed him where Phoenix’s annual rainfall of 7 INCHES falls on the scale, as opposed to the 12.5 FEET they get in Ketchikan!

Opposite the Rain Gauge was a statue called “The Rock,” which depicts the miners, loggers, fishers, and pilots who originally settled in Ketchikan.

Of course, we couldn’t resist the quintessential tourist photo with the Welcome to Ketchikan sign:

At 8:15am, I got a text message from our guide, Clarke, saying he had arrived to pick us up.  Since we were already there, we could start our tour a few minutes early.  As it turned out, we were the only people who booked this tour today, so we ended up with a private tour!  Clarke walked us over to the 12-person van he had parked in the small parking lot next to The Rock statue, and we got on our way.

Clarke drove us about 10 minutes south of the cruise port to Rotary Beach so we could explore some of the tide pools.  

He led us down a staircase to the beach, and we followed him across the slippery rocks in search of some wildlife.

At first, we saw lots of moss and kelp, but no animals.

I liked this heart-shaped piece of kelp:

There were a few rocks that were covered with blue mussels.  He said people will come out here with buckets and pick the mussels off the rocks, throw them in a pot of boiling water, and cook up a fresh dinner!

We continued walking closer towards the water until we found what we really came for: the starfish!  It was sort of like looking for a needle in a haystack!

Clarke said they like to travel together, so when we saw one starfish, we knew there would be others close by.  Sure enough, just a little further up the rocks we found 3 more.  These were unlike any starfish I have seen before as they were purple!

This guy was trying to stretch an arm way up high to climb up the rock:

Clarke reached down and picked up one of the starfish to show us.  

Then, he handed it to me to hold:

Yup, it’s definitely purple!

Ian tends to be very shy about trying new experiences, and we have learned that a great way to peak his interest is if we do the activity first and he sees us enjoying it, then he wants to do it too.  I knew the only way he would go anywhere near this starfish was if I held it first, and sure enough, a moment later, he asked to hold it too!  We were so proud of him for going out of his comfort zone and trying something new!

I tried to get him to take it from me so I could get a photo of him holding it, but that was too much for him and he declined.  Okay, fair enough, baby steps for now.  I still consider it a win!

We looked around for a few more minutes, unsuccessfully searching for more animals, but since we were already standing at the edge of the tide, we couldn’t go out any deeper.  

I knew from reading reviews and seeing photos from other people who took this tour that there is a giant starfish who lives somewhere nearby, but the water was still too deep for us to go find him.  It was a little disappointing that Clarke brought us here between 8:40 and 9am when low tide wasn’t until 10:30am.  In hindsight, I wish we would have done the whole tour in the opposite order and gone to Totem Bight first thing in the morning, with the added bonus of likely arriving before any other tours (more on that when I get to that part of our day).  That would have gotten us to the tide pools an hour or two later, closer to the true low tide time of 10:30am and I’ll bet we would have seen a lot more.

Another thing I want to mention about this stop at Rotary Beach was that it was extremely slippery.  Since the tides come and go very quickly, we were walking along a section of beach that was underwater just a few minutes earlier.  The rocks and sand were all still wet as they hadn’t had a chance to dry, and being a cloudy and rainy day certainly didn’t help that process.  I had emailed Clarke a few weeks before our trip to inquire about the best option for footwear.  Would we need rain galoshes?  Hiking boots?  Aqua socks?  He replied “The water won’t be high. You can wear whatever shoes you’d like. You don’t need to bring special shoes.”  Hmm, that was not helpful at all!  I considered bringing Crocs for Ian in case he wanted to walk around in the water, but in the end, decided not to pack his Crocs just for this one tour and instead, he wore his old sneakers from last year at school (they were already so beaten up that I didn’t care what happened to them, and he actually wore them for all of our port days).  I wore a pair of sneakers that I had sprayed with Scotchgard.  My sneakers had a thick sole that kept my foot 2 inches off the ground, hopefully keeping me dry in case we were in shallow puddles.  Jason opted to wear flip flops because he only brought one pair of sneakers on the trip and he didn’t want to risk them getting ruined if our feet got fully submerged.  While I can understand Clarke telling me the water won’t be high enough to need rain boots just for this tour, I think he should have emphasized the importance of wearing sneakers with good traction.  These rocks were very slippery, so the issue wasn’t us getting wet as much as it was maintaining good traction to safely walk along the beach without falling.

We stayed at Rotary Beach for 20 minutes, then walked back to the van to head off for our next stop.

Next, Clarke drove us to Herring Cove.  This spot is very popular with all the tour groups, so it was very crowded when we arrived.  Clarke dropped us off and told us to go where all the people were standing as that’s where you get a good view of the river.  There are usually lots of salmon swimming here, and that attracts bears looking for a snack, so that’s why so many tour groups come here.  Clarke said he was going to drive the van back up the hill so he wouldn’t get trapped by other tour vans, and he would come down to meet us.  This was one of those moments when it was convenient being on a private tour as we were easily able to find a spot between the other tour groups for the 3 of us to stand and admire the view.

We spotted two eagles perched atop the poles in the distance.  Unfortunately, they were facing away from us so we really only got a view of their backs:

We scanned the length of the river, trying to see the salmon, but honestly, I didn’t see anything swimming in the water.

I did notice there was a platform nestled in the trees, packed with so many people I questioned if they were safe.

A moment later, one of them stepped off the platform and slid down the zipline!  He moved too fast for me to capture him in a photo, but that must have been a stunning spot to go ziplining!  

We stayed in this spot for 10 minutes, searching for more animals.  The eagles remained perched on their poles, but there really wasn’t much else happening.  At one point, I noticed some movement in the trees:

Do you see it?  Let me zoom in a little more…

There was a beautiful blue bird flying between the branches.  

When he finally emerged, he flew off into the distance so fast that my photo was just a big blur.  After 10 minutes, we were ready to move on, disappointed we didn’t get to see a bear, but hopeful we would see some more animals at our next stop.

When Clarke came back down the hill to meet us, we told him we were ready to move on since there wasn’t much to see here, so we walked back up to his van.  He drove us around the corner to a small parking lot for a tent selling homemade honey and jam.  Clarke said that very few tour groups get to park in this spot.  He is friends with the woman who owns this land and she allows him to park his tour van here to bring visitors down to the beach along Herring Bay, so this spot was much less crowded than Herring Cove where we just left.  We hopped out of the van and walked down a hill to reach the beach.

By now, the rain had stopped, but it was still very cloudy and gloomy.  

Clarke walked over to the rocks and started flipping them over, searching for little critters hiding underneath.  You can see him in the green shirt in this photo:

He used his empty coffee cup from this morning to collect his findings, then called us over to show us the tiny Dungeness Crabs.

He also found Hermit crabs and a tiny eel:

Ian loved this part of the tour and was so curious to look at the tiny animals as they crawled along the beach.  

Another family was fishing at the far end of the beach.  They caught a few fish while we were there, but they kept throwing them back in before we could walk over to see what they caught.  Other than them, we had the rest of the beach to ourselves.  It’s funny to think that there were 3 cruise ships in port today, totalling close to 9000 passengers, yet we had this whole beach nearly to ourselves.

We noticed a few more eagles way up high in the trees surrounding the beach.

Clarke said that based on their feathers, he could tell those eagles were 2 or 3 years old.  A little while later, an adult eagle came to join them!

He landed on top of one of the tallest trees, and just sat there, overlooking the beach and water below.

When it was time to move on from the beach, Ian just wanted to stay and explore more!  

We eventually lured Ian away from the beach with the promise of going to see totem poles!  We walked back up to the van and drove north, passing through downtown and the cruise port area, then driving even further north until we reached Totem Bight State Park.  For some perspective, Herring Cove is about 20 minutes south of the cruise port, and Totem Bight is 20 minutes north of the cruise port, so this tour takes you to two opposite locations, 40 minutes apart, with no shortcut or highways or any faster way to get there.  After returning home and looking at Google Maps, I found it strange that we didn’t visit Saxman Village instead.  Saxman is very similar to Totem Bight in allowing visitors to see a few totem poles and replicas of native tribal houses, but it is located on our way when driving between Herring Cove/Bay and the cruise port.  We literally drove right past it (but didn’t know it at the time) and that would have saved us a ton of driving on an already-too-short port day.  To be fair to Clarke, I think he wanted to show us something else next to Totem Bight (more on that later), but it would have been better if he asked us our preference.  Did we want to go to Saxman to save a lot of time driving, and then have more time after the tour to visit Creek Street?  Or did we want to drive up to Totem Bight and also visit another place (Potlatch Park), but it would be a much longer drive.  Since it was just our family on the tour today, I think that would have been a reasonable adjustment had he asked us what we preferred.  

On our drive north, we passed Ward Cove, NCL’s private dock for when its ships visit Ketchikan.  There weren’t any NCL ships in port today, but I can attest that Ward Cove is very far from the main downtown area.  A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot for Totem Bight, so I would definitely recommend this as a great place for NCL cruisers to visit since it is so close to where their ship will dock.

We drove past the visitor center and parking lot for Totem Bight and continued down a long driveway to a smaller parking area.  This was actually for the site next door called Potlatch Park.  Clarke explained that most tours only visit Totem Bight, but he would also take us on a tour of Potlatch Park, but we could pick which order we toured them in.  While we had the opportunity to use an outhouse at both Rotary Beach and Herring Bay, we all held out for this stop on the tour because Clarke had told us this would be our only chance for clean, indoor bathrooms.  Clearly, that was our first order of business!  The bathrooms were located inside the museum at Potlatch Park.

Bio break complete, we spent a few minutes looking around the museum.  We could have spent a lot longer there as there were a ton of things to see, but we just took a quick glance so we could carry on with the tour.

Clarke suggested that we should visit Totem Bight first, so he escorted us back along a path to the main entrance, and showed us where we could use the machines to purchase our tickets for $5 per person.  He recommended that we pick up the guide brochure, and then left us to walk around on our own, saying he would meet us back at Potlatch Park in about 15 minutes.  I thought it was a little strange that he didn’t come into Totem Bight with us to explain what we were seeing, but perhaps he needed this time for a break?  At least we had a detailed brochure to tell us what we were seeing.

Just as we finished buying our tickets, two huge tour buses with 50 passengers each pulled up and started unloading.  We hurried up to get ahead of them so we could enjoy the park without the crowds of people.

Totem Bight follows along a path through the woods, and it makes one big loop so it’s easy to follow on your own.  At the start of the path stands two shorter poles…

Thunderbird and Whale:

And Eagle Grave Marker:

This was the fee booth, but we had already paid our fee in the automatic machines in the parking lot.

We followed this path for a few minutes.  It was smooth and even, so it was easy to walk on.

Man Wearing Bear Hat:

After a few minutes, the trees opened up to a view of the water, and we could see several totem poles on display.

We continued around the path until we came upon a building where they were restoring old poles.

It is interesting to see the poles laying down because you can get a better look at the details in the wood which are normally very high up and hard to see.

Next, we saw a replica of a clan house.  The hole in the bottom of the pole was used as the entrance door to the house.  When we met back up with Clarke, he explained that the hole was designed so that if the clan were all sleeping inside of the house and they were being invaded, only one person could enter the house at a time.  If the opening was too big, the invaders would be able to attack all at once and the clan didn’t have a fighting chance, so they made the hole small enough for only one man to enter at a time, in hopes that the first invader would wake the whole clan up and they could defend themselves before any other invaders entered.

The purple lupine really stood out amongst all the greenery.

This next pole was called Pole on the Point, and stood 68 feet tall!  I should have made Ian stand next to it for some perspective!

Blackfish Pole:

Land Otter Pole:

There was a fenced boardwalk that surrounded some of the poles.  I’m not sure why we were allowed to get very close to some, but these poles were protected by keeping visitors at a distance.

Back along the path, we caught up to a big tour group from the Discovery Princess.  Instead of getting caught up with the crowd, we skipped ahead two poles and leapfrogged them.

I appreciated that they put discrete numbered plaques at the base of each pole, making it easy to follow along in the guide brochure.  This was the Kadjuk Bird Pole:

We asked someone to take a family photo for us, but Ian wasn’t having it!

He actually started screaming for some unknown reason, so we took that as our cue to finish up and head out to find Clarke, sparing the Discovery Princess passengers from listening to Ian’s tantrum.

We found Clarke sitting outside the Potlatch museum, so he escorted us through Potlatch Park, explaining everything we were seeing along the way.

First, he took us inside the carving shed and explained how a woman named Brita Alendar hand carved this totem pole.  Totem carvers are a field dominated by men, so it was remarkable that she was able to prove herself and create such beautiful art.  

Clarke had actually spent most of our 40 minute drive up here explaining about Brita, but I am not an auditory learner and I honestly didn’t process most of what he said.  I intended to come home and Google her, but there isn’t much information about her online.  On the other hand, if I meant to search for “Brita Calendar” then there is endless information about how to track when my water filtration system needs its filters replaced!  

I just conferred with Jason and he remembers hearing the same thing I remember… Clarke told us that he knew Brita very well, in fact, they were once engaged to be married!  He said she spent many years honing her craft and applied to train under one of the master totem carvers, but he denied her request and said she must first prove herself by carving a replica native village.  He said that Brita worked on this village for 40 hours a week, over the course of 20 years until it became the Potlatch Park we visited today.  When I tried Googling more information about Potlatch Park, I did not find anything to verify Clarke’s story.  Brita’s name does not appear anywhere on the Potlatch Park website, and the information I did find seemed to indicate that no single person was credited with building this entire village.  I can’t definitively confirm or deny what Clarke said, but maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.

This was as close as we got to a bear today:

After we left the carving shed, we walked down along a path to enter the replica village.

This was a historical depiction of how the local tribes would have lived through the 1800s.  There were a series of smaller clan houses, with hand-carved and painted symbols on the outside.  Each of these walls told a story, identifying the people who lived inside.

This canoe was also hand-carved…

This larger building was the clan house.  Clarke pointed out that the opening to the door here was significantly smaller than the one we saw in Totem Bight.  This was when he told us the story about the importance of having a small opening to keep the clansmen safe from invaders.

They closed off the actual opening, but visitors were welcome to enter this building through a traditional door (on the right side of the photo below… that door would have been a solid wall in a native village).  Inside, we saw the space they used for fires, and how the ceiling above was open to the sky to let out the smoke.  The wall at the far side displayed a huge wall carving of a mother bear and her cub.

On the opposite wall was another huge Thunderbird carving.  There were several other carvings both inside and outside the house of Raven, Killer Whales, Wolves, and Eagle.

There was so much attention to detail inside this house, even the walls were carved for a decorative texture as opposed to just sanding the wood smooth.

Back outside, we looked at some of the intricate wall carvings…

Clarke explained that this park is privately owned by a very wealthy family, and they also collect antique cars from the early 1900’s.  I thought this seemed somewhat random amidst the native wood-carved totem poles and tribal houses, but it was still interesting to see the cars (and of course, Ian loved this part!)

We walked all the way down to where the park meets the water to view the last few buildings.

That was the end of the path, so we turned around and walked back towards the parking lot.  On the way, Clarke had one last thing to show us: the skeletal remains of an orca whale!  Those were some huge teeth and ribs!

I took that photo at 11:20am.  This tour was scheduled to start at 8:30am, and was supposed to take 2.5 hours, meaning we should have been done at 11am.  We were still a 20 minute drive north of the port (actually longer because there was construction and traffic on the way back into town).  We had planned to walk around Creek Street before returning to the ship, but all aboard was at 12:30pm, so time was running out.  I didn’t object to Clarke spending more time with us and allowing us to see everything at our own pace, but as I said earlier, I think the flow of the day would have been more efficient if we visited the totem poles first, then went to the tide pools after so we could have been there right at peak low tide.

As we drove back into town, we told Clarke we wanted to visit Creek Street.  He said we wouldn’t have time to walk the full loop, nor to hike up Married Man’s Trail.  He recommended that he could drop us off in a parking lot at the middle of Creek Street, and we could walk half of it just to see it and take a few photos, then walk back down towards the ships all within 30 minutes to be on time for all-aboard time.  He also offered to just take us straight back to the ship, but we wanted to at least say we saw a glimpse of Creek Street.  In hindsight, I wish I would have asked if he could drop us off at the top of Creek Street on Park Avenue near the salmon ladder.  I really think Ian would have enjoyed seeing that, and it doesn’t look like it was much further to walk back to the ship from there.  Hindsight is definitely 20/20 on this tour!

Clarke dropped us off at the parking lot in the middle of Creek Street at 11:50am.  With two other ships in port who both had all aboard times later than us, it was still very busy along Creek Street.

I would have loved a family photo under the sign, but it was just too chaotic to even attempt it.

We looked down at the river in hopes of seeing some salmon, but couldn’t spot any.  I’m not really sure if this was the best place to look for them, but we tried to work within the time we had left.

In another moment of hindsight, I wish we had walked straight at this point all the way to the red bridge, as then we could have cut a shortcut back to our ship at Berth 1.  Instead, we doubled back to where Clarke dropped us off and cut through town, which meant we ended up at Berth 2 and had to double back to get to Berth 1.  We reached the line to board the ship at 12:15pm, so we had 15 minutes to spare and would have been better off had we known to be dropped off at the salmon ladder.  Oh well, I know we will be back here again at some point, so now we know better.

There wasn’t much of a line to board when we arrived at 12:15pm, and they had two gangways open so it moved quickly.  Definitely a huge improvement over yesterday’s fiasco!!

Once we got back onboard and went through security, we went straight up to the Lido buffet for lunch.  I expected it to be a complete madhouse as everyone else probably also wanted lunch now after returning from their own tours.  I was pleasantly surprised that while it was busy, it wasn’t overwhelming and we easily found a table.  This was day 6 of our cruise and we had yet to try a burger, so I knew that’s what I wanted for lunch today.  I was also expecting a huge line to get burgers, but there was literally no one else in line and I returned to our table with our burgers before Jason even finished getting Ian settled.  In fact, this photo was taken exactly 10 minutes after the prior photo from waiting in line to reboard the ship (and in the interim, we had to get to the top of that line to scan our cards, go through the security x-rays, wait for an elevator, find a table in the buffet, walk over to the burger station and get 2 burgers, and return to our table!)

Much like the debate over the tacos and burritos station being Blue Iguana Cantina, there was also a lot of debate over if the burger station on the Luminosa was Guy’s Burgers or not.  Once again, I am convinced that they serve the exact same food as Guy’s Burgers, and the only thing missing is the official branding and signage.  Jason and I both had a cheeseburger with fries, and we thought that everything looked and tasted the same as Guy’s Burgers on other Carnival ships. 

Ian wanted a meatball sandwich from the deli (again!), so while getting that, I also got some grilled onions to put on our burgers and that made it even better.  I think the grilled onions are really intended for the hot dog or one of the other deli sandwiches, but they tasted perfect atop our burgers!

When we finished our burgers, I went to the dessert station and couldn’t decide what to get because so many options looked good to me.  I decided to take a piece of chocolate cheesecake, chocolate layer fudge cake, and apple pie, and the 3 of us shared all 3 pieces.  Yum!

After dessert, we went back to our cabin to get Ian ready for his nap.  This guy was waiting for us on the bed, but I’m not really sure what kind of animal he is!

Jason and Ian took a shower to wash off the grime from our day of exploring along the beach, and then Jason said he would get Ian ready for his nap so I could sit out on the balcony.  Our cabin was on the dock side of the ship, so I had a great view to watch as the workers prepared for sail away. 

I saw this forklift driving all the way down the pier, and at first I wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

He swooped in, perfectly aligned to the middle of the gangway…

Then lifted it up, like cradling a baby in his arms…

Then he perfectly maneuvered on the narrow pier to turn the gangway 90 degrees so it lined up with the edge of the pier, where he put it down and left it in place for the next ship to dock here.

It was quite impressive to watch this man operate the forklift so precisely, and I could tell that he has probably done this 100 times before.

I soaked in the last few views of the Ketchikan harbor, and said goodbye to Alaska as we sailed away.  These magical four days were not nearly enough, and I know we will return here someday in the future to spend more time exploring this amazing state.

Bye for now, Alaska!

As we sailed away from Ketchikan, there was still a lot to see as there were many businesses lining the water.

Alaska General Foods selling wild Alaskan salmon:

Next, we floated past the US Coast Guard:

There were also several houses lining the water…

A few minutes later when we were out further into the water, we saw the Allusian Ballard sail past us, heading back from one of their tours.  For those unfamiliar, this boat was featured on the TV show Deadliest Catch, and now is used to operate crab fishing tours.

With Jason and Ian now napping in the cabin, I sat outside on the balcony, curled up in a fleece blanket.  As I admired the scenery, I couldn’t help but think back about the amazing 4 days we had just spent in Alaska.  We were truly so fortunate to have nearly perfect weather (aside from some drizzle this morning in Ketchikan, but then it was just cool and cloudy the rest of the day with no more rain).  In addition to the indescribable beauty of the scenery, we also saw so many different animals, including humpback whales, porpoises, a seal, sea lions, grizzly bears, eagles, crabs, starfish, eels, dahl sheep, and technically there was a moose somewhere in my distant line of sight, even if I don’t think I really saw it!  This trip had already gifted my family with countless memories and new experiences, and we still had 5 more days to go before returning home!

When the boys woke up from their nap, it was their turn to enjoy the balcony views while I showered and got ready for formal night.  Part of me wished we had longer times scheduled to be in port each day, but in the end, it was very convenient to be forced back on the ship with enough time to relax in the afternoons before dinner.  Had we been docked into the evenings as some other ships do, I know I would have planned a bunch of activities for us to maximize our time in port, and then we would be too exhausted to enjoy our dinner and nighttime entertainment on the ship.  This itinerary gave us the best of both worlds, with enough time to take fulfilling excursions during the morning/early afternoon, but then a few hours of downtime in the afternoon.

With everyone dressed for dinner, we went down to the MDR and asked someone to take a family photo before we (ie: Ian) got messy while eating.

The waiter brought Ian two duckies tonight.  He really loved that smaller blue duckie and called it his baby duckie.  You know he loves a toy when he takes it to bed with him at night instead of a car toy!

I ordered the calamari appetizer, but was disappointed to only see 3 pieces of calamari on the plate.  I just looked back at my photo from our Panorama cruise a year and a half ago and I was given 6 pieces.  Cutbacks!

I also ordered the beef carpaccio from Emeril’s menu.  

Tonight was the lobster tail formal night, so you know what I ordered for my entree.  I remembered to ask for two lobsters, knowing they are very small, and the waiter was nice enough to bring them on one plate since I didn’t really need double the potatoes and broccoli.

While we were eating, the waiters came out singing and dancing for show time.  These were our waiters for the cruise.  I forgot to write down their names in my notes, but I know the one on the left was Michael as he was the one who brought Ian a new duckie every night.

Once again, I ordered the chocolate melting cake for dessert.  I usually love eating dessert, but the two daily options each night never appealed to me so I kept having to fall back on the melting cake.  This was my fourth night of the cruise eating the same dessert, and by now, I was getting sick of it and didn’t even bother to take a photo.  

After dinner, we had a few minutes before we could bring Ian to camp, so we stopped back at the cabin for me to change out of my heels.  We found the debarkation information waiting for us in our mailbox.  Boo!  Hiss!

We brought Ian up to Camp Ocean, and were happy to see the doors already open at 6:50pm so we could drop him off a few minutes early.  Then, we decided to switch up our evening routine.  We had been going to the 7pm shows in the theater, but tonight, we decided to hold off for the 9pm show.  That gave us two hours to enjoy some of the other evening entertainment, and we realized we actually got to do a whole lot more by switching the order.

Up first, we went to the 7:15pm comedy show with Chris Cope.  He had boarded the ship in Skagway a few days ago, but this was the first time we saw one of his shows.  We arrived at the Limelight Lounge at 6:55 and it was already packed, 20 minutes before the show was scheduled to start!  These passengers really loved their family friendly comedy shows!

We both thoroughly enjoyed Chris’s show and hoped we could see him perform again before the end of the cruise.

Up next, we went down the secret spiral staircase (or maybe I should call it the hiding-in-plain-sight staircase) located right outside the Limelight Lounge for quick access to Ocean Plaza.  Zach was hosting the Decades Music Trivia Party.  Perhaps this was a misnomer because when we arrived, they were playing a game where the room was divided in half, and the goal was to try NOT to sing along as they played well-known songs.  If someone was heard singing along, their side lost that round and the other side gained a point.  It was surprisingly hard to stay quiet when hearing such popular songs, and we felt like we couldn’t even talk to each other for fear of being mistaken for singing along!  

We stayed for 2 or 3 songs, then decided it was kind of a weird game.  This was probably the only time all week when Ocean Plaza was silent, aside from the music through the speakers.  It just didn’t feel fun to us, so we moved on to our next activity: the Piano Bar.

We thought we would have great timing and arrive at the Piano Bar promptly at 8pm to hear the first set of Michelle’s show.  When we arrived, we were surprised to see that they were doing something different tonight.  Julian plays guitar in the Piano Bar space earlier in the evening, and tonight, he stayed later into Michelle’s timeslot so they could perform together.  They pre-rehearsed a set list so it wasn’t like a typical night in the Piano Bar when you can submit requests, but it was fun to hear their duets.

In an attempt to fully maximize our entertainment tonight, we only stayed at the Piano Bar until 8:25pm, then we went back over to the Limelight Lounge for the 8:30pm adult comedy show.  This time, the comedian was Kier, the other one who joined the ship in Skagway.  Although it was crowded when we arrived, we were able to find seats together at the back of the room.  We both enjoyed Kier as much as all the other comedians we had seen throughout the cruise.

Kier finished his act just in time for us to walk across the hall to the theater and get seats for tonight’s production show, Vintage Pop.  This was the only production show that was new to me, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  This show combined classic oldies like “I Got Rhythm” and “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)” with modern pop songs like Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Megan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”  The costumes and set designs all had a glitzy Roaring ‘20s theme, and the band played live on stage throughout the show.  We both thought the show was a lot of fun!

The show ended at 9:45pm, just in time for us to go straight up the forward elevators to pick up Ian at camp.  I wish we had thought to switch our schedule around earlier on the cruise because we really maximized our time and saw so many different things around the ship tonight!

Back in the cabin, we had to spring our clocks forward one hour tonight as we neared the end of our cruise.

Up next: the weirdest port day schedule I have ever experienced on a cruise

One of the things I definitely wanted to do in Alaska was to go whale watching.  Jason and I went whale watching in Puerto Vallarta when we stayed there for a week in 2018, and honestly, it was underwhelming.  We spent 3 hours out on a boat, but it wasn’t until the very end on our way back to the dock that we finally saw 2 whales swimming below the surface alongside the boat for a few minutes.  Yes, that was very exciting, but we spent the whole rest of the time unsuccessfully searching for whales and it just got monotonous by the end.  With all of the research I did for this cruise, the Alaskan whale watching tours all seemed much more exciting than what we did in Mexico and I really wanted to give it another chance.  Since we only had a half-day in port in Ketchikan (and Ketchikan is not known for having great whale watching anyway), and I knew I wanted to go up to the Yukon on our day in Skagway, that left Juneau as our day to see whales.  There are many options of tour operators with all different sized boats and tour lengths to choose from.  I weighed the pros and cons of taking a larger boat to save some money versus a smaller boat where we could get closer to the whales, and I decided the extra cost would be worth it to go with a smaller boat.  Plus, it would be nice to have only 6 people max on the tour when we were half of them, so hopefully Ian would get a good spot to see the whales and not get lost in a crowd of taller adults.

After reviewing all of our options, I decided to book with Jayleen’s Alaska based on all of the excellent reviews from prior guests.  She had 4 boats which all held 6 people each, so we were guaranteed a small group tour.  Her tour was 4 hours long, including transportation to/from the cruise port, and we would be out on the water looking for wildlife for 3 hours.  I sent her an email in late April 2024 to request to book our tour, and she replied the next day to say that they would open up bookings for 2025 on May 1, so I should write back again then.  The next week, on May 1, I emailed her again, and she replied that we are confirmed for our tour at 8am, and that she will collect our deposit in January 2025.  My one concern was that there might be a minimum age requirement to go on her small boat, but she said that was not an issue and our 4-year-old was welcome, but he must wear a life jacket that she would provide for us.  Perfect!  

On January 1, Jayleen emailed us to collect payment of our deposit.  Funny enough, I received that email while sitting on the beach in Puerto Vallarta on our last cruise on the Discovery Princess!  It was kind of crazy to think about planning for our next cruise while we were enjoying a port day on our prior cruise, but I just bookmarked the email to remember to send in my payment when we got home.  Jayleen emailed us again in March, when the cruise ship docking schedule was released, with instructions on where to meet her for the tour.  

A quick side note for anyone planning a cruise to Alaska: There is a website where they publish where every cruise ship will dock for every day of the Alaska cruise season (https://claalaska.com/?page_id=1250).  They usually post the schedule at some point in the spring, and it was very helpful because where your ship docks can make a huge difference in the logistics of your port day.  For example, in Ketchikan, most ships dock right downtown within a few blocks from the main tourist attractions around Creek Street, but some ships dock a 20ish minute drive north of town at Ward Cove and passengers must take a shuttle to get downtown.  Imagine my surprise when I checked the schedule for our cruise and found out we would be tendering in Juneau.  That was a huge disappointment because usually cruise lines tell you in the itinerary details if there will be a tender port, but Carnival didn’t give us advanced warning about the tender and I needed that information to coordinate timing for our whale watching tour.  As soon as I saw that we were scheduled to tender, I emailed Jayleen and she was extremely helpful and eased all of my concerns.  I was worried that we don’t have any kind of priority for tender tickets (not Platinum VIFP and not in a suite), so I had no idea how long it would take us to get off the ship by tender.  The idea occurred to me that we might be tied to the dock in the morning because we were the only ship scheduled to be in port at 7am (4 or 5 other ships were joining us but not until noon or later), so perhaps they would let us dock in the morning to get everyone off on their excursions, and then move the Luminosa out to tender around 11am so the other ships could use the docks.  Jayleen said that scenario was likely based on what she had seen in the past, but she offered to move us to the 9am excursion as a precaution (we originally booked an 8am tour).  That would give us a little more time in case we did need to tender in the morning, since we likely wouldn’t know the exact logistics until we were on the cruise.  Once the cruise season started in May, I used the berth schedule to see what other days the Luminosa was scheduled to use the ACT dock (meaning Anchor Cruise Terminal).  Each morning, I checked the webcam for the port of Juneau (https://www.juneauharborwebcam.com/), and sure enough, I could see a live video feed of the Luminosa tied up at the dock in the morning…

…and then anchored in the bay in the afternoon.  

These screenshots were taken on July 14, but I noticed the ship did the same maneuver for several weeks in May and June as well.  That was very reassuring because although the idea of waiting in a long tender line to reboard the ship after our excursion didn’t thrill me, it was much more important that we be docked in the morning to avoid tender tickets and possibly missing the start of our excursion!

When we got back to the cabin after dinner on Skagway night, we found this letter in our mailbox.  I wasn’t surprised at all because that was what the Luminosa had been doing all season, but now it was official…

My alarm was set for 7am, but I woke up at 6am and decided to get ready for the day.  While still not a great night of sleep, this was a huge improvement from the last few nights…

The boys were still asleep, so I slipped out onto the balcony and was thrilled to be greeted by clear blue skies as we sailed into Juneau.  It was going to be a glorious day!

We were close enough to Juneau that I could turn on my data and check the weather forecast for today.  This was a HUGE improvement over the mid-50’s and rainy weather that was originally predicted for today!

It was still only 6:15am, so instead of just sitting on the balcony, I took this time to walk around the ship and take photos of all the indoor venues while most of the passengers were still asleep.  I already posted those back on embarkation day, so I’ll just skip ahead.  At 7am, I went to the buffet to pick up burritos for Jason and me, and a few slices of cheese and French Toast for Ian, and I brought it all back to the cabin.  This was one of those times I really liked having a cabin so close to the mid-ship elevators because I was carrying a lot of food!  The boys were still asleep when I returned, but it was time for them to get up and get ready for the day.  Once they were dressed, we took the food outside to eat on the balcony as we admired the views.

The one thing I couldn’t juggle with all the other food was a cup of coffee for Jason, so when we all finished eating, we went back up to the buffet for him to get his caffeine fix.  We brought it down to the deck 3 Promenade so Ian and I could admire the views from the starboard side of the ship overlooking the action in port.

This would be a stunning day to ride the Mt. Roberts Tramway.  I imagine they could see incredible views on such a clear day like today!

Jason finished his coffee, and we got off the ship at 8:20am.  It was still too early to meet up with our guide, so we walked around the boardwalk area for a few minutes.  First, we took the obligatory photo with the Welcome to Juneau sign.  We didn’t have great timing because the sun had just crested over the mountaintop and was now shining harshly from behind us.  This would have been a much better photo if we took it 10 minutes early, but oh well!

At least the Luminosa looked radiant in the morning sun!

This is a good photo to point out our cabin location.  Do you see the sections of mid-ship balconies on the bump out?  Our cabin was in that section, circled in red in this photo:

We walked a little further along the boardwalk to see some of the totem poles.

We were told to meet our guide next to the Mt. Roberts Tramway building at 9am.  We decided to walk over a little early just to make sure we knew where to go.  We were given very detailed instructions about our meeting spot, and sure enough, there was a small parking area for tour buses right where they described.

We were told to look out for a blue van, so we spotted Jayleen immediately when she pulled up early at 8:45am.  When I booked the tour, I had been emailing directly with Jayleen and we got along well so I asked if I could request that she be our captain on the tour.  She said she didn’t decide until that day who would be the captain for each tour, but she would make a note of my request.  I was so excited to see that it was Jayleen driving the van and that she would be our captain today as I have heard wonderful things about her.  I walked over to greet her at the van and noticed another couple approaching her too.  They were visiting Juneau for a few days and booked our tour as well (they did not come from the cruise ship), so it would be just 5 of us on the tour today.

Since we were all already there, we got in the van and got started a few minutes early.  As we drove north to the marina, Jayleen explained that she is Marv’s daughter from the popular tour company Marv and Harv, but her dad sold the company in 2011 so she isn’t competing with her parents for business.  She was born and raised in Juneau and has been on boats for her whole life.  When she was younger, they lived on an island off the coast, so her parents had to take her places in their boat.  When she turned 11, they told her she needed to learn to drive the boat on her own because they didn’t want to chauffeur her around anymore, and she’s been driving boats ever since!  I told her that reminded me of the character Kya from the book/movie Where the Crawdads Sing… Jayleen said it was close, but she had a much better family dynamic when she was growing up!  I revised my answer and said it also reminded me of Dawson from Dawson’s Creek, and she agreed.

As we drove up to the marina, we spotted an eagle perched atop the light pole.  I realized the baby eagle we saw yesterday didn’t have a white head, and when I mentioned that, Jayleen told me that’s because the eagle’s feathers turn white around 4 years old.  Who knew!?

We drove 15 minutes north of town to a small harbor where Jayleen keeps her boat.  She dropped us off and told us we could use the bathrooms here while she went to park her van.  

When she came back, she had a small life vest for Ian.  I had emailed her Ian’s height and weight a few days ago so she was prepared.  We got him snuggly bucked in (much to his dismay), then Jayleen led us down a steep ramp to the docks.

As we walked to her boat, she pointed out a starfish that likes to hang out below the docks.  She said it was low tide right now so we could easily see him, but by the time we returned, the tide would rise and this water would be too deep to see to the bottom.

This is a horrible photo because they were very far away, but we also saw two adult bald eagles scavenging for breakfast along the shore in the land exposed during low tide.

We boarded Jayleen’s boat at 9:30am.  I had seen 4 boats described on her website when I booked this tour last year, but we were very lucky that today, we would be riding aboard her brand new boat that was custom-built in 2025.

The dock wobbled a little bit as we walked to the stern, so she helped us all climb aboard safely, then gave us a quick tour of the boat and a safety briefing.  She had two camping chairs set up on the back deck, and comfortable padded benches along the inside of the cabin.  We all found somewhere comfortable to sit, and we set out on our journey a few minutes later.

We didn’t stay seated for long, as I couldn’t stop taking photos in every direction.  It was a gorgeous morning to spend on a boat, and I just couldn’t believe we were actually here.

Ten minutes after leaving the harbor, Jayleen slowed the boat to a stop and told us to turn around.  Behind us, we had a great view of the Mendenhall Glacier.  I know a lot of tourists in Juneau visit this glacier and hike out to see Nugget Falls next to the glacier.  We didn’t have time for that with our relatively short port day, so it was nice that she stopped to point it out to us now.

She offered to take a family photo for us, but Ian didn’t want to be in the photo.  

Jayleen said it would take us about 20 minutes to motor out into the bay, so since there were only two camping chairs on the back deck, we told the other couple they could take them if they wanted to (they did), and we sat inside the cabin.

Jayleen had a little snack bar on the boat, which conveniently included Ian’s favorite Z-Bars, so we let him eat a little snack to keep him happy.

She also had a cooler filled with bottles of water, soda, and seltzers.  Inside the cabin, she had a poster of “Juneau’s Local Celebrities” mounted inside the cabin.  Does anyone want to guess how many of these whales we saw on our tour?

At 10:10am, Jayleen slowed the boat alongside this island.  She said the currents in this area bring a lot of fish, so the whales like to hang out here.  Just a few minutes later, we spotted our first whale!  You can see the water spout close to the shoreline at the center of this photo…

Then we saw him arch his back across the surface of the water, and we noticed it was actually two humpback whales!

And finally, we saw two whale tails as they dove down underwater.

Okay, that was great!  I’ve already seen more on this tour than on our entire tour in Puerto Vallarta, and it was just the beginning.  I guess we can go home now?  Just kidding!  We weren’t going anywhere!

While we waited to see if the whales would come back to the surface, Jayleen dropped the microphone from her hydrophone into the water.  We could hear a series of clicks and low, deep, rhythmic sounds, which Jayleen said were the whales communicating with each other.

It all happened so fast that I didn’t really process what we saw, so Jayleen explained what we were watching was called bubble feeding.  She said that only 20% of whales know how to perform this skill, so it was rare to see it on a tour.  The whales blow bubbles under the water, and that attracts fish to the area.  The whales swim in a circle so the fish will cluster close together, and when the timing is right, the whales rush to the surface with their mouths open, scooping up all the fish.  As a viewer on a boat at the surface, we can’t see all of that activity underwater, but as the fish gather, so do the birds because they also want to eat the fish.  As soon as we saw all the birds fly over, we knew the whales had summoned more fish and they were about to jump up to eat them.  

Step 1: Spot all the birds flying to the area:

Step 2: Blow spout, formed by warm, moist air from the whale’s lungs being forced out and condensing in the cooler surrounding air:

Step 3: Peduncle arch:

Step 4: Whale tail:

This whole process repeated several times so we really got to understand the sequencing, with 5-10 minutes between each cycle so we could calm our adrenaline and set up to witness it again!

Remember how I mentioned that the Luminosa was the only cruise ship in port this morning?  Well that also meant there weren’t many whale watching tour boats either.  In fact, we were the only boat here to witness this show!  

Jayleen opened up a door in the front windshield of the boat so we could sit out on the bow while we weren’t moving.  Jason took Ian out there, and I sat in the passenger seat next to an open window, so I could rest my feet on a ledge to stabilize my camera.  The other couple enjoyed having the back deck to themselves, and we were very happy with our decision to book this small tour because we all had so much space to spread out, and everyone had a perfect view of the whales.

Oh!  The birds are coming back again!  We’d better get ready for the show!

This happened so fast that my camera couldn’t focus in time, but the whale rushed to the surface with so much power that his head actually came out of the water!  All of the other times, his head stayed below the surface, so this was incredible to see and capture in a photo (even if it’s a little blurry)…

Everyone on the boat, including Jayleen, just sat there with our jaws dropped, unable to process how amazing it was to see that happen so close to our boat!

We decided to stay in this spot for one more cycle of bubble feeding.  This time, the blow spout reflected a rainbow.  It was kind of ironic that something so gross (basically, it is from the whale blowing his nose) could look so pretty!

Right around the time we were getting ready to move on to our next spot, the whales were also ready to move on as they started to swim further from our boat.  I couldn’t imagine seeing anything more magical than what we had just witnessed, but Jayleen was up to the task!

We passed a view of a glacier in the distance.  I don’t remember which glacier this was, but I know it was not Mendenhall.

As we motored to our next stop, a pod of Dall’s porpoises swam over to play in our wake.  It was basically impossible to capture a photo of them as they were so small and moved so quickly, but Jayleen started driving in large circles to entertain the porpoises, and they kept jumping behind our boat.

Even without the wildlife in view, we still had a beautiful day to be out on the water, with stunning scenery surrounding us.  I was so glad that some of the snow was left atop the tallest mountains because I had feared a late July cruise would mean all the snow had melted before our arrival.

Jayleen slowed the boat as we approached this buoy because she knew that a colony of sea lions often lay here to warm up out of the water.  

I just loved seeing the contrast of the bright red buoy against the blue sky and water.  We drove a few circles around the buoy so we could watch the sea lions from all angles.  Ian got a kick out of hearing them “talk” and he tried to imitate their sounds.

There was a lighthouse in the distance so Jayleen positioned the boat for us to get the lighthouse and buoy in the same photo.

By now, it was 11am, so we were halfway through the tour and it was time to go in search of some more whales.  On the way, we passed a larger whale watching boat.  There must have been over 100 people on that boat, and I was so thankful for our more intimate experience.  I couldn’t imagine trying to elbow my way to the railings to get a good photo from that boat, let alone how I would have kept Ian protected from being stepped on.  We definitely made the right decision in booking with Jayleen!

We continued driving around until we spotted another blow spout in the distance up ahead.  Jayleen said that to protect the whales, she had to stop her boat a certain distance away from them, but if they chose to swim closer, that was their choice and we could just let them do what they wanted to do.

When we stopped, we noticed this was a pod of about 9 or 10 whales, including two baby whales!  See, just when I thought Jayleen couldn’t top the 2 whales she showed us at the start of the tour, she found this large pod as our grand finale!  

At first, they were swimming pretty far away from us, but each time they came to the surface, we noticed they were getting closer and closer to our boat.  

At one point, Jayleen backed up a little bit and ran the motor to churn up the water and let the whales know we were there.  That only seemed to make them more curious about us, and they swam even closer!  It is really hard to capture this in photos because mostly, we just saw their backs swimming in the water.  They weren’t bubble feeding, and they never breached, so all you can see are their backs and the occasional spout.  What really made it special was that there were so many of them, and they were so close to our boat that I was actually slightly worried they might knock into us when they came to the surface to breathe!  

I think this is a day we will all remember for years to come!

That was quite a grand finale, and it was now time to head back towards the marina.

As we approached the harbor, Jayleen thanked us for joining her on this tour today.  She passed around a box filled with photos she had taken over the years, which she had printed and mounted onto greeting cards, and she invited us to each take one home as a souvenir.  I picked two for the three of us to take home, as these reminded me of the things we saw during our tour… 

I also took a moment to tally up all of the whales we had seen during our tour.  Each time a whale showed us the underside of its tail, Jayleen was able to identify it and tell us its name.  I was amazed that she could identify them so clearly because the patterns on the underside of the tail were only visible for a split second before the whale dove back underwater, but Jayleen said she has been watching these same whales for decades, so she knew them well.  We saw at least these 8 whales, plus the two babies who were not yet named and included on the poster.  There were also 2 or 3 other whales who Jayleen didn’t recognize, so they aren’t included either.

Jayleen tied up to the dock at 12:30pm.  She told us she needed to close up the boat and prep it for the afternoon tours, so we should walk back up the ramp and use the bathrooms if needed.

When we were all done, she met us in the parking lot with her van so we could drive back to the port.

On the way back, Jayleen pointed out this view of the Mendenhall Glacier.  I had seen a few other whale watching tours who stop here for a photo op with the glacier in the background, but honestly, I think we got a better photo from on the boat at the start of our tour!

Jayleen dropped us off promptly at 1pm back at the port next to Mt. Robert’s Tramway.  We tipped her and thanked her for a fabulous morning of whale watching.  I cannot recommend Jayleen’s tour enough, and I won’t hesitate to book with her again if we return to Juneau.

According to the paper left in our mailbox yesterday, the last tender was scheduled to leave at 1:45pm.  We weren’t scheduled to sail away until 3pm, so had we been able to remain tied to the dock all day, all aboard would have been 30 minutes earlier at 2:30pm.  Now that we were anchored in the bay and needed to take a tender to return to the ship, we lost 45 minutes from our time in Juneau, so that was definitely not ideal.  We considered going somewhere for lunch, but feared we didn’t have enough time.  Instead, we just walked along the boardwalk to see some of the other ships that had arrived while we were gone.

Oh, good!  The Luminosa was still anchored in the bay and hadn’t left without us! 

When we got to the end of the path, we turned around to head back towards the line for the tenders.  We joined the line at 1:30pm, and I was honestly shocked at how long it was.  It stretched all the way back to the Juneau Library, and the front of the line was where we got off the ship that morning near the tramway.  Just for perspective for those unfamiliar with Juneau:

We knew we would be in this line for a while, and Jason was tempted to jump out of line and grab a beer somewhere.  I told him I didn’t think we would have time because as long as the line looked, I have seen tender lines move very quickly.  Each tender holds approximately 150 people, so there was a chance they would load the tenders quickly, and as soon as one was full, they would have an empty one waiting.  

As it turned out, I have no idea what they were doing down on the loading dock, but this line moved so slowly that we didn’t board our tender until 2:20pm.  We waited in line for 50 minutes!!!  So much for the last tender leaving at 1:45pm, and we definitely had time to grab a quick beer or lunch and rejoin the end of the line for the last tender.  We were actually the last people to board our tender, so we had to sit in the very front row with our knees nearly touching the front windows.  I really took this photo to act as a time stamp for my notes and never intended for anyone to see it (that’s how I keep track of what time we did things when I write my reviews- by using the time stamp in my photos), but I’ll just share it to prove my point.  I was actually hoping to have a nice view of the ship as we took the tender back this afternoon, but we couldn’t see anything out this salt-covered window!

Being the last ones on the tender also meant we were the last ones off.  We reboarded the ship at 2:30pm and went straight back to the cabin so Ian could nap.

This little elephant was waiting to greet us:

Jason offered to get Ian ready for his nap so I could go out on the balcony to take some photos, just as the next tender approached the ship.

As you can see in this photo, we were anchored very far to the side of the bay, so close that I thought we might drift into that pier.  In mid-June, there was a storm with winds so powerful it ripped the Celebrity Edge from its moorings and it nearly crashed into the Luminosa!  I actually saw the whole event happen because someone recorded a video and posted it online.  Luckily, the captain of the Luminosa acted quickly and moved the ship out of the way, avoiding a potential crash.  As a result, the Luminosa now must anchor further away from the docked ships to prevent any possible incidents in the future.

Around 3:15pm, they started hoisting the tenders back up into position on the Luminosa.  I have never seen this process, so it was fun to have a front-row seat for all the action.

Meanwhile, there were a bunch of sea planes taking off right in the same path where the tenders were traveling.  It was such a busy afternoon on the water!

Apologies that these photos are all a little blurry.  I left my Sony in the cabin and didn’t want to go back inside and disturb the boys’ naps, so I just did my best with my iPhone.

 Let’s take a roll call for the ships in port today.  First up is Holland America’s Koningsdam:

Next, was Holland America’s Eurodam:

At the far end was the Royal Princess and Celebrity Edge, but we’ll take more up close photos of them when we sail away.

Speaking of sailing away, I felt the ship start to move at 3:42pm, so we were definitely late leaving port today.  Luckily, we had plenty of time to reach Ketchikan by 7am tomorrow, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

Now I can get a better view of the Royal Princess:

It looked like this tug boat was towing a smaller boat back to the docks…

And finally, the Celebrity Edge, who likely had no issues remaining tied to the docks today as we had perfect weather with hardly any wind at all!

As we continued to sail away, I saw an interesting tour approach.  It looked like some kind of jet ski tour, and everyone looked like they were having a ton of fun!

So long, Juneau!  Until we meet again!

Once we got past the port area, the scenery looked similar to what we saw last night leaving Skagway.  The main difference was the lighting, as it was only 4pm and the sun was still high in the sky.

When Ian woke up from his nap, he asked to join me out on the balcony.  Now that we were in the shade and the ship was moving a little faster, it was chilly enough to benefit from the fleece blankets Sigit brought us.

We stayed outside a little longer, then went inside to get changed for dinner in the MDR.

Ian was excited to see which new duckie the waiter would bring him tonight.

I ordered the stuffed mushrooms appetizer, and I noticed that the portion size has definitely decreased over the years.  They used to serve this in the same dish they used for escargots, with individual spots for 6 mushrooms.  Tonight, they only gave me 3 (which honestly was fine as it meant I had more space for a second appetizer, but I just thought it was worth noting.)

I also ordered the linguine and clams appetizer.  I knew my entree wouldn’t come with pasta, so this filled that void.

For my entree, I ordered the chicken parmigiana.

Ian and Jason really got into it when it was time to wave their napkins for showtime!

This was another benefit of our table along the glass railing: we had a view of the dancing down on deck 2.  

Jason ordered the cheese plate for dessert tonight.  If you have read my previous reviews, then you might remember Jason’s love for cheese plates on cruises.  When we sailed on the Carnival Panorama over New Year’s Eve 2023-2024, the cheese plate had just 5 tiny cubes of cheese.  It was such a sad looking cheese plate and really showed the extent of the cutbacks Carnival had made in their dinner portions.  We were both pleasantly surprised to see that tonight, Jason was served medium-sized triangles of each flavor of cheese.  This was certainly an improvement from the Panorama and I told him he had to let me take a photo to share with you before he started eating!

None of the dessert options appealed to me, so I just ordered the tried and true melting cake.

We finished dinner by 6:15pm, and walked around the ship until it was time to take Ian to Camp Ocean.  Then, Jason and I went down to the theater for tonight’s production show, America Rocks.  This is another show that we saw on our Carnival Dream cruise, but we enjoyed it then and hoped we would enjoy seeing it again tonight.  This show features music from some of America’s best known rock bands, with a live band on stage to accompany the singers and dancers.  Because we dropped Ian at camp just a minute or two before the 7pm show started, we again opted for seats at the back of the theater where we wouldn’t disrupt anyone as we entered in the dark.

After the show, we went to the piano bar to listen to a few songs before we needed to pick up Ian from camp.  It had been a long day, and we had one more early wake up call tomorrow, so we didn’t want to make it too late of a night.  We picked up Ian around 9pm and went back to the cabin to re-pack our backpacks for tomorrow and get ready for bed.

Up next: Ketchikan

The town of Skagway was created nearly overnight during the gold rush era as thousands of men used this town as a starting point for their trek to find gold.  We used to live in the Bay Area, so we have taken several tours which talked about a similar history in San Francisco, and I was intrigued to learn about this town in Alaska.  Skagway is also known as the Gateway to the Yukon, and cruise passengers can access this region of Canada either by driving along a scenic highway, or riding a train along the cliffs of the mountains, or a combination of the two.  It did not take much research for me to decide I wanted to see as much of this beautiful scenery as possible on our day in Skagway.  There are several private tour companies offering such tours, but the one that appealed to me the most was Dyea Dave Tours.  It seemed like all the companies followed the same itinerary and stopped at the same attractions and photo spots, but Dyea Dave’s pricing was significantly cheaper than the other companies, plus children under age 5 were free!  They got outstanding reviews on both Trip Advisor and Cruise Critic, and they seemed to really cater to their guests, ensuring we saw as much as possible while avoiding the crowds of the larger tour buses.  Booking the tour was easy… I sent them an email expressing our interest in the tour, and Frank replied within a few hours to say we were booked!  No deposit needed, and he just asked that we let him know if our plans changed.  I emailed them again in June to ask a few logistical questions, and Frank replied exactly 19 minutes later!  Plus, I appreciated that his emails were always quite funny (like telling me that we are currently the only people signed up on our day, but his crystal ball isn’t working to predict if anyone else will sign up too before then.)

Here is the official tour description from the Dyea Dave website:

Emerald Lake Tour

Travel with us 75 miles into the Yukon, Canada, to the scenic and beautiful Emerald Lake. We offer a more personalized tour than the larger, more expensive outfits. They’ll take your cash and leave you wanting more.  Our buses are equipped with large windows, so you can see all the awesome views of the White Pass, including the Falls and the trail the Miners actually had to climb!! We make multiple stops for photos along the way. Our experienced drivers will help you enjoy every moment.

We meet up with passengers at the boat docks as well as the Fraser Rail Station. No matter where you start or end your tour with us, here’s what you can expect from our Team.  Our tour buses depart Skagway promptly at 8:30 AM with arrival back in Skagway prior to 4:30 PM. 

We went back and forth for several months, trying to decide if we wanted to add the White Pass Yukon Railroad train ride to the end of our day in Skagway.  It was so tempting because I knew the views would be beautiful, and Ian would probably enjoy riding on the train.  My concern was that it would be at the end of an already long day, and I had read several reviews of people mentioning that the rocking of the train lulled their kids to sleep, and that was a lot of money to spend for their kids to take a nap!  In the end, we decided to skip the train ride.  The tickets for a 1.5 hour train ride cost more than the Dyea Dave tour for the whole day, so it wasn’t just a cheap little add-on experience.  Plus, we knew we would return to Alaska when Ian was old enough to do the more active excursions, so we could always ride the train then.  

For the sake of keeping true to the timeline, today started at the early hour of 12:30am when Jason woke up on the hunt for the Northern Lights.  He tried not to wake me when he got out of bed, but as you can clearly see on my sleep graph, not only did he wake me up, but I didn’t fall back asleep until after he returned.

The good news was that Ian slept through it, because Jason would never have heard the end of it if he woke the child!  Unfortunately, it was all for naught as the clear skies from earlier in the evening changed to heavily cloudy skies overnight.  It honestly didn’t surprise me as mid-summer is not the best time to see the Northern Lights with so many hours of daylight and such a short window of time when the skies are dark enough to show the aurora.  

After Jason was back in the cabin, I eventually fell back to sleep until my alarm went off at 6am.  I was eager to see today’s weather for fear of a rainy day ruining our scenic drive.  At this early hour, it was still hard to tell what weather the day would hold as the skies were mostly cloudy, with small breaks where the blue sky could peek through.

I quickly got dressed, then woke up Jason to get himself ready while I dressed Ian.  Just before we left the cabin, I looked out on the balcony again and we were just pulling up alongside the dock.

My favorite breakfast to eat on port days on Carnival cruises is a burrito from Blue Iguana’s Cantina.  Prior to the cruise, there was a lot of talk in the online forums about whether or not the Luminosa served those breakfast burritos.  I knew they didn’t have the official Blue Iguana’s Cantina because that required signage and branding which hadn’t been added during the Costa to Carnival renovations, but they did have a section of the buffet labeled as “Tacos & Burritos” on the deck plans.  Some reports indicated that they served the same food as all the other Carnival ships, just without the Blue Iguana branding, while other reports claimed the food was different (and not as good).  Well, I am pleased to report that I thought this was the exact same breakfast burrito as I have eaten on every Carnival cruise since 2013.  The menu was identical, and all of the ingredients tasted the same.

The one issue I had was that they didn’t open for breakfast service until 7am, and we wanted to leave the ship by 7:40am at the latest because we had to meet our tour guide off the ship at 8am, so that didn’t give us much time to eat breakfast.  We packed up all of our bags for the day and headed up to the buffet at 6:50am.  My goal was to be the first person on line for burritos right when they opened at 7am.  My plan worked perfectly!  All of the tables opposite this station were open, so I stood by the counter to ensure no one got ahead of me in line, and Jason parked Ian in his stroller at one of the tables, facing in so he could see me, and then went off to find himself some coffee and a bagel for Ian to eat.  

Since the crew was already finished setting up, they took my order a few minutes before 7am, and I was able to order burritos for both Jason and myself.  Not only is the menu the same as other Carnival ships, they also wrap the burritos in the same paper and serve them on the same metal tray as on the other ships.  At this point, I don’t know why they don’t just install the signage on one turnaround day and stop all of the pre-cruise speculations!

We were all finished eating by 7:30, so we decided to just get off the ship now.  A few minutes later, we stepped foot for the first time on Alaskan soil!  While we were technically in Alaska yesterday while cruising through the fjord, we never touched land, so this was a special moment.  I loved how the port had wood planks lining the pier.  It just felt so Alaskan!

We climbed up the ramp to exit the security gate…

…and found an area where lots of people were meeting guides for their excursions (both through the ship and for private tours).  

It was still 20 minutes before we were scheduled to meet our guide, so I left Jason and Ian to wait there in case she showed up early, and I walked around to take a few photos.

This map had magnets with each ship name, placed in the location where they were docking today.  The Luminosa was on the far left at the Ore Dock.  I took a photo to ensure we didn’t get lost on our walk back to the ship later today.

I walked back to where Jason and Ian were waiting near the small parking lot, watching as each tour van/bus arrived to see if it was for us.  Moments later, a white mini-bus pulled up and parked, and a woman climbed out carrying a sign for Dyea Dave.  I walked towards her and saw another woman walking towards her as well.  It turned out that someone else booked this tour after all, and funny enough, it was a woman also named Dana, and her cousin.  It is rare that I meet another Dana, so we thought that was funny.  The tour guide introduced herself as Mo, and she said she was only picking up the 5 of us from the Luminosa so since we were all there already, we could board the bus and get going a few minutes early.  The bus had 28 seats, so there was plenty of space for us to all spread out.  Mo said that we could collapse Ian’s stroller and lay it on the floor in the back row of seats, and that she also had a car seat Ian could use.

We drove away from the Ore Dock and I thought we were going to head out of town, but then Mo turned right and drove back towards the Coral Princess so we could pick up 2 more passengers.   So in the month since I last asked Frank, 4 more people booked our tour, leaving 7 of us to share the 28-passenger van.  A private tour would have been nice, but this was still a small enough group that we could get off/on the van quickly at each of our stops.

Once we were all settled in our seats, Mo drove away from the port at 8:05am, heading up towards the Klondike Highway.  I tried taking some photos during the drive, but there was too much glare from the windows for my liking so I mostly just watched and listened to Mo’s commentary as she drove.

Fifteen minutes into our drive, Mo thought to confirm that none of us planned to ride the train later this afternoon.  We said no, as did Dana and her cousin, but the couple from the Coral Princess (let’s call them the Corals, since I never asked their names) said yes.  They pre-booked their tickets online, but Mo said they needed to pick up the paper tickets from the YPRR station back in Skagway and we needed to turn around.  Honestly, that was very frustrating as I had read tons of reviews about how the driver always takes people to the station in Skagway to pick up their train tickets at the start of the day, so this is a common and routine occurrence and Mo should have been in the habit of asking everyone immediately if they needed to make that stop.  She said she was distracted this morning and forgot to double check, so we made a U-turn and headed back south.  On our way, we saw several tour buses pass us going north, including a handful of 50-passenger buses that we knew were filled with people from the cruise ships.  One of the biggest reasons I booked with Dyea Dave was to have a small group and start our day early enough that we could stay ahead of the big buses, but Mo’s mistake prevented that.

We drove back south, crossed the bridge, and drove into town.

Mo parked outside the train station and the Corals got off to pick up their tickets.

A few minutes later, the Corals returned to the bus and we could get on with the day.  I guess the good part of re-doing our start to the drive was I was more prepared to snap photos along the way.  This looked like a holding space for some of the YPRR train cars…

At 8:45am, we passed the spot where we made our U-turn, so Mo’s mistake delayed us by 25 minutes.  That may not seem like a big deal, but we definitely felt the impact.  We approached several overlooks, but there was no space for us to pull over and park our bus because there were already large buses parked there.  Mo said we would stop at those places later in the afternoon, but I’m not really sure if we ever did.

Anyway, let’s get on with the tour… As we drove further north along the Klondike Highway, the terrain became more mountainous.  Before the cruise, I had tried to figure out which side of the bus would offer better views (because people reported that there was definitely a “better” side of the train and I assumed the bus would have the same logistics), but honestly, I think it didn’t really matter.  As we drove north, sometimes where I was sitting on the passenger side had the better views, and other times I was facing a rock wall and had to climb over to the driver’s side to see the views.

I will do my best to remember what each of the overlooks/waterfalls/etc were called, but we probably got on and off the bus 20 times, so it got hard keeping my notes organized.

Our first stop was at Pitchfork Falls, as seen from across the valley.

The white tubing you can see to the right of the waterfall is for hydroelectricity, so some people mistakenly call the waterfall “Pipeline Falls”.

We stayed at each stop for just a few minutes, long enough for everyone to take their photos and be ready to move on.  Stop #1 completed, we all climbed back on the bus.

The next stop was Bridal Veil Falls.

There were lots of breaks between oncoming cars, so it was easy to dart across the two-lane road if we wanted photos from the opposite side.  I was curious where the metal tube at the base of the waterfall let out, so I crossed the street to find this:

I imagine if you viewed this waterfall from across the valley, it was probably much bigger than the part we could see.

I tried playing around with the shutter speed settings on my camera, but I didn’t have a tripod, so I couldn’t quite capture the silky water I was hoping for.

I am borrowing this photo from an Alaska travel blog, so I cannot take credit for it, but this was the kind of photo I was trying to take:

When we all got our fill of photos, we piled back in the bus to continue on our way.

We passed the William Moore Suspension Bridge, which is no longer in use today.  It was built in the 1970’s and crossed an active earthquake fault line, so they only anchored it on the downhill side allowing it to sway freely in the event of an earthquake.  They constructed a new more stable bridge which was completed in 2019, so the old bridge was left standing as a historical landmark.  There were 2 big tour buses parked at the viewing area here so we opted for a drive-by photo instead.

Just beyond the William Moore Bridge, there was a gorgeous overlook, so I understand why those 2 buses stopped here:

Eight minutes later, we arrived at our next big stop, the Welcome to Alaska sign!  Ian was pretty moody today, and often gave us a hard time about posing for photos, so that’s why you will see more photos of just Jason and me (or even just me alone).  Ian was always somewhere nearby, but we left him out of the photos to avoid a total meltdown!

This was the view from behind the sign:

We made another stop but Ian refused to get off the bus.  Mo took everyone else on a short hike down into the valley, but we stayed behind with Ian.

Our next stop was at Outhouse Hill, so I’ll bet you can imagine how it got its name.  Yup!  Because there were outhouses that we could use here!  It was actually a large pull out with the outhouses down at one end, and a view of Summit Lake on the other end.  I wish I thought to take a photo of the outhouses, but this was the view of the lake:

We stopped here for several minutes so everyone had a chance to use the facilities, then got back on the road.  I don’t remember the name of our next stop, but it was stunning and the view went on for miles.

While we were all taking our photos of this view, someone noticed some movement in the grass in the distance.

Mo went back to the bus to grab her high-end binoculars, and I went back to switch to my 18-300mm zoom camera lens.  This animal sighting required more reach than I get with my iPhone!

If you look closely in the grass along the peninsula, you can see a family of grizzly bears!  We were extremely far away from them, but it was still so exciting to see them in real life!

This was the moment that justified me carrying around such a heavy camera lens for this vacation!  There’s no way any of my point and shoot cameras or my iPhone could have captured that!

When we got back on the bus, Mo told us to all dig out our passports as our next stop would be the Canada Customs Border Crossing at the Fraser train station.  She told us what to expect so there wouldn’t be any surprises when we arrived.  There were a few cars ahead of us in line when we arrived, so I watched the YPRR trains at the Fraser Station while we waited.  We would be back at this station later in the day so we weren’t getting off the bus quite yet.

When it was our turn, an agent boarded the bus and walked down the aisle.  We were instructed to hold up our passports, turned to the page with our photo, so she could quickly check that everything matched.  When she got to my seat, I showed her Ian’s birth certificate and she compared it with Jason’s and my passport to make sure we were his parents.  The whole process took two minutes, then she got off the bus and we were on our way again, free to enter into Canada.  

As we continued driving along the Klondike Highway, Mo asked if we wanted to stop at the Yukon Suspension Bridge.  She said there was no way to just view it from the road and you had to pay the $24 per person admission to go there.  We all thought that was too pricey for a quick stop at a bridge and decided to skip it.  

A few moments later, Mo pulled over on the side of the road and told everyone to get off the bus.  We were standing along an area filled with tall trees, so we knew this wasn’t a scenic overlook.  Why are we stopping?  

Mo pointed up into the trees to show us 2 baby eagles in their nest.  She said they were about 4 months old and she had been stopping here to see them all summer.  It was very high in the trees, so my iPhone photos just weren’t cutting it.

I got back on the bus and quickly grabbed my Sony camera for a better view…

Much better!  I could only capture one of the baby eagles in my photo, but you can sort of see the wing and beak of the other one peeking out from behind the tree trunk.  We watched them for a few minutes, hoping the mother would fly back to the nest, but eventually decided to just move on.

As we continued driving, we passed an overlook for Lake Tutshi.  There were 3 huge tour buses already parked in the pull out space, so Mo said we would stop here on our drive back south in the afternoon.  This was the view out the window of our bus:

I loved the bright purple flowers lining the road.  Mo said they were a native flower to Alaska called lupine.

The highway followed along Lake Tutshi for 10 miles, so we had plenty of opportunities to enjoy the views as we continued driving.

Mo turned off the highway and drove down a long driveway to a parking lot for our next stop along the shore of Lake Tutshi.  This was one stop I wished we made later in the day.  We were there at 10:30am and the sun was on the far side of the lake, casting everything in shadow.  I don’t like how any of these photos came out, but I had to work with the circumstances we were given.  I just know this lake would have been stunning in better lighting.

https://flic.kr/p/2rokFxw

You can sort of see the green water in the lake if you look in the other direction…

Ian wanted to try skipping stones by throwing the rocks into the lake.

Another big tour bus pulled up, so that was our cue to hop back on our bus and move on.

When I researched this tour, I learned that there were 2 optional stops that the group can elect to make or skip.  The first was the Yukon Suspension Bridge, but we had already vetoed that stop.  Part of my logic in wanting to skip the bridge was that I was looking forward to stopping at Tutshi Sled Dog Tours to play with the husky puppies and learn about mushing.  As we drove past an abandoned tent, Mo said that the “p-u-p-p-i-e-s” camp was closed already for the season.  I appreciated that she spelled it out so Ian wouldn’t know what we were missing.  (Pro parenting tip: tell your kids as little as possible about your plans for the day so if something doesn’t go as planned, you can avoid a meltdown!)  She wasn’t sure why they closed already, and I just looked at their website as I’m typing this and there is no indication that they would have been closed because it says they are open 7 days a week in June, July, and August.  That was definitely disappointing because it was one of the few parts of today’s tour that I thought Ian would love.  For the most part, we were just stopping to look at pretty scenery.  I loved the views and photo opportunities, but that was probably boring for Ian, so the puppies were supposed to be fun for him.  Oh well, I guess I’ll just add that to my list for things we want to do if/when we return to Alaska.

Our next stop was at the Yukon sign.  I have seen photos from prior years where this sign was made of wood, similar to the Welcome to Alaska sign, so I was surprised to see this new sign made of aluminum and galvanized steel.  Mo said the sign was replaced because the old wooden signs were deteriorating and becoming structurally unsound.  

The sign now features a painting of dahl sheep, as they can often be seen climbing along the mountainside.  Mo let us borrow her binoculars, and sure enough, there was a herd of sheep at the top of the mountain just above us!  It is nearly impossible to see in this photo, but the white cluster in the middle of the top of the mountain is the herd of sheep.  

I guess you can add that to the tally of animals we have seen in Alaska, but they were so far away that we couldn’t really get a good look at them.  After we all had our turn watching them through Mo’s binoculars, we got back on the bus again.

We drove north for another 20 minutes until we arrived at the small town of Carcross.  Originally settled during the gold rush, it remains one of the oldest communities in the Yukon.  Mo said we would have 45 minutes here to explore the downtown area.  There was a Bistro where we could order a sit-down lunch, a coffee shop where we could pick up a quick lunch to go, and several stores we could visit.  We wanted to have some time to walk around the town, so we opted to get lunch at Caribou Crossing Coffee shop.

There was a display case filled with pastries and pre-made sandwiches.  We both thought the Mediterranean Square looked good, filled with spinach, feta, tomato, and egg, so we ordered 2 of those and a carrot muffin for Ian.

They heated everything up for us and we took it outside to eat on one of the picnic tables.  By now it had warmed up to the low-70s, but it felt much warmer in the bright sunshine.  

Everything was delicious, and we ate our lunch quickly so we could spend some time exploring.  All of the shops were hand-carved and painted, and there were also a few totem poles and a playground, so there was a lot to see in this small town.

This was The Bistro where we could have eaten a sit-down lunch.  It would have been perfect weather to enjoy that outdoor patio!

We walked across the large parking lot to the other side of the town to see the Carcross Railway Bridge over the Nares River.

Next, we walked across the street to the Matthew Watson General Store.

Mo had told us they have a table outside the store where you can stamp your own passport.  They used to provide this service at the post office in town, but now it is just a self-serve station.  I figured, why not?  My passport is due for renewal next year and I still have tons of blank pages, so may as well get a stamp to remember this trip!

Just as we finished our stamps, we heard the White Pass Railroad coming down the tracks!  Ian was so excited to see the train, and I have to admit, even Jason and I thought it was cool to see it roll across the bridge into town.

The train stopped right in front of the general store since the train station was directly across the street.  That was fortunate for us because we were due to meet the group back on our bus in the parking lot in 5 minutes and still needed to use the bathrooms first!  

TMI potty training side note:  I was very concerned about how Ian would handle this tour in terms of using the potty.  I knew there would not be a toilet on the bus, and I knew we were spending most of the day driving along a road with no public bathrooms.  I actually bought some disposable urine bags on Amazon to keep in our backpack in case Ian urgently needed to go.  None of that concern was necessary.  Mo pointed out every time there was a bathroom we could use (Outhouse Hill earlier this morning, the large (and clean!) public bathroom here in Carcross, and the Fraser train station where we would stop in an hour or two), and Ian was a champ at using all these facilities and holding it in the rest of the day.  

We all met back at the bus at 12:15pm for the short drive to Carcross Desert.  This area is often called “the world’s smallest desert” but it isn’t truly a desert at all because the climate here is too humid to be classified as a desert.  It is a series of sand dunes that formed during the last glacial period when large glacial lakes deposited silt.  When the lakes dried, the dunes were left behind.  Today, this area is home to many species of plants native to the Yukon, as well as lots of animals, including bears.  Mo said we were free to walk on the dunes, but she recommended we stay close to the road for our safety in case there were bears nearby.

Living in Phoenix, we didn’t need to schlep all the way to the Yukon to see a desert, so this was more of a novelty due to its location.

Next, we drove north for 10 more minutes to reach the highlight of our day: Emerald Lake.  This stunning lake features bright shades of blues and greens, formed from light reflecting off the deposits of limestone gravel that eroded from the nearby mountains and were carried here 14,000 years ago by the glaciers of the last ice age.  Glacial erosion also scooped out the shallow lakebed, leaving the limestone deposits visible through the water.  The only way to really appreciate these colors is with a top-down view point, so it is very fortunate that the highway winds through the side of the mountains, offering the perfect place to pull over and look down towards the lake.

When everyone had their fill of the overlook views, Mo had a treat in store for us.  We drove down a steep side street, then got out of the bus and walked down a dirt trail for a few minutes until the trees cleared and we were greeted with this view:

She said this was a secret access point to Emerald Lake, and that no other tours come down here because the access road is too narrow for the large buses.  The view was just as stunning as from the overlook point, but now we could see the reflection in the crystal clear water, so it was even more special.

Locals use this as a camp ground and it looked like someone had set up their camp but then left for a bit, so we had good timing.  Their camping chairs were still there but since they weren’t around, we could go right up to the lake without feeling like we were in their way.

Mo offered to take photos for each of us, so she did the normal photo of us facing the camera, but then she told us to turn around and she would also take a photo of us admiring the view.  Even though our faces wouldn’t be seen in the photo, all of us still smiled for this photo.  Old habits die hard, I guess!

Emerald Lake was our turnaround point in the tour.  We were approximately 75 miles north of the cruise port, so now it was time to head back down south again.  On the way, we made a few more stops, including some of the places we skipped because they were too crowded earlier this morning.

The island in the middle of Nares Lake is called Bove Island, named for Lt. Bove from the Italian Navy, who went on an Arctic exploration in the 1870’s.  Mo said that people will ride kayaks out to the island to go camping there throughout the summer.

This overlook is a popular stop for tourists driving along the Klondike Highway.  There were a few information boards to explain the history of this area.

Next, we stopped at the panoramic overlook of Lake Tutshi that we had to skip this morning.  It was now 1:15pm and we had the whole place to ourselves.

As we got back on the bus, we noticed some darker clouds were rolling in.  We had been very lucky all day and although there were partly cloudy skies, the sun was always peeking through, but it looked like our luck was starting to run out.  The good news was that we only had a few more stops before the end of the tour.  As we continued driving south, we drove across the train tracks for the YPRR.  Mo said she often spots moose in this area, but there weren’t any here today.

Our next stop was the Fraser Lookout Point over Bernard Lake.

From here, we could see the train tracks as they came around the river and continued down to the Fraser Train Station.

We left the overlook at 2:05pm and drove down the street to the Fraser Train Station.  This was the same spot where we stopped earlier for the Canada Customs Border Crossing, but we didn’t need to stop there again now.  We pulled into the parking lot of the train station, expecting that we were just here to drop off the Corals for their YPRR train ride.  Mo said that we needed to wait here for the train to come into the station so she could make sure the Corals got on without incident.  If we just dropped them off and drove away, and then if something happened preventing them from riding the train back south, they would be stuck in Fraser.  Obviously no one wanted that to happen, so of course we waited for their train.  The problem was that it was now 2:10pm, and the train wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 2:30pm when it needed to let off the prior passengers, so we had a lot of time to kill.  

This was the customs building:

The train station has a large, clean bathroom so we all used the facilities and just stood around, waiting for the train.  This was the one and only time all week that I encountered Alaska’s state bird, the mosquito.  I’m not sure if it was because we were close to the lake, or because the skies were growing dark with rain clouds, but those mosquitos were out in force!  I had packed bug spray wipes, but I forgot to put them in my backpack this morning so of course, they were back in the cabin on the ship.  I put my hoodie back on to keep my arms covered, and luckily, none of us got any bites.

Right on schedule, the train pulled into the station at 2:30pm.  Ian loved getting to see so many trains today!  Part of me regretted not buying tickets for us to ride the train this afternoon because I know Ian would have had so much fun.  I just had to keep reminding myself the reason for my decision, and that it was likely the train would rock him to sleep and he would miss most of the ride anyway.

Just as the train came to a stop, the skies opened up and it started to rain.  We took that as our cue to get back on the bus, and Dana and her cousin joined us.  I felt bad for Mo that she had to stay out in the rain with the Corals, waiting for the prior passengers to get off the train, and for the ticket collectors to assign the Corals a train car and get them checked in.  That process took about 10 minutes, then Mo came back to the bus and we were able to pull away at 2:45pm.  In all, we were at the station for 35 minutes, plus the 25 minute delay earlier this morning to return to Skagway for their tickets, so we lost an hour of our day for the Corals to ride the train.  I sure do hope they enjoyed the ride!  Now we were down to just 5 of us on the bus for the rest of the tour.

While we were waiting for the train, one of the station employees said she heard the incoming train spotted 2 moose in the lake about 8 miles away.  We didn’t know exactly where the moose were, and of course they could have already moved somewhere else, so we tried to track them down.

We pulled over in the area where Mo thought they might be and we all got out and scanned the water.

There was a lot of area to cover, and I couldn’t see any movement, but someone else said they thought they saw something over towards the right.  

This was in a spot where the road veered away from the lake, so we couldn’t get any closer to them.  I think the train continues to hug the edge of the lake down by that area so it made sense that people on the train could see the moose.  Mo used her binoculars and said she could see them, but they were very far away.  Even with the longest zoom extended on my lens, I couldn’t capture them in a photo.

Mo let me borrow her binoculars and I still couldn’t find them, but everyone else said they saw them so I believe they were there.  Maybe they walked around behind a rock before I had my turn?  I don’t know, but in theory there is a moose or two in that photo!

That was our last official stop on the tour, so the rest of my photos were taken out the window on the bus as we drove back down to Skagway.  It rained on and off for most of the drive, so we got very lucky that it held off until after we saw everything we came to see.

This was William Moore Falls, located opposite the William Moore Suspension Bridge we saw earlier in the day.

Pitchfork Falls looked much prettier this afternoon, versus when we stopped here this morning and the sun put it in silhouette.

Driving back across the Skagway Bridge for the fourth time today as we drove into town.

Mo mentioned that she usually takes her tours on some sort of a hike to see a waterfall, but we had to skip that today because when she took the group yesterday, they saw a grizzly bear on the trail!  We would have enjoyed that hike, but obviously were okay with staying safe and avoiding the area in case the bear was still nearby!  

At 3:30pm, Mo parked the bus on the corner of 7th Avenue and Broadway, towards the top of downtown Skagway.  We paid her in cash for the tour, plus a bit extra for a tip, and said our goodbyes.  Overall, this was a great way to view the beauty of the Yukon, with the flexibility of getting off the bus whenever we wanted to take a photo.  It would have been nice if we had known from the start of the day that we had to skip the waterfall hike and the dog sledding camp, because then we would have paid for the stop at the Suspension Bridge.  Without any of those stops, it was just a day of scenic view points, with a 45 minute lunch break in the middle.  I look forward to returning here some day when Ian is older and we can take a more active excursion, but for what it was, it was a good day overall.  There are many vendors who offer similar tours, but Dyea Dave had the best pricing by far.  Even with a few hiccups, I would still book this same tour again.

All aboard wasn’t until 7:30pm, so we took our time walking back into town.

We considered visiting the Red Onion Saloon, but it looked crowded with people waiting outside, so instead we went across the street to the Klondike Brewery.

They had plenty of open tables inside, but when the hostess mentioned that they also had a patio in the back, we couldn’t resist!  By now, the temperatures were in the mid-70’s and we couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have such perfect weather.  Remembering that we can never sit outside on a patio back home in Phoenix over the summer, this was our chance! 

We weren’t really hungry and didn’t want to spoil our dinner, so we just ordered some beers to sip as we reflected on the day.  I don’t remember what Jason had, but I ordered the Devil’s Punchbowl and it was delightful.

We left the brewery around 4:30pm to walk back to the port.

We knew the general direction we had to go to get back to the ship because we could see it from a distance, but it was reassuring that they also had signs along the way so you don’t get lost.

We could see the Luminosa peeking out from behind the containers.  Coral Princess was still at her dock too.

Just keep walking along the path…

We knew we were almost there when we stepped onto the wooden pier…

Someone was nice enough to take our photo.  Don’t worry, we didn’t forget Ian.  He was just on borrowed time after skipping his nap, so he was on the verge of a meltdown and we didn’t want to press our luck by making him smile for a photo.  We did try to convince him to nap on the bus after our last stop, but of course he refused.

We got back on the ship at 5:15pm, which was our dinner time.  We knew we would be a little late, but decided to take advantage of the 30 minute arrival window listed in the app.  We went back to the cabin to drop off the stroller and our backpacks.  We were greeted by this guy… perhaps a dinosaur?

We didn’t even take the time to change our clothes before going down to the MDR and we got to our table at 5:35pm.  It was no problem that we arrived late, and most of the other tables were empty.  I’ll bet the waiters are used to Skagway being a slow night every week with the late all-aboard time.

Ian was thrilled when the waiter brought him another new duckie tonight, especially because his favorite color is red!

For my appetizer, I ordered the crab and shrimp cake from the Emeril section of the menu.  This was similar to the fish cake entree I had on formal night, and I enjoyed it just as much.

I also ordered the caesar salad appetizer.

I ordered the Chicken Roulade entree from the Emeril section, so I guess I was just having an Emeril kind of night!  

After we finished our entrees, Ian said he needed to go potty.  There was a women’s room located right outside of the dining room next to the stairs, so I took him.  Ian saw a helicopter through the window to the promenade deck.  It was returning from a tour and he wanted to go outside to watch it land.  It was a gorgeous evening in Skagway!

The landing spot for the helicopters was very close to the port, just on the far side of the parking lot where we met Mo this morning.

I eventually pulled Ian back inside, lured by the promise of dessert.  When we got back, it was already on the table waiting for us.  My key lime pie was the perfect end to the meal.

We were all done with dinner at 6:45pm and opted to just come back to the cabin and put Ian to bed early.  He missed his nap 2 days in a row and we could tell from his behavior all day that he was overtired.  In an attempt to get him back on track, we opted to skip the evening entertainment on the ship and make it an early night.  I was a little sad to miss the Love and Marriage show as it is usually very funny, but I was willing to make that sacrifice.  

Sail away was scheduled for 8pm, and we had just gotten Ian into bed when I felt the ship moving.  Jason and I stepped outside onto our balcony just in time to watch as the Luminosa pushed away from the dock.

With Ian asleep inside the cabin, Jason and I spent the evening on the balcony, sipping on glasses of the wine we carried on from embarkation day, and marveling over the stunning views as we sailed through the fjord leaving Skagway.  The ship moved slower than normal and it felt like we were silently gliding through the water.  

At first, there was a harsh shadow on the lower half of the mountain, created by the sun setting behind the mountains on the opposite side of the fjord.

Once the sun set a little more, we were able to see the details along the mountainside, with many waterfalls peeking out from between the trees.

I can’t remember ever spending a night sitting on the balcony after dinner.  We always spend our evenings enjoying the entertainment on the ship, but this turned out to be the perfect end to our day.  It definitely justified upgrading from our 4K inside cabin!  We finally called it a night after I took this photo at 9:30pm.  

That reminds me… I was a little concerned that Alaska’s endless summer daylight might impact our ability to fall asleep in a balcony cabin.  Our cruise was in late July, one month after the summer solstice, so it might have been more impactful had we cruised one month earlier.  We honestly didn’t have any issues at all.  The sun had pretty much set by 9:30pm each night, and it was dark by 10pm.  Sunrise was around 4:30am every day, but the blackout curtains in our cabin did a great job at keeping the light out (as long as we remembered to pull them closed beyond where the window ended, and held it in place with Ian’s stroller so it didn’t slide open overnight).  

Up next: Juneau!

When I originally looked at this cruise itinerary, I assumed we would keep this as a “free” day of scenic cruising from the ship (obviously it wasn’t free since we paid to be on the ship, but you know what I mean!).  I read a few reviews and watched a few YouTube videos showing how beautiful it is to cruise through Tracy Arm Fjord, and I assumed that we would get fairly close to the Sawyer Glacier with the cruise being in late July, so the risk of icebergs blocking our path was low, and that would be that.  But then I got to thinking… this would be our only chance to see a glacier up close on this cruise.  What if the ship couldn’t get close to the glacier and we could only see it from a few miles away?  I’ve read so many reports about how the glaciers are receding and who knows when we will get back to Alaska, and maybe the glaciers will all melt before then?!  Or more realistically, maybe they will recede so far that they are not visible from where we could easily see them?  I would kick myself if I had the opportunity to do something really special and I didn’t seize the opportunity.   

Every Alaska cruise review that I have seen where people went on a small boat excursion to get closer to the glaciers has said that it was 1000% worth the price and they would highly recommend taking the tour.  If you have read my reviews in the past, you know that I avoid cruise ship excursions as much as possible.  I made an exception on our New Year’s cruise with Princess to simplify the logistics with the tender situation in Cabo, and that worked out pretty well, so I was open to booking another cruise ship excursion if that was our only option.  Since this day in Tracy Arm Fjord only involved scenic cruising and there was no dock or place to get off the ship, the only way to book an excursion out to the glacier was to book directly through the cruise line.  I had to be okay with booking a cruise ship excursion in this case because there was no alternative!  With all of my planning, I read a thread that tracked the prices of Alaska cruise ship excursions over the year prior to the cruise and they came close to doubling in price as the cruise got closer!  One of the advantages to booking this cruise so far in advance was that I was fairly certain the excursion was priced at its original low price, and if the price did go down with a sale or something in the future, I could always cancel and rebook the tour or call Carnival to have them refund the difference.  One evening, I brought up to Jason the idea of taking this excursion, and with the way I was describing it, he thought it would cost something crazy like $5000 per person haha When I told him the actual price of $250 per adult and $175 for Ian, he thought it was a no-brainer to book the excursion!  I guess it’s all about perspective, right?!  I thought $675 was a lot of money to spend on a 3 hour excursion, but was able to justify it considering all of the reviews and that it was a very rare opportunity, so with Jason in agreement, I went ahead and booked the tour!  

I spent the next year+ checking the price of this excursion (and also if it was sold out because I had heard it usually sells out early and I was curious how it would play out), but surprisingly enough, that never happened.  The price remained exactly the same until 2 months before the cruise when it went up to $270pp, and it never sold out (or at least not before we got on the ship and I stopped tracking it.)  Of course, your mileage may vary, but this was our experience.  It was still nice having the peace of mind that we knew we had the lowest possible price, even if the price didn’t fluctuate much.  

When we originally booked, the only time option available was for 7am.  Honestly, that alone almost convinced me to scrap the whole excursion because ship tours usually meet in the theater 30 minutes early and there was no way we could all be awake, dressed, and fed to be in the theater at 6:30am!  I still booked the tour and figured the timing logistics would work themselves out.  At some point in the spring, I noticed that the time of our excursion changed to 1pm!  What?!  That’s perfect!  I called Carnival because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a glitch.  They said that due to the time it takes the ship to sail from Seattle up to Tracy Arm Fjord, we wouldn’t arrive in time for a 7am tour and they pushed it back to the afternoon.  They actually had the option of both 1pm and 4pm start times, but I preferred 1pm because 4pm would interfere with dinner.  Sometimes the Luminosa goes to Juneau as their first port, and Tracy Arm is scheduled for the next day.  On those cruises, the ship is already up in Alaska and can probably get to Tracy Arm for a 7am tour, so I was very thankful I didn’t book that itinerary!

Sigit delivered the tickets for our excursion at some point yesterday, so I used one of my magnetic hooks to hold it on the wall near the cabin door so we wouldn’t forget to bring them to the theater for our 12:30pm meet time.

There was something really weird going on with my sleep on this cruise.  We all slept in this morning until 7am, but I still didn’t feel well-rested.  I checked my sleep graph and was shocked to see this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that bad of a sleep pattern in my life!  Zero REM or deep sleep for the entire night?!  And it looked like I was awake more than I was asleep.  Luckily the adrenaline and excitement running through my body was enough to power me through the day!

I stepped out onto the balcony and was greeted with cloudy, gloomy skies.  Without the sun shining, everything appeared as a shade of grey.  The water was grey, the mountains were grey, the clouds were grey.  This photo was taken at 7:30am, so had we actually taken the early morning tour, it wouldn’t have been all that spectacular.  You really do need the sun to come out if you want the colors to pop.  Luckily, we still had 5 hours to hope the weather cleared up.

We all got dressed in layers, as it was in the 50’s outside and we knew we would want the option of checking out the views throughout the morning.  We went up to the Lido buffet for a light breakfast around 8am.  We didn’t want to eat too much because we needed to eat lunch around 11:30am before the tour, but we certainly needed to eat a little something to start the day.  I picked up 2 slices of french toast, 2 hashbrowns, and 2 hardboiled eggs, and shared 1 of each item with Ian.

The big question on our minds this morning was if we would actually be able to visit Tracy Arm Fjord.  Even as late as last week, there were too many icebergs for the ship to safely sail into Tracy Arm, so every cruise so far this season was diverted to Endicott Arm.  I was really surprised because if it wasn’t possible to visit Tracy Arm on July 26, was it ever possible??  Without an internet connection, Google Maps didn’t have any details or locations labeled, but I knew from my research that when the ship reached the fork in the “Y”, if it turned left/north, we were going to Tracy Arm, and if it turned right/south, we were going to Endicott Arm.  I checked our location using my phone’s GPS and saw we were still too far away to know which Arm we would take.

Thanks to Camp Ocean, we had fun plans to take our minds off the Fjord drama.  The Dr. Seuss Parade was scheduled for 8:45am this morning, and we knew Ian would love it!  I couldn’t resist posing Ian in front of the tub of supplies, with the woman statue appearing to lay on top.

We participated in this activity on our Carnival Panorama cruise a year and a half ago, so I knew what to expect.  One of the crew members handed each kid a bell or maraca to use during the parade.

They ran through a few warm up exercises to get the kids excited and encouraged them to make lots of noise.

Cruise Director Zach came out to introduce Thing 1 and Thing 2…

…and Sam I Am

And then they all walked down the stairs to kick off the parade.  

On the Panorama, we chanted “Dr. Seuss is on the loose”, but on the Luminosa, we chanted “1, 2, 3, Seuss at sea!”.  I’m not sure why they made the change, but we marched from the atrium, through the casino and Ocean Plaza, and into the theater.

Once all the kids and parents took their seats, Zach hosted story time for a reenactment of Horton Hears a Who.

First, they brought the Cat in the Hat out on stage.

Ian got a kick out of that!

Then, Zach introduced all of the characters from Horton Hears a Who.

And then Zach took his position behind the podium to read the story of Horton Hears a Who.

The story was over around 9:20am, and Ian had fun watching the characters on stage.  We left the theater and went outside on the deck 3 promenade to see if the weather had cleared up, but there didn’t seem to be any change in the last 2 hours.

We still had some time before we needed to eat lunch, so we went back to the cabin.  While we were out, Sigit cleaned our room and left us a new towel animal.  I think this one is a ram?

Sigit also left us information about the Port Valet.  We weren’t flying home on debarkation day so we had no use for this, but it is a great option for people with late flights who want to explore Seattle sans-luggage before going to the airport.

We spent some time chilling out on the balcony, and I do mean chilling!  With the wind from the moving ship, it was cold enough to need our jackets and the fleece blankets from the cabin.

At 10:15am, the Captain made the inevitable announcement: we were diverting to Endicott Arm Fjord because Tracy Arm Fjord had too much ice.  I wasn’t surprised given that last week’s cruise also made that itinerary change, but now it was official.  Cruise Director Zach came on the speaker to tell those of us taking the small boat excursion that we needn’t worry, and our excursion would continue exactly as originally planned.  We would still meet in the theater at the designated time, and the tour boat would still come find the Luminosa wherever we were in Endicott Arm.  

Next, Daryth the naturalist came on the speaker to convince us that Endicott was very similar to Tracy, and we shouldn’t be upset that we were missing out on anything with the itinerary change.  Since we had never visited either location, we didn’t really know the difference, but apparently Tracy Arm is windier, making for a more dramatic view, but that makes it harder for the cruise ship to navigate.  Endicott Arm is straighter, so the ship can navigate easier, and people not taking the small boat excursion will have a better line of sight towards the glacier in the distance.  Basically, it sounded like the itinerary change would benefit those not taking the small boat excursion, which made me second guess all that money we were paying since our view might not be all that different.

Around 10:30am, the clouds finally started to clear, and by 10:45am, we saw blue skies for the first time since leaving Seattle!  Okay, now I was finally getting excited for our excursion!  Fingers crossed the skies stayed clear for the rest of the day!

At 11am, we went back up to the Lido buffet in search of lunch.  We weren’t necessarily hungry yet but we decided to eat early so we would have time to go back to the cabin and put on more layers of warm clothes afterwards.  All of my research said that it gets very cold on the small boat as it moves quickly towards the glacier, and close to the glacier itself can be cold too, so I wanted to layer up so we could spend as much time as possible on the excursion outside taking photos.  I realized it wouldn’t be ideal to eat lunch wearing all those layers, so we went for an early lunch.  

I decided to get a pizza to split between the 3 of us.  When I got to the pizza counter, they had just pulled about 10 pepperoni pizzas from the oven, but not a single option for people who don’t eat pepperoni.  What was it with pepperoni pizza on this ship?  This would actually become a routine issue every time I wanted pizza.  They only ever had pepperoni ready to serve, and if you wanted anything else, you had to order it and wait 15 minutes for them to make it fresh.  On the one hand, it was nice always eating hot fresh pizza, but it was annoying that they didn’t just automatically have other options available.  When I ordered my Funghi pizza, the man spread out 10 new balls of dough, turned 9 of them into more pepperoni pizzas, and then saved the last one to make my mushroom pizza.  It seemed very inefficient if you ask me!

While my pizza was in the oven, Daryth came over the speaker to say she was up in the Bridge and could see a pod of 5 humpback whales approaching along the port side of the ship!  Everyone ran over to the windows, and sure enough, we could see subtle circles in the water up ahead.  As they got closer, we saw the blow spout!

Then we watched as the whale came up to the surface to breathe, then dove back down under the water, flashing us his tail!  Our first whale sighting from the ship!  It was so exciting!  It was really hard to take photos through the blue-tinted glass windows, especially with all the water spots and dirt on the outside, so this was the best I could get:

When my pizza was ready, I brought it back to where Jason and Ian were sitting.  We continued to watch the pod of whales while we ate our lunch, just marveling at how surreal it was to finally be here in Alaska after over a year of planning this vacation.

When we finished eating, we went back down to the cabin to put on some more layers of clothing.  I opted to wear my fleece leggings underneath my regular leggings, with a pair of wool socks pulled up between the two pants.  On top, I wore a long sleeve base layer with a tshirt on top, a fleece long sleeve shirt, and a zipper-down sweatshirt over all of that.  I also packed my backpack with my packable puffer jacket, rain pants, gloves, and a fleece headband to cover my ears in case I was cold on the tour.  I dressed Ian in several layers, and threw an extra hoodie, gloves, and a hat in my backpack for him too.  Jason just wore his jeans, a tshirt, and a long sleeve shirt on top, and carried his jacket just in case.

Just as we finished getting dressed, Daryth announced that we were coming up to Sumdum Glacier on the starboard side of the ship.  When she said it, I thought it was called “Some Dumb” Glacier, but later figured out the correct spelling haha!  Our cabin was on the wrong side of the ship to see the glacier, so we grabbed everything we needed for the excursion and went down to the deck 3 promenade, using the forward elevators so we would only be one deck away from the theater to meet up for the tour.

I stepped one foot outside and my jaw hit the floor… err, the deck!  It was absolutely stunning!  The bright blue water!  The lush tree-lined mountains!  The cotton ball puffy white clouds!  It was everything I imagined Alaska to be!

If you walk too far forward on the ship, the open railing is enclosed and there are giant oval open holes in the wall like windows.  This would probably be a perfect place to see the views on a rainy day, but we needn’t worry about rain today!

As the ship continued its course, we started to see Sumdum Glacier peek out from behind a mountain.

It was amazing to see the frozen river of ice cascading down the side of the mountain (which Google just informed me was Mt. Sumdum… duh!).  

As we stood there admiring the views, I noticed a Princess ship rounding the corner from behind the mountain.  I guess they had their glacier viewing earlier this morning and were now heading back out of the fjord.

It was now 12:25pm, so we had to pull ourselves away from the view or we’d be late for the excursion.  This was the description of the excursion from the Hub app:

When we got to deck 2 of the theater, someone checked our excursion tickets and told us to take a seat in one of the rows.  I made an assumption that they would ask us to leave the theater row by row to walk down to the tour boat, and they would likely start at the back of the theater, so we opted to sit in the last row.  

And then we sat.  We sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat (Sorry, the potty training book “Once Upon a Potty” is on regular rotation in this household. IYKYK).  The shore excursions guy talked about the excursion as if he was trying to sell us tickets, highlighting all the amazing scenery and wildlife we would see.  Didn’t he realize that if we were sitting there, then we already bought excursion tickets?  Don’t sell past the close!  I figured out that he was basically killing time until the excursion boat was ready for us.  Apparently there was some kind of delay, but he assured us that we would still get our full 3 hour excursion, and if we left late, we would return to the ship late as well.

We finally got up to leave the theater at 1:10pm, so we sat in there for 40 minutes.  If it was just Jason and I, I wouldn’t have cared, but Ian was getting antsy and overheated in all his layers.  My assumption was correct and we were, in fact, asked to exit the theater starting with the back row.  We walked down the stairs to deck 1, across to the midship elevators, then down another flight of stairs to deck A to board the tour boat.  There were 2 tour boats for the 1pm excursion, each with about 75 people.  The downstairs level had booths and tables, and there was a bar with drinks and packaged snacks for purchase.  They also had complimentary coffee, hot chocolate, and donut holes.  Upstairs, there was a big outdoor deck and a smaller indoor viewing room surrounded by windows, with benches inside to sit.  It was very warm in this room, so while we were one of the first to enter, and we got great seats in the front row, it was way too hot to sit in there the whole time.  This photo was from the end of the tour when we were side by side with the 2nd boat doing our tour, but it is the best photo I have of the tour boat itself.  I never thought to take a photo from inside the seating areas upstairs or downstairs.

Just as an aside, most of the photos I have posted so far have been from my iPhone (aside from a few of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainier photos taken on embarkation day).  As I post my port day photos, those were mostly taken on my Sony a6100 mirrorless DSLR camera.  I didn’t want to carry it around the ship as it is heavy and fragile and not convenient for quick photos of our food or activities throughout the cruise, but I did enjoy using it on the port days.  Anytime you see a photo with me in it, that was taken on the iPhone as I didn’t ask strangers to use the fancy camera (and usually, you can see me wearing the Sony around my neck so obviously it wasn’t used to take those photos!).  

It took a few minutes for everyone to board the boat, so I tried taking a photo through the window from inside the viewing room while we waited.  I quickly realized the glare from the windows made it impossible to capture a good photo and I would need to take all my photos from outside.

I left Ian and Jason inside with our backpacks and I stepped outside to take some photos of the Luminosa.  It is so rare to see the cruise ship from this perspective, and I was excited to take as many photos as I could.  

I could feel the tour boat pull away from the Luminosa at 1:25pm, and we were officially on our way.

I turned around and spotted the Carnival Legend in the distance.  She must have also been cruising through Endicott Arm Fjord this morning with the Princess ship.

Ok, now back to focusing on the Luminosa!

Carnival contracts this excursion through Allen Marine Tours.  The guides spoke over the speakers about some of the history of the fjord and stories about the people who discovered it.  Unfortunately, you could only hear that if you were inside (either upstairs or downstairs).  They turned off the speakers on the outside decks to avoid disturbing the wildlife.  Since my top priority was taking photos, and because we were so incredibly lucky with perfect warm sunny weather, I spent most of the time outside and missed most of the commentary.  Jason and Ian alternated between standing outside and sitting on the benches inside the upstairs cabin.  As you can see in this photo, most people on the tour chose to stand outside along the railings for the best views.  I was worried it might be hard to get a good spot, but people moved around throughout the 3 hour tour, and I was always able to squeeze in to get a photo if I wasn’t already in the perfect spot.  The guides told us at the start of the tour that if we do pass any wildlife, they will rotate the boat so people on both sides can see it without having to move.  

While it was very windy outside, it really wasn’t all that cold and I was comfortable in the layers I wore.  At some point I took off the extra fleece long sleeve shirt, but I kept on my sweatshirt.  Wind always bothers my ears, so I did end up wearing my fleece headband to cover my ears to keep them warm from the wind when the boat was moving.  When we stayed still, it was surprisingly warm in the sun, and none of the extra winter gear inside my backpack was needed.  Of course, there was no way to know it would feel so warm, and I was glad I brought it just in case. 

I took several hundred photos today, so in an effort to avoid boring you, I’ll try to only share some of my favorites throughout the tour:

Remember how we diverted to Endicott Arm because there was too much ice in Tracy Arm for the Luminosa to safely navigate it?  I honestly think those of us who paid for this excursion were given a disservice because there were only a handful of small icebergs the entire time we cruised through the fjord.  Before our cruise, I read countless reviews of people saying they saw tons of wildlife on the icebergs.  If there aren’t any icebergs, then there also isn’t any wildlife!  Each time we approached one of the small icebergs, I eagerly scanned its surface in hopes of spotting an otter or seal or anything, but nope!  No such luck!

Downstairs at the bar, they sold margaritas made with ice from the glacier for $12 a cup.  We knew about that in advance and planned to share a cup just to say we tried it.  We figured that since we didn’t have a drink package on the ship, and we had to pay out of pocket for any drinks we drank on board, we might as well pay a similar price on this excursion and try the glacier ice margarita.  Once the excursion started and the other passengers started buying their drinks, we quickly learned that no one liked them!  Everyone said they were way too sweet, and some people were trying to give away the drinks they bought because they couldn’t finish them!  Needless to say, we skipped the glacier ice margaritas.  It was gimmicky and we originally thought we would just embrace the cheesiness, but not if people said they were that undrinkable!

Finally, 30 minutes into the tour, the boat noticeably slowed down.  I was outside so I didn’t hear the announcement of why we stopped, but I had a hunch there was an animal nearby.  I was on the port side of the boat, but I noticed people moving to the starboard side.  Keeping in mind that the Captain said he would rotate the boat if we saw wildlife, at first I stayed put where I was standing.  

After a while, we still didn’t rotate the boat and it seemed like everyone else was moving to the starboard side and getting very excited.  I couldn’t wait any longer, so I crossed the boat and squeezed into a small space along the railing and just started blindly taking photos.  I honestly didn’t know what I was looking for, or where the animal was located, but I just aimed my camera in the direction where others were pointing and hoped for the best.

I asked the person next to me if he knew what we were looking for and he said there was a bear!  Where?  Over there!

I finally spotted the bear, just in time!  A second after I took this photo, he disappeared between the rocks, and I definitely would have missed it if I stayed on the port side of the boat.  Not cool, Captain!

Inside the cabin, I saw Jason trying to show Ian where to look, but I don’t think either of them spotted the bear, so I showed them the photo from my camera.

After that excitement, we continued drifting through the fjord.  We saw a few small waterfalls, but the boat didn’t stop so I just snapped photos as we passed.

Every so often, I turned back but I never saw the other excursion boat behind us.  I honestly don’t know where they were this whole time, as they should have been following behind us.

As we got closer to the glacier, there were a few more small icebergs, but none had any animals on top.

This waterfall seemed very powerful.

And then we finally spotted it!  The thing we came all this way to see… Dawes Glacier!  I made my way all the way to the front of the starboard side of the boat to get the best view I could.

I took this photo at 2:55pm, so it took us an hour and a half to reach this point, although we still had a ways to go before we stopped.  This was definitely a pinch-me moment that we were actually here.  Thinking back to all the anticipation and planning for this trip, I tried to stay present in the moment and appreciate everything I was seeing with my own eyes.

Ooh, a bigger iceberg!

Nope, no animals on top.

At this point, I kept turning around to wave for Jason to join me outside.  He was such a champ on this whole excursion by staying inside with Ian to avoid the wind, but this was it!  The final push towards the glacier, and I didn’t want either of them to miss it!  When Ian saw the glacier in the distance, he got so excited, so we picked him up for a better view.

As we continued to approach the glacier, the water turned to a lighter aqua color, and we saw a few more larger waterfalls.

I did think it was funny that they allowed us to get so close to the front of the boat.  There were control levers and a steering wheel right there that I could have touched and possibly operated by mistake.  I can only assume they have a way to turn off those controls during tours and only steer the boat from inside the bridge.

As we glided closer and closer to the glacier, we all took turns standing at the very front so everyone had a chance to see the unobstructed views.

The Captain stopped the boat a quarter mile from the face of the glacier.  It was so close that we could see all the details and jagged edges of the ice.

We all took turns handing off our cameras to have others take our photos.  

Just then, I noticed the other tour boat coming up alongside us.  I honestly have no idea where they were for the last hour, but they joined us at the glacier so I had a chance to show them in some photos for size perspective.

We decided to move towards the back of the boat to give other people a chance to stand up front.  

Funny enough, I think we actually got better photos back there because it was less crowded and the person taking our photo could back up a bit more.  There was a photographer from the ship who offered to take our photo on her camera, but we declined since we could just have another passenger take it on my phone for free.

One of the crew members walked around with a big chunk of ice from the glacier, so now I can say I have touched glacier ice.

We stayed at the face of the glacier for about 30 minutes, and the Captain rotated the boat so we could all see it, but most people were walking around to see all the different angles anyway.  Around 3:40pm, we started to motor away from the glacier.

I took this photo 9 minutes later.  I was surprised to see the Luminosa right there behind us!  

I guess I thought they were much further back up the fjord and we’d have a long ride back to the ship, similar in how long it took us to first reach the glacier.  Nope!  We tied up to the ship at 3:55pm, so only 15 minutes after leaving the glacier.  I will say that there was some big excitement during that short time.  As we got closer to the bigger of those 2 pieces of ice, the man next to me spotted a seal!

That man must have excellent vision because the seal was really on the opposite side of the ice and the seal was fairly small.  When I zoom in all the way, I can see it better, even if it’s a bit blurry from the lower resolution…

And that was that.  We spent the next few minutes inching closer to the Luminosa for the end of the tour.

So let’s talk through some final thoughts about this excursion…  I have read so many reviews of people raving about this tour and how many animals they saw and how they got way closer to the glacier than the ship did.  Well we only saw 2 animals (the bear from a far distance that I nearly missed because the Captain never turned the boat for the other side to see it, and that seal at the very end which, again, only the people on that side of the boat would have seen it, and the Captain didn’t even acknowledge it was there!).  The ship ended up getting within 3 miles of the glacier, so honestly I do not think this tour was worth the $675 my family paid for it.  Had we gotten to visit Tracy Arm, then the ship wouldn’t have gotten so close to the glacier and maybe I would have felt differently.  I will say it was incredible to stand at the front of the smaller boat and watch us drift through the water, breathing the fresh air, with the cool wind blowing my hair as we moved closer to the glacier.  The boat stopped a quarter mile from Dawes Glacier, so yes that was much closer than the 3 miles away that the ship got.  I’m just not sure it was worth what we paid considering the ship saw everything we saw in the fjord and still got fairly close to the glacier.  Oh, and I got to touch ice from the glacier, if you think that is worth $675?  Of course your mileage may vary, but that was our experience.

When we reboarded the Luminosa, I asked Jason to keep Ian occupied somewhere else around the ship so I could go back to the cabin to shower with some privacy.  I think he ended up taking Ian to a top deck to look at the glacier in the distance.  Opening the door to my cabin, I was struck by the beautiful view through the windows!  

It was tempting to just sit out on the balcony and continue to enjoy the views, but I really needed to shower before Jason and Ian returned.  I showered and quickly dried my hair just as the boys entered the cabin.  I wasn’t really paying attention to the view outside, but when they came in I looked up and saw that the ship had rotated and we could now see the Dawes Glacier straight ahead.

So this is a good comparison of how close the ship got to the glacier compared to how close our excursion got.  I could also see the 4pm excursion boat sailing down towards the glacier.  I guess they would see the glacier for the first part of their tour, then slowly sail out of the fjord behind the Luminosa for the next 2 hours?  I’m not really sure how the timing worked out for them- is anyone reading this who took the 4pm tour?

Anyway, I finished getting dressed for the evening, then got Ian dressed so we could take some photos on the balcony.  The color of that water was just so incredible!

This background and lighting was just too perfect to not capture it in a photo.  I mounted my phone on the glass of the balcony window using a suction cup mount, set the timer on my phone’s camera, and this was the photo we got:

It was perfect!  I called into the cabin for Jason to hurry up and get dressed so we could take another one with the 3 of us!

 That was my absolute favorite photo of us from the entire vacation!

This was tonight’s MDR dinner menu:

The scenic cruising was too important for us to waste an hour eating dinner in the center of the MDR with no windows to admire the view.  Instead, tonight we decided to eat dinner in the buffet so we could get a table next to the window and enjoy the views while we ate.  When we got upstairs to the buffet at 5:20pm, we were literally the only ones there and had our pick of any table in the room.  We opted for this table next to the angled windows so we had views looking forward and out the starboard side of the ship.

Ian had a meatball sandwich from the deli.  At home, he would eat mac and cheese for every meal of the day if I allowed it, so it was great that he loved the meatball sandwich from the deli so much.  Unlike some of the other buffet stations, the deli was open for both lunch and dinner, so I am fairly sure he ate at least one meatball sandwich every day of the cruise.  

I really wished Chopstix and the pasta station were open for dinner because that would have been perfect for me tonight.  Instead, I had a sampling of a few options from the MDR menu, but I didn’t take a photo, so I don’t remember exactly what I had.  There was only one small station set up for dessert, but I didn’t care for the options so I just skipped it.

We finished dinner by 6:15, so I went back to the cabin to pack our bags for tomorrow’s excursion while Jason took Ian to the atrium to listen to the guitarist.  A few minutes before 7pm, I met up with them up at Camp Ocean so we could drop off Ian, then Jason and I went down to the theater to watch a few rounds of Family Feud, which started at 7pm.  I’ve never watched that before on a cruise ship and thought they did a good job at keeping it true to the original show.  The host made it clear that there was no talking allowed in the theater because they didn’t want the audience helping the contestants think of answers.  You were also not allowed to take photos of the show because they reuse the questions on every sailing, but we still had fun watching and trying to play along in our heads.  

At 7:30, we left Family Feud to get a seat for Jeff Shaw’s 7:45pm PG comedy show.  I was surprised to see the room so crowded for a family-friendly show, but we found 2 seats at the back of the room so all was good!

He was funny, but I liked last night’s over 18 show better.  Tomorrow, the comedians from the beginning of the cruise were getting off the ship and we would have 2 new comedians for the rest of the week, so I was looking forward to that.  

We wanted to make tonight an early night because we had an early morning wake up time tomorrow, so we picked up Ian at 8:30pm and went back to the cabin.  I couldn’t resist a quick peek out on the balcony to see the views.  The water was so calm, aside from the ripples caused by our ship.  

Earlier in the night, Daryth announced that there was a good chance to see the Northern Lights tonight between 11pm and 2am.  We would have to leave the cabin to do that because she said it would be best viewed from one of the top decks.  We didn’t want to wake up Ian in the middle of the night, so only 1 of us could go.  Jason wanted to see it and I thought it was so unlikely to happen that sleeping would be a better use of my time, so I told Jason that if it was visible from the balcony, he should wake me.  If he had to go upstairs, I told him to take photos and show me tomorrow.  Plans in place, we all got ready for bed, and we went to sleep by 9:30pm.  

Up next: Skagway!

Ian did a great job sleeping on the big boy bed all night, but around 5am, he woke me up with his fidgeting and tossing and turning.  I think we both fell back asleep, but I continued to wake up on and off.  Around 6am, he started stirring again, and I heard him get out of bed around 7am so I decided to admit defeat and get up then too.  You will notice in my sleep chart that I never entered deep sleep the entire night.  It was a good thing today was a Sea Day and we didn’t have much planned because I definitely felt less pep in my step.

Jason woke up then too, so we all got ready for the day.  Stepping out on the balcony, we could see it was cloudy and gloomy, and the temperature was only 57 degrees.  I guess we would be wearing pants and hoodies today!  

When we were all dressed, I used the app to request a table for brunch at 8:12am. It was a 30-40 minute wait.  Too bad I didn’t think to check the wait time when we first woke up, as we probably could have gotten dressed quicker if that meant we could be seated sooner.

With some time to kill, we went up to the Lido buffet to get Jason some coffee and Ian some pancakes while we waited.  Life is always easier when Ian is not hungry, so it made sense to get him some pancakes to eat now.  Even after we got seated at brunch, it would take a while before they brought out our food.  By the time we got Ian’s pancakes and found a table, I checked the app again and our table was ready!  At 8:25am!  So much for a 30-40 minute wait, as that only took 13 minutes!  Jason didn’t even have a chance to get his coffee, but we took Ian’s plate of pancakes to the MDR so he could eat while we ordered our food. 

As is often the case at Sea Day Brunch, the service was extremely slow this morning.  Jason and I each ordered a glass of orange juice, but they only brought one glass.  Jason let me take it and he ordered another glass.  Five minutes later, after the table next to us got their drinks from the same waiter, Jason asked a second time for OJ.  10 minutes later, still no OJ so Jason asked a third time, this time from an assistant waiter.  Finally, they brought the OJ.  That was kind of ridiculous, especially since the guy selling the $6 glasses of freshly pressed juice walked by our table several times in the interim.  Maybe this was their secret ploy to get us to pay for the juice?

In the meantime, we ordered our food.  They brought out the bagels and lox first, which worked well because I planned to let Ian eat the bagel and I just wanted the lox and cream cheese. 

Fifteen minutes later, they brought our hot dishes.  I ordered 2 eggs over hard, and the skillet cake.  I order this exact combo on every Carnival Sea Day Brunch, and this was honestly the best skillet cake I’ve ever had.  It tasted freshly made, and while it was hot, the marshmallows were still solid and hadn’t melted yet, meaning it probably wasn’t sitting out too long. 

While we ate, I checked the weather forecast for the week.  For the 2 weeks prior to the cruise, I checked both Accuweather and Weather.com several times a day, desperate to see if we would have good weather for our cruise.  As of Wednesday when we flew to Seattle, it didn’t bode well, with about a 50% chance of rain and temperatures in the 50’s every day of the week in Juneau.  I figured since all the ports (except Victoria) were close together, I could just use Juneau as a central location to check the weather.

Now that we were on the cruise, I liked how they had one spot in the Hub app which listed the weather expected at each port on the day we would be there.  It seemed like things were changing for the better, as the predicted temperatures in each port were much higher, and only a few days expected rain.  Fingers crossed this forecast was more accurate than what I saw before we left home!

After brunch, we went to the theater to listen to the naturalist’s lecture.  We arrived a few minutes early, so we caught the end of cruise director Zach hosting The Wave morning show.  He was announcing the teams that qualified to play Family Feud later in the week.

The naturalist on our cruise was Daryth.  She is a retired middle school science and marine biology teacher from Southern California, and we always enjoyed listening to her commentary.  Throughout the cruise, she came on the overhead speakers to point out when she saw wildlife passing the ship.  She also hosted several lectures in the theater throughout the week.  We missed the one last night called North to Alaska, but were looking forward to this morning’s lecture titled Glaciers, Volcanoes, and Wildlife in Alaska.

It was very informative and even Ian was captivated. She did a good job of explaining the science behind how glaciers work and how volcanoes were formed, and since she was a teacher, she really knew how to explain things in a way that made it interesting.

Camp opened at 10am so after the lecture, we took Ian upstairs to drop him off.  We went back to the cabin to finish unpacking and getting settled in the room without Ian there.  By then, Sigit had already cleaned our room, and he left us a customs form to fill out for Canada.  It’s funny how much work there is for this 4-hour port stop when half the passengers won’t even get off the ship! 

I decided to just fill out the form right now when we didn’t have much else going on.  We dropped it off in the box in the atrium, then went upstairs to the Lido buffet.  Neither of us were hungry at all, but we knew the easiest way to keep Ian happy when we picked him up from camp was to have lunch already waiting for him.  We got him a grilled cheese sandwich and a meatball sandwich from the deli, and I planned to eat the one he didn’t want.  The buffet was very crowded, which was surprising since it was only 11:30am.  The deli line took 20 minutes to get our food, but luckily we found a table next to a window, which is where Ian kept asking to sit at dinner last night and brunch this morning. 

Jason sat with Ian’s food while I ran up to camp to pick him up.  I will say it is very convenient that camp is on deck 10 forward.  It is just one flight above the buffet, and a straight shot up the elevators from the theater and comedy club, which were all places we found ourselves right before/after dropping Ian at camp.  

I was worried Ian would be having so much fun playing with the toys at camp that he wouldn’t want to leave.  Luckily, my plan worked perfectly and Ian was thrilled when I told him about our window table and the sandwiches waiting for him.  He devoured the meatball sandwich, and he asked to take the grilled cheese back to the cabin for his post-nap snack.  Ian’s meatball sandwich looked so good that I went back to the deli to get one for myself.  This time there was no line and it only took me 3 minutes.  When I brought it back to our table, Jason got up to get some food for himself for lunch. 

When everyone was done eating, we went back to the cabin to get ready for Ian’s nap.  He loved seeing the towel animal bear on the bed.  I made Ian’s embarkation day shirt using my Cricut, and while it said “I’m just here for the towel animals,” I don’t think he really remembered what they were from his prior cruises.  On this cruise, he loved coming back to the cabin each day to see what Sigit left for us, but he still needed some practice on being gentle with them so they didn’t fall apart (unlike his stuffies at home!).

I left the boys to nap in the cabin, and went down to Ocean Plaza for trivia.  I picked a banquet along the windows so I could watch the views as I listened to the questions.

The first round was general knowledge, followed by “Mind Game” trivia which was more like riddles.  I won’t share my answer sheets so I don’t ruin the game for anyone playing on future cruises.  I wasn’t really sure what “Mind Game” trivia was, so just as an example, they asked how many animals Moses brought on the ark.  None!  It was Noah’s ark!  So that was the kind of thought process you needed to answer all of the questions, although some were definitely harder than others.  I only got about half right for each game, but it was still fun to play along.  The third round of trivia was going to be sports trivia, so I took that as my cue to leave and find something else to do since sports are definitely not my forte.

I stopped by Pixels Photo Gallery on deck 3, as that’s where we had to go to pick up the VIFP pin.  It is disappointing that I don’t think Carnival will hand out these pins anymore after they start the new VIFP program in 2026.  I have a collection of pins from all our prior cruises, so I guess this will be my last one.

I noticed we could see land off the starboard side of the ship, so I stepped outside onto the Promenade Deck.  This area offered a great view close to the water, with coverage overhead in case of too much sun or rain.  It was surprising that there was hardly anyone else out here whenever I stepped out to admire the scenery.  Yes, we had a balcony cabin but we were on the port side and only had a view of the ocean today, so it was nice having the option of using this public space.  

I headed up to Serenity Deck for a different perspective.  It was still very cloudy outside, but it did look like the clouds were starting to break up a little bit.  If you look very closely at the horizon, you can see some land… that’s Canada!

It wouldn’t be a cruise if I didn’t snap a photo of the wake on a sea day!

…and also a photo of the life ring displaying the name of our ship!

As I came back inside and walked through the Lido pool area, I noticed they were setting up for an activity.  A quick check in the Hub app told me the Great Alaskan Race was starting soon.

One of the benefits of using the Luminosa for Alaska cruises was the main Lido pool had a retractable roof.  I think they kept the roof closed for the entire cruise (at least, I never saw it open!), so that allowed people to use the space no matter what weather was happening outside.  I will say that having an indoor pool gave the space a different feeling than when the Lido pool is open to the sky.  It’s kind of like going to an indoor pool versus an outdoor pool when we are at home.  The indoor pool just sets a different tone compared to the outdoor pool, and I noticed that here on the ship.  The pool on the Serenity deck was open to the sky, but they couldn’t hold big activities back there because the space is only for adults, so that left us to use the indoor pool space for most activities.

A few minutes after I arrived, Zach called for people to volunteer to play the game.

Everyone was given an animal hat to wear, and they had to answer questions to move forward a certain number of spaces.  Whoever got to the end of the mat first, won a prize, but I didn’t stay long enough to see who won or what the prize was.

It was now after 3pm, so I headed back to the cabin to see if the boys were awake from their naps.  We did not pay for Carnival’s WiFi package on this cruise because we knew our phones would work like normal when we were in port, so we wouldn’t be totally disconnected for the week and we would just make due on the ship without internet access.  We figured out that when our iPhones were connected to the ship’s free internal WiFi, iMessage worked!  On our Carnival Panorama cruise a year and a half ago, we both paid for the chat feature in the Hub app, but quickly realized it was useless because it doesn’t send you a push notification of an incoming text.  The only way to know we had a new text was to manually check, and that just doesn’t work in real life scenarios.  We knew we were not going to pay for the chat feature again on this cruise, so it was great when we realized iMessage worked for free.  The only glitch was that it only worked while connected to Carnival’s free WiFi.  For whatever reason, the signal inside our cabin was very weak and we both kept getting disconnected while we were in the cabin.  It was actually very annoying because if I wanted to check the daily schedule or look at the dinner menus, I first had to re-log in to Carnival’s free WiFi before opening the Hub app.  Anyway, because of the poor signal, I couldn’t text Jason to ask if he was awake yet, so I had to physically go down to the cabin.  I am sure we would have had the same issue with the WiFi disconnecting even if we paid for Carnival’s chat feature in the app.  Texting with iMessage worked out great when we were walking around the ship, so I could get us seats in the theater and text Jason where I was sitting, or other little things like that.

Anyway, I got back to the cabin and found Jason awake and reading his Kindle in bed, but Ian was still passed out.  How does he sleep in that position?!  

Ian woke up from his nap around 3:45pm, so we all got dressed for formal night.  I wanted to take a nice photo before we all got disheveled during dinner, so we went back to the same spot we used yesterday and asked someone to take our photo.  

It was only 4:45pm, so we went down to deck 2 to listen to the Take Two duo perform inside their little box stage.  Every time I saw someone perform in there, it made me chuckle that they looked like puppets.

We listened to their set until 5:15, then made our way over to the MDR for dinner.  When we arrived at our table, we were happy to see that the waiters had a booster seat already installed on Ian’s chair, so that saved us the headache of negotiating with him about if he needed one or not.  “Oh look, Ian!  Your chair is all set up for you!  Do you need help climbing into your seat?”  The icing on the cake was that the waiters also left 2 duckies as a surprise for Ian.  He was so excited, and the waiters were doing a great job of winning him over.  They were so thoughtful that they brought him one or two new duckies every night of the cruise!

I didn’t take a photo of Ian’s food, but I think he ordered pasta with red sauce tonight.  The waiters were always great about bringing up Ian’s food with our appetizers.  Not only did this mean he wasn’t sitting there bored and watching us eat while waiting for his entree, but it gave him a ton of time to work through his meal since he is a very slow (and easily distracted) eater!

The only time I ever eat escargots is on a cruise ship, so you know I had to order it tonight!  I noticed it is now served in a flat ramekin, like what they use for crème breulee, instead of the dishes with the little pods like they used to use.  No worries though- it still tasted just garlicky and buttery as always. 

I also ordered the Tuna Crudo from Emeril’s section of the menu.  It tasted fresh and light.

For my entree, I ordered the Grilled Jumbo Shrimp and Fish Cake.  On our Panorama cruise, we ate in the buffet on the night they served this menu.  I remember loving the fish cakes, so I was looking forward to ordering this dish tonight.  It lived up to my expectations!

I ordered the chocolate melting cake for dessert.  When the waiter served it to me, I was surprised to see it in this oval bowl.  I guess they ran out of the cups they usually serve it in because they were also serving the Grand Marnier Souffle in those cups tonight.  This actually worked better for me because I prefer my chocolate melting cake to be cooked well done (ie: not liquidy in the middle), and this dish was shallower so the whole thing was cooked though solid like a chocolate cake.  Winning!

After dinner, we went back to the Atrium to hear the end of Take Two’s set.

Jason and I decided to get a few cocktails.  He got a regular martini, and I got a Funstar Martini, with Grey Goose Vodka, Chinola Passionfruit Liqueur, citrus, and prosecco.  I asked for it on the rocks so I wouldn’t spill it while walking around the ship.

We took our drinks to go, and brought Ian up to deck 10.  Camp Ocean was scheduled to open at 7pm, but that was the same time that the production show started in the theater.  I was hopeful that if we brought him to camp a few minutes early, they would let us drop him off so we didn’t miss the start of the show.  Sure enough, the door to camp was open when we arrived at 6:55pm, and they were nice enough to let us drop off Ian.  We were able to do this every night of the cruise, but honestly, I wished they coordinated the camp and show schedules better to avoid that unnecessary stress.  On both our Panorama and Discovery Princess cruises, camp opened at 7pm in the evening, but the shows didn’t start until 7:30pm.  We had plenty of time to drop Ian off, go down to the theater, find a seat, and see the whole show.  This cruise started all the evening shows at 7pm, so by the time we arrived at the theater, the lights were already off and we had to hunt for seats in the dark.  Fortunately, we always found somewhere to sit, but it was definitely not our first choice of seats as we were very far from the stage and it was hard to take good photos.  Apologies in advance for the quality of all my photos from the shows, but now you understand why we didn’t get better seats!

Tonight’s Playlist Production show was Flick, featuring songs from various movies.  When we arrived, they had already started the pre-show entertainment.

We saw Flick on the Dream in 2019, so I remembered some parts of it, but it was still enjoyable.  It featured songs from movies, but most of the famous songs from movies are ballads, and I personally prefer more upbeat songs, so this show was a little slow for my taste.  Despite the song selection, the singers and dancers did a fantastic job and we both enjoyed the performance.  

I will do my best to remember what song was featured in each of these photos.  I know for sure this first one was Adele’s song Skyfall from the James Bond movie.  Even though I knew what to expect from seeing the show 6 years ago, I was still amazed at how they synchronized the fans to make that piece of fabric dance above the stage.  

I think this one was from I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston:

I think this was from Footloose… what a great use of those light-up sneakers for this song!

You can probably guess what song and movie this was from without me telling you…

And this was from I’m A Believer by Smashmouth from Shrek:

Flick ended at 7:40pm, so we had some time before the 8:30pm comedy show.  We went to the Ocean Plaza for the 70s and Motown music trivia party.  They split the room in half and had us compete to name songs and sing along to them louder than the other team.  It was a fun way to pass the time until the comedy started.

Right next to where we were sitting at the back of Ocean Plaza was a spiral staircase.  This was very convenient as a secret path from deck 2 to 3 as it let you out directly in front of the entrance to the Limelight Lounge.  I hardly saw anyone using this staircase all week, but it saved us having to walk to the stairs near the elevators, and it got us between these two popular evening entertainment venues quickly.  You can sort of see it in the back of this photo from my ship tour:

Anyway, the doors to the Limelight Lounge opened at 8pm for the 8:30pm show.  We arrived at 8:10pm and there were only 5 to 10 empty chairs in the room!  Oops!  Last night, hardly anyone was there, but I guess word got out that the comedians were funny and more people showed up tonight.  We snagged 2 seats together at the back, but most other people who arrived after us had to sit separately from their partner. 

Tonight’s 8:30pm adult show was with Jeff Shaw.  We both thought his whole show was very funny.  I appreciated that he could get the whole room laughing without making gratuitous inappropriate jokes or cursing just for the sake of cursing, as some comedians tend to do.  I don’t want to give away the content of his material, but he was self-deprecating in all the right ways, and we hoped we could see another one of his shows before he got off the ship in Skagway.

When that ended, we went to the piano bar because we still had an hour before needing to get Ian from camp.  Michelle was the piano bar entertainer on our cruise, and we were looking forward to seeing her perform, but she was on a break when we arrived.  We haven’t had the best luck with our piano bar entertainers on our Carnival cruises.  The one we had on our last cruise on the Panorama just couldn’t get the vibe going and had a terrible song selection for a piano bar that should focus on well-known sing-along songs.  Michelle returned from her break at 9:20pm.  She won me over immediately as she started with Pink Pony Club, and had every girl in the room singing along by the first chorus!

We were sad to leave Michelle after just 30 minutes, but it was time to pick up Ian from camp.  They started charging for the Night Owls babysitting at 10pm, so we needed to get him before that.  We burst out laughing when this little boy came to the door to greet us!

King Ian had a wonderful night at camp and couldn’t wait to go back the next day!  Until then, we headed back to the cabin so we could rest up for our day of scenic cruising through Tracy Arm Fjord… or would we??

One thing’s for sure…

Next up: we finally see ALASKA for the first time!

Do you know that moment when you can feel someone watching you?  At 5am, I rolled over and opened my eyes to find Ian standing next to my bed, saying he was ready to wake up now.  It was still pitch black outside and I was nowhere near ready to wake up, so I took him back to his bed and told him to go back to sleep.  Of course, that didn’t work and I spent the next 2 hours trying to get him to go back to sleep.  I have a reputation for getting very little sleep on the night before a cruise, and last night was no different.  I kept waking up, tossing and turning for a bit, falling back asleep, then waking up again an hour later.  Having Ian continuously wake us up from 5-7am was just the icing on the cake!

I gave up at 7am, and got myself and Ian dressed for the day so we could go down to the lobby for breakfast and leave Jason to go back to sleep.  Once I was awake enough to realize what day it was, I checked Cruise Mapper again, and sure enough, the Luminosa was docked in Seattle awaiting our arrival!

The hotel set up a very nice complimentary breakfast in the lobby.  They had several stations, so we walked around to see our options.

Cereal and fruit

Warm cinnamon rolls

Scrambled eggs, cheese omelets, pork sausage links, and turkey sausage patties

Juice, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and milk

I have never seen this machine before and Ian and I both thought it was interesting.  You push the “OK” button and the machine dispenses 2 tandem dollops of batter.  The batter moves along a conveyor belt and gets pressed flat between 2 heated plates, and then the pancakes drop out of the machine onto your plate at the end.  I have been to tons of hotels where you can make your own Belgian waffles, but this was a unique twist and Ian was excited to eat his pancakes for breakfast.

We took our food out into the seating area and found a table for 2 to enjoy our food.

When we were done, we went back up to our room and found Jason was already awake and getting ready.  I sent him back down to the lobby for breakfast with Ian so I could have the room to myself while I packed up all of our belongings.  When they came back to the room, we loaded up the luggage on a trolley and Ian helped push it down the hall to the elevators.

I completed the online check-in process for our cruise at exactly midnight Eastern time, two weeks before the cruise.  Conveniently, that was only 9pm in Arizona so I didn’t have to stay up super late at night to be one of the first to check in, and I was able to secure the earliest boarding arrival window.  For our cruise, that was between 11 and 11:30am.  I thought I remembered having earlier arrival windows on prior cruises, but even the people who had early access to check-in (either through VIFP status or by staying in a suite) said 11am was their earliest arrival time too.  At some point a week or two before the cruise, someone posted in the FB forum that they work at the terminal and they start letting people enter at 10am and let everyone in as they arrive.  I didn’t want to arrive right at 10am in case we really did have to wait for our 11am time slot so we just waited at the hotel until 9:30am before checking out and requesting our ride. 

Pier 91 is too far from our hotel to use the courtesy shuttle, so I requested a Lyft XL.   $90 seemed crazy expensive for the 30 minute drive, but Uber XL wanted to charge $105!  The driver arrived quickly and the ride took us through downtown with great views of the skyline.  

Ian spotted the Space Needle as we drove through the streets of downtown, and asked what it was.  We told him, and he spent the next week and a half talking all about the “Space Noodle”.  In fact, he still calls it that as I’m writing this review today, long after we returned home.  We did try correcting him the first few times he said it, but then gave up as the mispronunciation was too cute!  So I present to you, Seattle’s famous landmark, the Space Noodle!

Soon after that, we spotted our first glimpse of the Carnival Luminosa.  There was something weird about seeing a Carnival ship without the famous whale tale on the funnel, but I knew to expect that since she used to be owned by Costa and they didn’t add the whale tale during the Carnival refurbishment.

The Lyft dropped us at the port at 10:15am and there were hardly any cars around.  It looked like we arrived at that sweet spot after the debarking passengers from the last cruise had left the pier, but before the new passengers were being dropped off.  We handed over our checked bags to one of the porters, and walked into the terminal.  Someone looked at our boarding pass which clearly said we had an 11am arrival time, but they just waved us into the building.  Inside, there was no wait for one of the agents to look at our passports and take our photos to link our sign and sail cards to the facial recognition system.  Ian was sitting in his stroller so we went in the wheelchair line to take the elevator upstairs.  When we got to security, they wanted me to give them my disposable water bottle.  They didn’t have a bin where I could dump out the water, and I tried chugging it because I had intended to reuse that bottle throughout the week and didn’t want it taken away.  Eventually, they let me keep it if I said I needed water to take medicine.  There was a strong chance I would need a caffeine pill after my poor night of sleep and then Ian’s 5am wake up call, so I probably would need to take that medicine after all!  The final step of security was going through the x-ray machines, which was quick and they did not ask us to remove the two wine bottles from Jason’s backpack. 

By then it was 10:30am, so the whole process from the Lyft’s drop off to finishing security only took 15 minutes.  People were already boarding the ship, and at first one employee said they were only boarding people in suites, so we waited to the side. Then we realized that everyone who came around the corner from security was going right on the ship, and it was way too many people for them to all be suite guests so we approached the man checking boarding passes and he waved us through.  

We walked along a long sidewalk outside the terminal running parallel to the ship until we reached the zig-zagging ramps to the gangway.

I officially stepped foot on the ship at 10:38am, more than 20 minutes before our arrival window started!

I was debating about where to put my ship tour photos because I collected photos around the ship throughout the week, but I think I’ll just go ahead and share them now.  Most of these were not taken until the morning we arrived in Juneau because that was when I was out of bed early enough to take pictures in the venues when they were empty, but I don’t want to wait that long to share them.  Think of this as a sneak peek of several venues around the ship, long before I even saw them myself!

Starting on Deck 2 forward with the Luminosa Theater.  Even though this ship was originally designed for Costa, I thought the theater had a similar layout and design to some of the older Carnival ships I have sailed on.  The seats upstairs (technically deck 3) were individual seats with cup holders in the arm rests.  

The seats downstairs were long rows of padded benches with a small table for every 2 seats to share.  Relative to the size of the ship, this theater seemed huge and there was plenty of seating for the shows we attended.

When you exit the theater on deck 2, you walk down a short hallway opposite the elevators, then enter into Ocean Plaza (although this photo was taken from inside the casino when you approach Ocean Plaza from the midship venues):

This space was also more than large enough for the events they held here.  My only complaint was sometimes they had loud events happening in Ocean Plaza and you could hear it from inside the theater because the 2 venues were so close to each other.  That was distracting (like during some of the naturalist’s lectures where she wasn’t very loud and the activity in Ocean Plaza over powered her).

I really liked this piece of art at the back of Ocean Plaza:

When you walk from Ocean Plaza aft into the Casino, you will find Bonsai Sushi Express on your right.  I never ate here, but I imagine it would be weird to get your sushi from a restaurant inside the only place on the ship where you are allowed to smoke cigarettes.  I sure do hope the cigarette smoke didn’t impact the flavor of the sushi!

We are not gamblers and we usually avoid walking through the casino on ships because it is too smokey.  Unfortunately, the layout of this ship made it hard to avoid passing through the casino because it is located between the atrium and the theater/Ocean Plaza.  To give credit where it is due, we noticed that you could barely smell the smoke when walking through the casino on this cruise.  I do not know if that is because the Luminosa has a powerful filtration and ventilation system installed, or just because people smoked in the outside smoking areas instead of in the casino, but either way, we did appreciate that the smoke never bothered us.  

Not that I know much about what makes a good casino because like I said, we don’t gamble, but this casino looked fairly large, clean, and had a good variety of tables and slot machines from what I could see.

I thought it was clever that the ship’s arcade was located right next to the casino.  Parents could drop their kids off in the arcade, then play the adult arcades (aka: slot machines).  I took this photo at 6:44am, so clearly not prime time for kids to play arcade games.  The room looked a bit small and I could imagine it got very crowded during peak times.

Up next was the art gallery.  Instead of having a dedicated room, this was just in a section of the atrium.  At some point, we passed through and saw a table set up for the Iris art.  I wish I got a photo of that as it was really cool, although I am sure it cost a fortune!

Next was the atrium.  This was one of the few places I saw signs of life at this early hour as people waited for their morning drinks at the bar.

This giant statue of a naked lady laying prone on a platform took up most of the floor space in the lobby.  It was kind of a weird choice because it made it hard for large events to happen here.  

Next was the nightclub, but the door was always locked during the day so I never went inside and didn’t get any photos there.

Finally, we came to the Piano Bar 88.  This was probably the weirdest piano bar I’ve seen on any Carnival ship.  It was literally in a hallway, so there wasn’t a dedicated room for it, and people were always walking through between the MDR and aft elevators and the other venues further forward on the ship.  I imagine that must have been very distracting to the piano bar entertainer.  I think this is probably one of the venues that Carnival needed to find a space for when they converted the Costa ship, so it’s not like it was originally planned to be used as a piano bar.  On the Costa ship, it was just a generic bar/lounge, and I’m sure it worked fine for that purpose.

All the way aft was the bottom level of the one and only main dining room on the ship.  They used the lower level for anytime dining and the upper level was for fixed dining.

Now we are walking forward from the aft of the ship on deck 3.  Forward of the aft elevators was the Alchemy Bar.  Similar to the piano bar directly below it, this venue was a walk-through hallway as opposed to a dedicated room.  It was also just a regular bar/lounge on the Costa ship, but Carnival needed to find a spot for their Alchemy Bar, so this is where they put it.  It was always crowded whenever we walked through here (which was every night around 6:30pm when we finished dinner and wanted to get up to the atrium).  It wasn’t ideal, but I did think the decor was classy and fairly modern.

Next up was the Carnival Store, where you can buy all of the Carnival-branded merchandise.  

After that, the ship opens up for the upper level of the atrium, with lots of space to stand around and overlook the activity in the deck 2 part of the atrium below.  They also used this for the Pixels Photo Gallery.  I didn’t take any specific photos here because it was closed when I did my early morning ship tour.

Next up was the Galleria shops, selling all the typical perfume, jewelry, and clothing sold on every ship.

Up next was Java Blue Cafe.  I didn’t take a photo of this area because it was busy with lots of people buying their morning specialty coffees and I didn’t want them in my photos.  I meant to come back another time, but every time we were in this area, there were always people around.  I guess people on this ship liked their specialty coffees throughout the day!

Up next was the Limelight Lounge, which was used for the comedy shows.  This space was a medium-sized room, so it probably depends on the sailing if the comedy shows are popular or not as to if this venue was big enough.  I have to wonder how popular the comedy club is when the Luminosa sails out of Australia.  The crew definitely tried to cram in as many chairs as possible into this room.  Most nights we needed to separate the rows a little more because otherwise there wasn’t any space for our legs when we sat in the chairs.

And then we were back at the theater in the front of the ship, so that pretty much covered all the indoor venues on decks 2 and 3.  That’s where my tour ended that morning, but I also found a few other photos from around the ship that I will include here.

This was the indoor Lido pool, featuring the retractable roof:

This was the outdoor Promenade on deck 3, running the length of both sides of the ship and offering excellent views of the water from a lower vantage point.

I liked that this ship had an open elevator bank with 3 glass elevators, running all the way from deck 2 up to deck 10.  There is something so grand about those open elevator banks that I always enjoy on cruise ships.

The top of that area had a huge skylight allowing lots of natural light to flood into the ship.  The steakhouse was also in this area on deck 10, but I didn’t take any photos inside that venue.

And finally, this was the mini-golf course.  Actually, I think Carnival calls it the putting green on their deck plans, which makes sense because it didn’t have all the fun things you usually find at mini-golf.  It was very small and I never saw anyone using it.

Okay, so that brings us back to 10:38am on Embarkation Day, just as we stepped on the ship…

As we boarded, someone noticed that we were traveling with a child and handed us this information about safety protocol for families:

Our first order of business was to visit our muster station to get that chore out of the way.  I love that we no longer need to cram together outside for the safety drill and the cruise lines have figured out a more efficient way to complete this requirement.  We found the crew members standing in the stairway near the deck 3 aft elevators for our muster station and they scanned our boarding passes to prove we were there, then they sent us on our way.  Easy peasy!

I wanted to see the view of the Seattle skyline from one of the outer decks, so since we were already near the aft elevators, we took that up to deck 9 aft.  This is where the Serenity Deck is located on this ship, and even though we were literally the only people out there, the crew were quick to shoo us away because Ian is under age 18.  We told them we just wanted to take a quick photo of the view, so they said that was okay if we left quickly.

Next, we went inside to the Lido Marketplace.  None of us were hungry after eating a big breakfast at the hotel, but we figured it was better to eat now while we could easily get a table.  I wanted nothing to do with the Lido buffet later in the afternoon when more people had boarded the ship.  It was just 11am when we got there, so it was no surprise that there were tons of open tables and no lines at the food stations.

I shared a make your own pasta dish with fusilli, chicken, mushrooms, onions, and pomodoro sauce with Ian.  I really wish this station was open at dinner time because it makes for a heavy lunch, but would have been perfect for a quick dinner one night.  There was no one ahead of me in line, so they took my order and made my dish within 5 minutes.

We sat at a table by the windows so we could watch all the people exiting the terminal to board the ship.  I’m not sure if it got busier later on, but at this early hour, there was still just a slow trickle of people approaching the gangway.

One of my favorite traditions on a Carnival ship is to have funfetti cheesecake for dessert at lunch on embarkation day.  It is the only day of the cruise when they serve this option, and it is always one of my favorites.  I noticed that the Luminosa didn’t have the fancy cakes on display like they do on some of the other ships.  I am not sure if Carnival doesn’t do that anymore or if it’s just a Luminosa thing, but I was happy to see they still served the funfetti cheesecake, just in smaller pieces than when they have the big cakes on display.

Ian was thrilled to have his first ice cream cone of the trip! 

I appreciated that these signs were sitting on all the tables near the buffet.  I can imagine that on a cold/rainy weather cruise, people might tend to hang out more at the indoor venues and it might be tempting to linger at your lunch table even after you finish eating.  That makes it very hard for people to find a table when they want to eat, so I hoped passengers would heed the request on these signs and vacate their tables when they finished eating.

While Ian was finishing his ice cream cone, I was playing around in the Hub app and noticed that you could already request a debarkation time.  It seemed crazy to think about debarking the ship when we were only 20 minutes into our cruise, but I went ahead and signed us up for the earliest time slot available.  I figured that time slots would fill up as more people boarded the ship and I may as well reserve the time we wanted now while it was available.

When I looked at Day 8 in My Planner, it now showed our debarkation group as a scheduled event.  Do you think if I clicked on the “cancel debarkation” button, they would let me stay on the ship forever??  **Wishful thinking!**

When we were all done with lunch, we took Ian up one level to deck 10 forward so we could register him for Camp Ocean.  This is the only time they allowed parents to enter the camp area and look around, so I wanted to see where Ian would be spending his time.  

They always had a schedule posted outside the entrance to remind us of the hours that day.

Inside, there were 2 rooms.  The front room was for the 6 to 8 year olds in the Stingrays group.  It had several large TV screens that they used to show movies and let the kids play video games.  Otherwise, it was just a big open room with plenty of space for the kids to run around and do other group activities.

There was a locked door with another room behind it for the 2 to 5 year olds in the Penguins group.  They had another TV screen in here so the younger kids didn’t have to watch the same movie as the older kids.  They also had lots of toys, including cars and trucks, so Ian was thrilled!  He loves anything in the transportation category (ie: cars, trucks, planes, boats, construction vehicles, etc.), so we were all happy to see the options on this ship because Princess didn’t have a single toy that interested Ian on our December cruise. 

This might be TMI, but parents of toddlers might be interested so I am going to mention it.  Anyone else can skip to the next paragraph… Both rooms in the camp had bathrooms set up for children of that size.  The front room for the Stingray kids had small toilets and low sinks as expected, but I was shocked at how small the toilets were in the Penguins room.  It was literally the size of a mixing bowl sitting on the floor!  Ian is newly potty trained, so this was his first cruise when we needed to worry about those logistics.  He loved that he was tall enough to stand or sit on the camp toilets, and we encouraged him to always use them right after we dropped him off, and immediately before we picked him up, because they were a lot more convenient than using the adult-sized toilets everywhere else on the ship.  I considered packing a foldable step stool for him to use in our cabin bathroom to reach the toilet and sink, but decided against it.  I regretted that decision, so it was great when he could utilize the camp bathrooms!

Our next order of business was to speak with the maitre’d in the MDR about our dinner table assignment.  We opted for the early seating of fixed dining on this cruise since all aboard times for all but one of our ports were early enough that I knew we could get to dinner by 5:30pm.  There was a lady at the desk who looked up our table and told me we were seated at a table for 6 with another family with a 7 year old child.  I was hoping for a private table because Ian has a reputation for displaying his worst behavior in the dining room on cruises.  I don’t know what it is, because sometimes he will be perfectly well behaved, but other times he starts yelling and throwing tantrums both at dinner and sea day brunch (so it’s not just that he’s ready for bed).  Anyway, I didn’t want to subject another family to Ian’s antics, and I knew I would be very stressed out with trying to keep him quiet and not disturb the other family, so a private table worked better for us.  I explained that to the lady at the desk and she said we could check the app later to see if they were able to honor our request.  I made a note that our original table assignment was #372, so if the table number changed then I knew we would have a private table.

By then, it was 1:30pm and our cabin was ready so we went up to check it out.  I knew we were close to the midship elevators, but I didn’t realize that we were the first cabin after getting off the glass elevators and turning into the hallway!  As in, if you were standing in front of the glass elevators waiting for one to come, and you turned to your right, you looked directly at the door to the cabin next to us (so I was glad we didn’t pick that one because they had no privacy if their door was open!)  I was very worried about noise from the elevator waiting area, from all the people walking down our hall to get to their cabins, and from the atrium a few decks below us, but I’ll just spoil it now and say none of that was an issue.  I actually loved our cabin location being so close to the elevators because that made it very quick and convenient when we needed to run back to the cabin to drop off backpacks after excursions, or grab something we forgot in the cabin, or whatever we needed.  So often on ships, I get off the elevator and hesitate before I get my bearings and know which way to turn to get to my cabin.  As long as we were using the midship elevators, I always knew exactly where to go by using the glass elevators as my landmark.  Also, I am thrilled to say that noise was not an issue at all!  If we were in our cabin with the door closed and we were all silent, then yes, I could hear the music from the atrium 3 decks below us, drifting up through the open elevator space.  It wasn’t loud enough to hear what song was playing, but we could hear it softly through the door.  However, if we were talking, or had our sound machine on at night/naptime, we couldn’t hear anything at all.  I would definitely pick this cabin if I ever cruised on the Luminosa again.

This cabin layout is different from anything I have seen on other Carnival ships (because it’s really made for a Costa ship!), so I tried to capture it with lots of photos.  Carnival called it a “premium balcony” but I would classify it more like a mini-suite on other cruise lines.  Carnival doesn’t have a mini-suite category, so I guess they just tried to work with terms they already used.

When you enter the cabin, there is a shelf to use as a drop zone.  This was great for setting out the things we would need each day for our excursions so we didn’t forget anything as we left the cabin.  There was a small cabinet above the shelf with the safe and an extra shelf at the very top where we stored our beach towels.  Below the shelf were 3 wide drawers.  These are wider than the drawers in the typical Carnival cabin, and while the top one was very shallow and best suited for holding papers and small items, the two bottom drawers were very deep and held a lot of our clothes.

Next, there are 2 standard Carnival closets.  Both of them had the option to hang clothes on the top, in the middle, or both, and they also had a shelf that could drop down in the middle of the closet or you could fold it up to keep it out of the way.  

One of the closets also had a full length mirror mounted on the inside of the door so I gave that one to Jason to use for the week because I had other plans for the inside of my closet door.

For my closet, I left the shelf folded up so I would have space to hang my dresses.  I also travel with a long hanging shoe rack that gives me tons of shelves for my folded clothes, plus an over-the-door shoe rack where we can store lots of small items to keep things organized.  I used to hang this in the bathroom, but now that we travel with Ian, I thought it was more convenient to hang it inside the closet to keep it out of sight so he wouldn’t try to mess with it.  

I will note one complaint I had with this closet configuration.  I am used to having 3 closets on Carnival ships:  two for hanging clothes and one with 5 shelves inside.  This cabin did not have the shelf closet because they used that space for the drop zone.  Usually the drawers are under the desk, so it felt like we missed out on some extra storage by switching things around like this.  When we cruise, we have a lot of non-clothing items that need to be stored away, so I struggled to find places for those items without the shelf closet.

The bathroom is located opposite the closets, just like in most Carnival cabins.  This was very similar to other Carnival bathrooms, but the shower had a glass door.  I knew I would appreciate not having the curtain cling to me while showering, but an added and unexpected benefit was it also helped keep the bathroom floor dry because all of the water stayed inside the shower stall.  

There were 3 shelves on either side of the mirror, plus a few little shelves under the counter, so we had plenty of space to store all of our toiletries for the week.

As you enter the main space of the cabin, there is a long desk next to the closets, similar to a standard Carnival balcony cabin.  The difference was that we didn’t have any drawers here because they are located by the front door.  They mounted a narrow shelf along the length of the mirror which seemed poorly thought out.  It was at the exact height that it blocked being able to see your face when standing in front of the mirror!  I suppose it wouldn’t have been a problem for someone shorter than 5 feet tall, but it was inconvenient for both Jason and me.  It would have worked better if they attached a shelf or two to the side of the closet like they do on other ships, and left most of the rest of the mirror unobstructed.  We ended up using this shelf to hold my hair tools and Ian’s snacks (so he couldn’t reach them and help himself without us knowing!)

The fridge is located in the cabinet under the desk.  It was empty when we arrived, so I appreciated that I didn’t need to remove a bunch of cans of soda that they would charge us for drinking, and the fridge kept our drinks cold throughout the week.

When we arrived in the cabin, there were two 1.5 liter bottles of water on the desk above the fridge.  We asked our steward and he said it would be fine for us to drink those bottles as our complimentary bottles through VIFP, as long as we didn’t also go to a bar to redeem the free bottle.  Obviously we didn’t plan to double-dip, so this was much more convenient than having to get the free bottles from the bar like we used to do.

This is also where the one and only US outlet is located in the cabin.  Because the ship spends half the year Down Under, there was also one Australian plug here.  I always travel with a universal outlet adaptor so we could make use of all the outlets in the room.

The couch is located opposite the desk.  This was a standard Carnival orange couch, which converted to be Ian’s bed for the week.  There are 2 large drawers under the couch, but one of them was stuffed with extra linens and unusable for us.  We used the empty drawer for our dirty laundry throughout the week, which made it much easier to pack at the end of the trip because all the laundry was condensed into one location.

Within the first 10 minutes in the cabin, I bumped into that coffee table so many times that I had a bruise on my leg, so we decided to slide it under the desk.  Luckily, it fit perfectly and opened up a bit more floor space for us to walk around.  This photo also shows the half-wall that helped divide the cabin and gave the feeling of Ian having his own space separate from our bedroom.  That half-wall is also what made this cabin feel like a mini-suite because it gave the illusion of having 2 rooms in the cabin.  There was also a small nightstand at the foot of Ian’s bed which he used to store his toys for the week.

On the other side of that half-wall, there was a desk/vanity area.  Typical Carnival cabins do not have this space, and I really enjoyed using it.  The desk had 3 small drawers which were perfect for me to store my electronics and chargers.  There was a hairdryer in the top drawer, which unfortunately cannot be removed and took up half the space in that drawer.  There was also a narrow drawer along the length of the desk, which is where I stored the Fun Times and any other papers our steward left in our mailbox.  There was also a second phone here, which seemed totally pointless as the other phone was literally 2 steps away on the opposite counter.  

One of the most useful parts of this desk was that it had 4 USB ports.  It was great being able to charge all my electronics simultaneously, and there was plenty of space on the desk for the devices to rest on while being charged.  I always travel with a 10 foot long phone charging cable because often the outlets in hotels are not convenient to charge and use my phone while I’m in bed, so we fed the cord behind the small lamps on our headboard over to Jason’s side of the bed for him to charge his phone at night because there weren’t any outlets or USBs over there.  There was also a standard EU outlet at this desk, so I could have used my travel adaptor here but we didn’t need it with all the USB ports.

This photo shows a good perspective on how big the cabin was.  That half-wall and desk space really helped to separate us from Ian when we were asleep.  The half-wall also blocked his view of us from when he was laying in bed, so it felt more private.

Lastly, we come to the balcony.  Although it was definitely deeper than a standard balcony, it likely would not have kept us dry if we sat outside in the rain.  The real benefit to this bigger balcony was that there was space for a third chair!  I sneaked a peek around the corner at our neighbor’s balcony, and they only had 2 chairs, so I don’t know if our steward intentionally gave us the third chair knowing we had 3 people in the cabin, or if it is always there because this cabin is allowed to have 3 guests whereas the one next to us can only have a maximum of 2 guests.  Either way, we loved having 3 chairs so we could all sit down and enjoy the balcony together.  

While still docked in Seattle, we had a great view of the marina and Ian loved watching all the smaller boats come and go.

They were still refueling the ship, so there was a lot of entertainment to watch from the balcony!

I went back inside the cabin to unpack our carry-on bags since our checked bags hadn’t arrived yet.  Our steward, Sigit, stopped by to say hello, so I asked him to turn the couch into a bed.  He said he usually does that in the evening, but I asked if he could do it now so Ian could take his nap, and he said that was no problem.  We ended up leaving it like a bed all week so it was always set up for Ian at nap and bedtime.  Sigit said he would come clean our cabin once a day, so I requested that he come in the mornings.  

I will note that the choice of art in the cabin was quite unique and random.  Cabins usually have some kind of painting or maybe a photograph, but this was a shadow box displaying what looked like women’s undergarments from a century ago.  I don’t know enough about costuming and the history of wardrobes to precisely identify it, but it was nothing I have ever seen displayed before in a cruise ship cabin.  Remembering that this ship was originally designed for a European market, I suppose I can imagine far more risque pieces of art they could have displayed, and I’ll count my blessings that it was only articles of clothing!

Before I forget, here is today’s copy of the Fun Times:

I left the cabin to let the boys take a nap.  As soon as I entered the elevator bank, I spotted our checked luggage sitting there with about a hundred other bags.  The crew member sorting the bags said it was fine if I wanted to take our bags back to the room, so I did because it was such a short walk only steps away.  I really wanted to unpack the bags, but I knew Jason and Ian were trying to nap so I just rolled them into the cabin and left again, knowing the rest of the unpacking would be a chore for later in the day.

It was now 3 hours since I shared my pasta lunch with Ian, so I went up to the Lido Marketplace in search of a snack to hold me over until dinner.  It wasn’t busy at all since everyone had left to go to their cabins, so there was no wait at the pizza counter and I was able to grab a slice to eat out on the Serenity deck (taking advantage of being sans-Ian).  The cloudy overcast skies from this morning had cleared and it turned into a beautiful, sunny day.  The Seattle skyline really shines (literally and figuratively) in the afternoon sun.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Mt. Rainier in the distance.  I have heard that it is rare to see it so clearly, so it felt so special to experience this view in person.  The point where the snow ends creates the illusion that the mountain is floating above the horizon, and I just couldn’t stop looking at this stunning view.

I snagged one of the coveted clamshells along the back railing so I could admire the view while soaking up the sunshine and taking some notes for this review.

After a while, the cushion got so hot from the sun that it was burning my legs.  I was trying to use the napkin from my pizza snack to keep me covered, but obviously that was not big enough to be effective and I eventually admitted defeat and got up to explore more of the ship.  I walked up the outdoor stairs to the Sunset Bar on deck 10 aft.  There was a circular sculpture up there which perfectly framed Mt. Rainier in the middle if you stood at the right angle.

Or, you could place it in the space between Mt. Rainier and the downtown skyline!

This is a good view of the Serenity Deck layout.  We didn’t spend much time out here throughout the cruise because we usually had Ian with us, but I found it odd that they put all those clam shells along the railing of the entire deck.  It blocked the view for everyone else not using a clam shell, and it was also nearly impossible to know which shells were occupied because you couldn’t see around them.  If you were lucky enough to see a vacant clamshell, it was really tricky to access it because there was no space to walk between them, and they were pushed all the way up to the railing, so it felt like you were walking through your neighbors bed to get to yours.  These were the only sources of shade out on the deck, so they were very popular, and I would imagine when the ship sails in the hotter climate out of Australia, they must be the most popular seats on the ship.  It is just a shame that they impede the view for everyone else who doesn’t get one!

Next, I walked up the port side of the ship to see the marina again.  

That is one huge yacht!  Also, do you see the big building with a brown roof in the background?  That’s where we will be eating dinner on the night we debark the ship next week!  It was fun to get a sneak peek at one of our upcoming activities.  More on that when we get to that day of the review.

Even though we could visit our muster stations at our leisure throughout the day, the ship was still required to do a safety briefing over the loud speaker, including sounding the emergency alarm.  When the Captain sounded the alarm at 3pm, it was so loud that I thought for sure it would wake up Ian, so I went back to the cabin.  The alarm did wake up Jason from his nap, but somehow Ian slept through it!  Ian naps for 2+ hours on weekends at home, so the longer nap he takes, the better.  The downside was that meant someone still needed to stay with him in the cabin.  Jason said I could go back out and continue taking photos, so I went back up to deck 9 for the best views of the skyline.

Seeing one of the ferries float across the water felt like such a quintessential Seattle view:

This sailboat looked like it was giving a tour of the Puget Sound:

I went back to the cabin around 3:30pm because that was our scheduled sail away time and I wanted to remind Jason to put his phone in airplane mode.  I was surprised to find that Ian was still asleep!  I still had a lot of unpacking to do, and I didn’t want to waste the whole night getting organized, so I quietly started unpacking the big suitcases in the dark, making every effort to avoid waking Ian.  He ended up sleeping until 4pm, so I sent the boys out to the balcony to watch the scenery as we sailed away from Seattle, and I stayed inside and continued to unpack (with the lights on!). 

We all changed into our evening outfits and got ready for dinner.  Although our fixed dining time was originally listed as 5:30pm, the app said that we could arrive between 5:15 and 5:45pm.  That helped ease the congestion of everyone showing up at the same time, all needing help to find their table.  I was very happy when I noticed that our dinner table number had changed to #367, and hoped that meant they were able to find us a private table.  When we got downstairs, one of the waiters escorted us to a table for 2 along the railing of the upper level of the MDR.  They had placed a third chair on the long side of the table to fit our party of 3.  I didn’t feel like I could complain considering they had accommodated us by giving us a private table, but it was very tight trying to fit the food and drinks for 3 people onto a 2 top table.  When this happened on our Carnival Panorama cruise, Ian was still sitting in a high chair, so his food went on the highchair tray and we had enough space for the adult food on the table.  He is too big for the highchair now, so we just had to get creative with finding space for all the plates.  We usually asked the waiters to clear our bread plates immediately, and we didn’t take the ramekins of butter (since we didn’t have anything to put butter on anyway), and I made use of the ledge along the railing next to our table as a place to put my purse and phone and other things that would usually be on the table with us.

After we were seated, our head waiter came over to introduce himself and his two assistant waiters.  They tried to give Ian a hi-five, but he played shy and tried to hide from them.  He is usually shy around strangers, so I told them not to take it personally!  They offered to get Ian a booster seat, but he refused.  When he tried to sit in his seat, he couldn’t reach the table.  As it was, I thought I would benefit from a booster seat because the chairs were all bottomed-out and in desperate need of reupholstering.  Eventually, we were able to convince Ian that it would be much easier for him to reach his food if he sat in a booster seat.  He hesitantly agreed, and the waiters brought one over and helped us buckle it to Ian’s chair.  Stubborn child!

Ian ordered the kid’s pizza with fries.  Ten minutes later, the waiter brought out his pizza, plus a dish of chicken nuggets “just in case”.  We appreciated his efforts to win over Ian, and this would continue throughout the week.

Here was tonight’s adult dinner drinks and food menu:

For my appetizers, I ordered the pappardelle with braised lamb.  I have had this on several cruises and it is always a highlight for me.

I also ordered the roasted duck rolls, which were refreshing as they were served chilled.

I ordered the BBQ salmon entree from the Emeril Selects section.  That might have been the first time I ever ordered salmon on a cruise.  For some reason I always feared it would be dry, but this dish was moist and delicious. 

I ordered the strawberry cheesecake for dessert.  Yes, I had cheesecake as dessert for both lunch and dinner, and no, I’m not mad about it!

Ian ordered the kid’s brownie for dessert.  The waiters made another attempt to win Ian’s affection by also bringing out some cookies.  From the look on Ian’s face, he was up to the task of eating 2 desserts!

We left dinner at 6:30pm, so we were there for an hour and 15 minutes.  That seemed reasonable considering the typical mayhem of dinner on night 1 of a cruise.  We usually try to keep our dining room dinners to one hour at most, so we hoped things would move along quicker the rest of the week.  Bellies full, we set out to explore some more of the ship.  There was live music playing in the atrium, so we headed there first.  I loved that you were able to walk the full length of the ship on decks 2 and 3 without having a galley in the middle to block your path.  That was definitely a huge advantage to the layout of this ship!  

There is a great spot for photos on deck 3 with the glass elevators in the background, so we found a fellow passenger to take a photo of the 3 of us together.

I loved the blue tear drops in the chandelier. 

We walked a little further around to the side and had a nice view overlooking the atrium bar.

We could hear the musicians, but at first, we couldn’t find them!  Then we noticed that there was a tiny stage behind the bartenders.  It reminded me of a puppet show stage, or perhaps a stage for marionettes where the people controlling the strings could hang down from where we just stood to take our photos!

I noticed the blue tear drop chandeliers continued up to the ceiling of the atrium.  A lot of the decor was dated on this ship, but I did love those chandeliers.

It was a little chilly on the ship, so we went back to the cabin to grab my cardigan.  While there, we went out on the balcony to check out the current view.  It was fun that we could almost always see land in the distance throughout this cruise, as opposed to Caribbean cruises when you see nothing but water on most sea days.

I also took a moment to hang up the door decorations I made at home.  I intended to hang these on our door to help Ian identify our cabin, but sadly, the door was not magnetic.  I ended up hanging the signs on the wall next to our door and mailbox, where the magnets held the signs in place all week.

Cardigan in hand, we went down to the Alchemy Bar to redeem our VIFP free drink.  I have been Gold for several cruises, but this was Jason’s first time also being Gold so we both got to redeem a free drink.  

I picked the Pain Relief, with Starr Rum, Bacardi 8 Rum, Malibu Coconut Rum, and fresh orange and pineapple juice.  Jason picked the Island Old Fashioned, with spice infused Flor de Cana 12 Rum, sugar, water, and bitters.  Jason stayed at one of the tables with Ian while I went up to the bar to order the drinks.  When I ordered Jason’s drink, the bartender looked at me funny and questioned if I liked alcohol-forward drinks.  I laughed and explained that it was for my husband, and he drinks Old Fashioned’s all the time so it was right up his alley, whereas the fruity rum drink was for me.  That seemed to ease her concern, and she scanned our Sign and Sail cards, then made both cocktails.

We took our drinks back to the atrium so Ian could listen to the duo perform.  We found a seat on the couches by the window, so we got to enjoy the view while enjoying the music.  I appreciated that they left the curtains open in the evenings all around the ship.  On most cruises, they close the curtains in the evening to create a more formal atmosphere.  On cruises to Alaska, it stays light so late at night, and the views from the ship are so pretty, it would be a waste for them to close the curtains and block the views, so I was glad they left them open.  

By now, it was 7:40pm, so we were surprised to see the pilot boat pull up alongside the ship.  We had left Seattle 4 hours ago, so it was surprising that the pilot was still on board.

Camp didn’t open until 8pm tonight, so we brought Ian upstairs when it was time.  He was so excited to play with the cars.  Thank you Carnival for having the kind of toys young boys like to play with (I’m looking at you, Discovery Princess).  If you read my review of that cruise, you know that Ian was bullied at camp by an older kid on the first night of the cruise and it traumatized him for the rest of the cruise and he never wanted to go back to camp.  Well, he spent the last 7 months worried that mean kid would be on this Alaska cruise with us.  He randomly brought it up all the time, so although I hoped he would forget about it, he never did.  We were thrilled when Ian willingly went to camp tonight, lured by the idea of playing with those cars, and we hoped he had a fun time.  This was our first cruise when camp did not issue us a phone or pager to contact us if Ian needed help, so I was a little nervous about how that would play out.  What if he had an accident?  What if he was bullied again and it made him upset?  There was no way for the counselors to contact us while we were around the ship.  Most likely, he would be fine because he is used to being at school for 10 hours a day, and we were only leaving him at camp for 2 hours tonight because they started charging for Night Owls at 10pm.  That seemed like a good amount of time for him to get to meet the new counselors and kids at camp on this cruise, and for him to feel safe that we would be back soon to pick him up.

We went down to the Limelight Lounge for the 8:30pm comedy show.  There were plenty of seats open when we arrived at 8:05pm, and even a few open seats at the start of the show.  This will not be the case later in the cruise, so I think it was just a slow night with it being embarkation day and people still learning the flow of the ship.  

This show was rated for adults.  I appreciated that there was an adult show early enough in the evening that we could see it while Ian was at camp.  The comedy club host on this cruise was Jem Jem, and we both thought she was great at her job.  So often you have comedy club hosts who aren’t funny, and some of them are just plain annoying, but Jem Jem really knew how to warm up the crowd.  As the week went on, she got to know the people who always sat in the front row, so she made some inside jokes that only the comedy show regulars would understand.  I appreciated that she worked as more of an opening act than just someone who told us the rules of the show.

Tonight’s comedian was Paul Lyons, and we both thought he was very funny and not the typical cruise ship comedian.  He told us he was 65 years old and he played into that with jokes about his age and past career as a teacher.  We both laughed out loud through most of his show. 

When the comedy show finished at 9pm, we went just a few steps down the hall into the main theater to watch the Welcome Aboard show.  It was so convenient having the comedy club and the theater nearby (just on opposite sides of the elevators, as opposed to most ships where the theater is all the way forward, but the comedy club is all the way aft and on a different deck).   

Zach was on stage and he called up one of the kids from the front row to ask her a few questions.  After about 10 minutes, Jason and I looked at each other and we could tell we were both not very entertained at this show.  We decided to leave, in hopes of using our limited child-free time more productively.  Jason decided he was hungry, so we went up to the buffet.  By now it was 9:30pm and the only options were the deli, pizza, or ice cream.  I was hoping for a cookie or piece of cake, but couldn’t find any.  I think Jason had a sandwich from the deli, but I didn’t take a photo so I can’t be totally sure.  (That’s how I can include so many details in my reviews, by the way.  I take photos of everything to jog my memory weeks later when I’m at home at my computer, typing this up!)

A few minutes before 10pm, we made our way back up to deck 10 forward to pick up Ian from camp.  He had a huge smile on his face and we could tell he got over his fears of being bullied by the older kids.  I definitely think it helped that he was on the old side of the age range for the camp.  Later in the week, I learned that there were only 200 kids on our cruise, so camp wasn’t nearly as crowded as on our New Year’s Eve cruises with probably closer to 1000 kids on board.  The counselors handed us this note on our way out.  I don’t know if they do this for every kid or just for Ian because they knew he was hesitant to stay at camp, but either way, we really appreciated this gesture and knew he was in good hands when we left them to watch him all week.

Back in the cabin, Ian showed us the penguin he made at camp.  We used one of the magnets I brought from home to hang it next to Ian’s bed for the week.

As we got ready for bed, we could hear music coming from the atrium if we stood close to the door while inside the cabin.  Once we got into bed at the far end of the cabin, and turned on our sound machine that we sleep with every night at home anyway, we couldn’t hear the music at all.  By the way, this little sound machine was a game changer for packing.  We used to travel with the full sized one we use at home (we have a duplicate that lived in our suitcases, dedicated for traveling).  I found this tiny sound machine on Amazon and it is just as loud as the full sized machine, but is slightly smaller than a Keurig pod!  I actually bought 2 of them for the times Ian sleeps in a separate room, and even together they don’t take up nearly as much space in the luggage as one full sized machine.

We set our clocks back one hour tonight so we would be in Alaska’s time zone for the port days.  We made sure to switch our phones to not automatically adjust for time zones, and then manually changed the time before going to sleep.

Up next: Our only official Sea Day

This summer proved to be yet another scorcher for Phoenix with high temperatures over 105 degrees for most of July.  Here’s our weather forecast for the 10 days leading up to the cruise:

Needless to say, we were ready to cool off and couldn’t wait to fly to Seattle for more comfortable temperatures!  When I originally booked our flights, I was debating between a 10:10am flight which landed at 1:10pm, and a 1pm flight which landed at 4pm.  The 10:10am flight meant Ian likely would not get to take his afternoon nap (he usually naps from 1-3pm), but it would get us in to Seattle early enough that we could check into the hotel, run over to a store to buy our 2 bottles of wine for the cruise, and have plenty of time to go out to dinner before needing to return to the hotel to put Ian to bed.  The 1pm flight would have given Ian the opportunity to nap during the flight, but I knew there was no guarantee that he would actually fall asleep on the plane.  This kid has major FOMO and often fights his naps when we are on the go.  Plus, landing at 4pm would make it a little rushed to have time for all the things we needed to do before bedtime.  In the end, the 10:10am flight made the most sense and I booked our 3 tickets for 12,500 points each, using the points I earned from the Alaska Airlines credit card sign-up bonus.  

Six weeks later, I noticed that Alaska Airlines added a new flight to their schedule!  They pushed our 10:10am flight earlier to 9:45am, and they pushed the 1pm flight later to 3:20pm, which made room for a new flight to be added at 11:45am!  This was perfect for us because it meant Ian would have an opportunity to nap on the plane, and we would land at 2:45pm, with plenty of time to check into the hotel and go to the store before dinner.  The new flight was the same price as the original flight, so it was easy to switch the flights on the Alaska Airlines website.   

My alarm was set for 5:30am this morning, but I woke up at 4am and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I got out of bed at 4:30am to get the day started.  I guess I was just too excited to sleep any later!  I had just enough time to shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before Ian woke up at 6am. 

I got an email from Lyft last week with a $3 off code because I haven’t used them in a while. Well, that’s because we have no need for ride shares unless we are traveling, but it was great timing with needing to get to the airport today.  We requested a Lyft XL, and a Chrysler Pacifica immediately accepted our request and was enroute to pick us up in 8 minutes.  When we travel with 3 people, 2 big checked bags, 2 carry-on bags, 2 over-stuffed giant backpacks, Ian’s backpack, and Ian’s stroller, I prefer to request an XL car.  We might save a few dollars by requesting a standard-sized car, but then we risk them sending something too small for all of our stuff, and that stress isn’t worth the few dollars upcharge for the XL vehicle.  We were on the road to PHX by 9:20am.  Ian was mesmerized by the TV screens mounted on the back of the front seat head rests, and he spent the entire ride staring at the cartoon that the driver selected.  I guess he saw us standing on the curb with a young child and assumed he would enjoy Disney’s Zootopia, and he was right!

PHX doesn’t have curbside check in for Alaska Airlines, so we had to take our 2 big bags inside to the bag drop counter.  Each bag only weighed 37 pounds, so for once, I wasn’t nervous to put them on the scale.  Next, we proceeded upstairs to security where there was only one person ahead of us in our line.  The good news was that TSA no longer asks you to remove our shoes.  The bad news was that the team scanning our bags in the X-ray were in training, so I just knew they would be overly thorough.  I was shocked they didn’t pull my rolling carry on aside because it literally weighed more than our big checked bag, but both carry-on bags and my backpack passed through without any problems.  Our last bag was Jason’s backpack and they flagged it. Ugh!  He hardly had anything packed in his backpack, but they took out every single thing.  They opened up a packing cube where I neatly packed all of Ian’s snacks (pre-packaged Chewy granola bars, fruit bars, cheese crackers, etc.) and they proceeded to swab each individual wrapper.  Next, they asked Jason about the Subway sandwich he packed for lunch.  They wanted him to open the wrapper to prove it was a sandwich.  Seriously?!  He was like, that’s my food that I am going to eat.  Don’t touch it!  What did they think was inside?!  It was wrapped in the paper from Subway with the Subway sticker sealing the wrapper, and it smelled like a sandwich.  They ended up letting Jason hold it and unwrap it so they never touched it, and then they gave him a piece of packing tape to wrap it up again.  They put everything through the x-ray machine again, and he was finally cleared to go.  The whole ordeal was very strange and just felt like they were targeting the wrong thing.  At least we got to the airport with plenty of time before our flight, so the 30 minutes spent giving Jason’s sandwich a pat down didn’t matter in the end. 

We had about an hour at our gate before boarding.  Ian loved watching all the trucks out the window as they loaded luggage and supplies on the planes.  When our plane pulled up to the gate, it was so fun to see that it was a special blue plane with orcas painted on the side.  Usually, Alaska Airlines planes are white with a man’s face painted on the back vertical wing, so this was a special plane.

Boarding went smoothly and the flight left on time.  Yesterday, I downloaded America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders through the Netflix app on my iPad to watch on the plane.  I purposely saved it to watch on this trip in case Ian started watching my screen over my shoulder.  I definitely didn’t think it would be wise for him to watch season 3 of Squid Games, so I made sure to watch something safe for him to see. (No spoilers of either show please!  I haven’t had a chance to finish either season yet!)  The flight was uneventful, which I suppose is the best kind of flight to have.  Ian spent most of the time watching movies on his phone and playing with his toys.

When we were approaching Seattle, we noticed that we were flying over downtown and could see the Space Needle from the plane.  It seemed like a strange approach because we knew that we had long passed the airport and had to make a U-turn to go back south to land the plane, but that was great because it meant we could see the cruise docks at Pier 91 and all of downtown Seattle while up in the air.

Our plane landed 10 minutes early, and our checked bags came out quickly, so we were off to a great start.  Before the trip, I had called the hotel to ask about the logistics of having the free shuttle pick us up at the airport.  They said I should call them as soon as we got our luggage and they would send the shuttle to get us.  As directed, I called the hotel to request the shuttle, and they gave me directions on how to walk to the pick-up spot for hotel shuttles.  This terminal of SEA-TAC is under construction, and we now had 2 big checked bags, 2 rolling carry-on bags, plus Ian in his stroller, and only the 2 of us to push it all.  It wasn’t a pretty sight as we struggled to squeeze down the narrow hallways of the airport to find an elevator upstairs, lugged everything across the sky bridge, down another elevator, and then across the street to the hotel pick up spot.  Had I known it was such a trek, I would have paid for one of those big luggage carts and made Jason do all the heavy pushing while I just pushed Ian’s stroller.  Flustered and sweaty, I called the hotel again and they said they would dispatch the driver and it would be a 25 minute wait.  This was very annoying because that’s why they originally told me to call them when I had my checked luggage at baggage claim!  So they could drive to the airport while we walked out to the pick up spot!  We stood there waiting, and anxiously checking every hotel shuttle bus as it passed, but as they said, our shuttle arrived exactly 25 minutes later.

The ride to the hotel took 10 minutes, so I’m not sure why it took the driver 25 minutes to pick us up.  As I mentioned, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express- Seattle South in Tukwila.  By the time the shuttle dropped us off, it was after 4pm, so our room was ready and we were able to check in right away.  The suite was very nice, and way more space than the 3 of us really needed.  

Living room with queen-sized bed, couch, and a wardrobe and desk area to the left (not pictured)

Bedroom with a king-sized bed, dresser, wardrobe, and a comfy chair in the corner to the left (not pictured)

Mini fridge, microwave, and Keurig machine

Large spacious bathroom

We dropped off our bags in the room, and then went back to the lobby to ask the shuttle to drive us to Total Wine so we could buy our two bottles of wine to bring on the ship with us.  It was about a mile away, so the driver said that was no problem and she took us right away.  When she dropped us off, she said to call her when we were ready to be picked up and she would come get us.  Inside Total Wine, I picked out a bottle of Riesling and Jason picked a bottle of Cabernet, both with screw tops for easy opening on the ship.  We also picked up a few individual cans of beer from the coolers so we could drink them in the hotel room tonight after Ian went to sleep.

Goods acquired, we walked a half mile across the street to the Westfield Southcenter Mall so we could have dinner at the food court.  We considered a real restaurant for dinner, but Ian did not nap on the plane so we wanted something quick so we could get back to the hotel to put him to sleep.  We got Ian his all-time favorite food: mac & cheese.  It was very good and tasted very premium, especially considering it was from a mall food court.  Unfortunately, after he spent the whole travel day snacking, he didn’t eat much of his dinner. 

Jason and I got Poké burritos, which we had never had before.  It was like a Poké bowl, but in burrito form all wrapped up with a seaweed wrapper.  It was so good and I wished that we could find it in our local restaurants.  

When we were done eating, we called the hotel to have the shuttle pick us up from the mall.  By the time we got outside, the shuttle was there waiting for us to drive us back to the hotel.  I’m not sure what the hold up was with getting us from the airport, but the shuttle worked out great going to/from the mall and we appreciated saving some money on ride shares!  

By now, it was 6:30 PM and time to put Ian to bed.  Of course, he was very riled up from all the excitement of the day, so that took longer than we wanted.  Eventually, he fell asleep and we could crack open those beers from Total Wine and unwind for a while.  Jason made sure to finish up the rest of Ian’s mac and cheese as his late night snack.  We called it a night by 9:30PM, as it had been a long day after I woke up at 4 AM.  Before going to sleep, I checked the Luminosa’s location on Cruise Mapper, and was happy to see her docked in Victoria.  I couldn’t wait for the next morning to check again when she would be pulling into Seattle for us to board the ship.

Up next: Embarkation Day!

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!

Hi everyone!  My name is Dana, and I just returned home from a 7-night cruise on the Carnival Luminosa (July 24-31, 2025 sailing). As you can see from my cruise history listed below in my signature, I have taken many cruises over the last 15+ years, but I have never been to Alaska!  I was so excited to finally check out this beautiful part of the world!  I always write a detailed photo review when I return home from my cruises, with a journal-style day-by-day format. This cruise will be no different!  If you are looking for a short and sweet review, you might want to look elsewhere… I tend to write like I talk, so my reviews are very long and take a few weeks to complete.  On the other hand, if you like reading about lots of details, and if you want to see TONS of photos (including all of the daily schedules and menus), this is the review for you!  I do this as much to help others plan their vacations as to give myself a travel log to look back on and remember my wonderful cruise. 

In preparing for this cruise, there were hardly any detailed reviews of the Luminosa doing itineraries in Alaska.  I am sure this was partly due to the ship splitting its time between Alaska and Australia (plus two cruises every year that are each over 3 weeks long to reposition the ship between those locations).  Also, the ship is relatively new to the Carnival fleet, as it was previously operated by Costa Cruises, and was renovated and transitioned to Carnival in 2022.  Whatever the reason, there was hardly any information on Cruise Critic about the Luminosa when I was planning for this vacation, so hopefully my review will help others who plan to sail her in the future.  I know she is transitioning to use San Francisco as a homeport for the 2026 Alaska season, but since there will still be other Carnival ships sailing from Seattle, and the Luminosa will still have an Alaska itinerary even with a different homeport, hopefully this review will hold value for its future cruisers. 

As always, please feel free to ask questions and post comments along the way… I welcome your feedback!  I would think this goes without saying, but please be respectful in your comments, and remember that this review is based on what I experienced with my family on this vacation.  YMMV.  All of the posts for the review will be in this larger purple font so it stands out if you just want to read the review and skip the comments and other posts.  It may take me a little while to get all of my photos sorted and loaded onto my computer as I took over 3000 photos in the 12 days we were away, so please be patient with me.  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip as a little something to hold you over until it’s time to post the rest!