Alaska on the Wonder and Canadian adventures pre trip report!!

Claireywalsh

Mouseketeer
Joined
Oct 29, 2014
AD7E03A2-2CA5-4E08-8C78-069A1B61C716.jpeg I’ve often toyed with the idea of doing a pre trip report but something always crops up but this time I’ve decided I’m going to give it a go as I feel like I have so much planning and organising to do it might actually help me get things straightened out and make some room in my head for other essential stuff!!

So here goes - we are a family of 3 from Chesterfield in the UK - myself, Claire, 35 year old wife/mum who is lead Disney fan in the family. My husband Sean, 39, who complained when we first met about our first trip together to Florida but now has his own appreciation of all things mouse. And last but not least Maddison, our almost 11 year old daughter who has no idea what life would be like without the influence of Walt cropping up into our every day life

We are booked onto the 26th of August sailing to Alaska on the beautiful Disney Wonder and this will be our third Disney cruise.

We have sailed to Alaska before on the Wonder in 2015 and said pretty much straight after debarkation that we would be back. This summer is the last one before Maddison starts senior/high school so we decided this would be a great time to go and started planning the trip last year when the sailings were released.
As it’s quite a long flight over we decided we would make the most of it and tagged a few days on before the cruise to explore some more of Canada as we literally only had a few days in Vancouver and Whistler last time.

Our itinerary currently looks like this.

Wednesday 14th August - drive down to Gatwick airport and stay over as it’s about 4 hours away from where we live.
Thursday 15th - fly out to Calgary.
Its about a 9 1/2 hour flight and we should arrive around 2pm.We have organised a transfer to our first hotel. We will then pick up a hire car the day after.

We then have:
2 nights in Banff
2 nights at Moraine lake
1 night in Jasper
2 nights in Clearwater
2 nights in kelowna
2 nights in Vancouver

Then it’s cruise time!!

We have all the hotels booked for our stops but I have yet to start looking at excursions and things to do at each location. Any hints/tips/things to avoid/key info will be greatly appreciated as I want to try and get stuff down!! This time in 19 weeks we will be in Banff!!
 
Will be following along! We are going on our first Alaska ( but 6th Disney) cruise August 2020. We also live in the UK, our daughter is 11 in December and I'm also called Claire !!
 


Sounds like a fun trip! Banff is beautiful. Admittedly I've never been to some of the places you mentioned despite living in BC... but Kelowna is also a beautiful city, great beach area right in their downtown core. There's a kangaroo farm (farm is the wrong word, maybe sanctuary?) in Kelowna that's well worth checking out. Tons of wineries if that's your thing.
 
Will be following along! We are going on our first Alaska ( but 6th Disney) cruise August 2020. We also live in the UK, our daughter is 11 in December and I'm also called Claire !!

Woah spooky!!! You’ll love Alaska it’s a special itinerary x
 


Sounds like a fun trip! Banff is beautiful. Admittedly I've never been to some of the places you mentioned despite living in BC... but Kelowna is also a beautiful city, great beach area right in their downtown core. There's a kangaroo farm (farm is the wrong word, maybe sanctuary?) in Kelowna that's well worth checking out. Tons of wineries if that's your thing.

I haven’t seen anything about the kangaroos that a great share. Whenever I google kelowna it’s all the wine stuff that pops up - which is definitely my thing but I know Maddison would love to see the sanctuary. Thanks
 
I haven’t seen anything about the kangaroos that a great share. Whenever I google kelowna it’s all the wine stuff that pops up - which is definitely my thing but I know Maddison would love to see the sanctuary. Thanks

It’s well worth a visit, we went last year for the second time I believe and they had greatly expanded. The roos kinda get to roam, it’s nice.

Myra Canyon Trestles would also be worth a look and they have a ropes course that’s pretty fun for adventurous folks too.
 
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So, the first part of our adventure will be the day before we fly to Calgary.
We have 3 airports that are within about an hour of us but only 1, Manchester, serves long haul flights and would usually be our airport of choice.
For whatever reason - I really struggled to get any flights, direct/indirect from Manchester to either Calgary or Vancouver.
We played with dates - cruise first, land adventures after etc, different air lines and it just wasn’t working so we only really had Gatwick as a departure airport option.

From the route planner above you can see that it’s a good journey down for us. With London traffic it’s easily going to be a 4 hour journey.
Once I had got the flights organised which were direct with Air Transat I started looking at airport parking.
For 3 weeks we weren’t getting much change from £100. I stumbled across a brilliant ‘mystery’ package with a hotel stay for the night before and parking for £139.
The only thing you was you didn’t find out which hotel you would be at until after booking which you then couldn’t change as it was such a good deal?!?!?!?
After a quick discussion with Sean I just went for it as you can’t get hotel rooms for that price close to the airport never mind parking aswell and I think we did pretty well.
It’s 10 minutes via shuttle to the airport and looks pretty cute for an older style of hotel
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At the end of the day - we will literally be, showering, sleeping and leaving for the airport so really pleased I found such a bargain!!
Our flight out is not until lunch time on Thursday so we will have plenty of time to get across to the airport and have a bit of breakfast/lunch. I think I will invest in some lounge passes as you can spend up to 3 hours in there prior to your flight and it includes all your food and drink aswell.
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The next part of the research is the plane!!! I am not a good flyer and my coping mechanism is to find out as much as possible about the airlines/potential planes we could be on etc etc - I am well aware it’s not rational but I cannot help myself LOL
Sean thinks it’s hilarious and has a started videoing me upon take off and landing as that’s when I’m at my worst and on the edge of panic - does anyone have anything they do to get themselves through tricky/challenging situations?
We’ve flown with Air Transat before and have had great experiences but it doesn’t make it any easier.....
 
Hi all - sorry such a gap inbetween posts but my non Disney life got in the way of things 😂

So during the last 3 weeks we reached online check in day and port excursions!!
We are silver cruisers - this will be our third Disney cruise - so I was a little nervous that some of the things I had pencilled in wouldn’t be available.
We booked this cruise as soon as the 2019 summer itineraries were released so I had spent quite a chunk of time researching what we wanted to.
A few days before I had made a list of ports and first choices and also prioritised what we wanted to do so I could try and book those first.
Our cruise group on Facebook is really great and a couple of the plat/gold cruisers had already posted the tasting times, character breakfast and princess meet and greet offerings. This was so helpful in deciding times to work round excursions.

So the initial list looked like this
EMBARKATION
SEA DAY - wine tasting
ICY STRAIGHT POINT - whale watching
SKAGWAY - white pass and trail camp
JUNEAU/DAWES GLACIER
KETCHIKAN - Bering sea crab fisherman tour
SEA DAY - palo brunch / choc liquor tasting
DEBARKATION

I checked before going to bed to see if the online check in window had opened but it hadn’t so set my alarm for 4.55am (UK)
I can never sleep when I know I have to do something or be up early so tossed and turned most of the night.
Woke up around 2am and checked to see if I could check in which I could so spent half an hour getting all that done.
Got an 11.30 port arrival which I was chuffed about as will work really well with check out from the pan Pacific.
Nodded back off and woke up again at 4.45am so got ready to get my list done - 4.59am and clicking finger ready
‘The link you required is currently not available’

AAAAAHHHHHHHH

This continued for the next 2 hours - it was getting closer and closer to when I needed to leave for work when my cruise group pinged up saying we were back up and running!!

So the frantic clicking began and I managed to get pretty much everything we wanted - there was no brunch slots left or choc and liquor tasting so went with the mojito class instead and will check onboard for any openings for brunch.
We also got a princess gathering spot on icy straight point day and character breakfast on our Ketchikan morning.
With Juneau being a split day with the glacier viewing I didn’t have anything pencilled in so I went for the mt Roberts tramway - but im still pondering whether or not to cancel this and just explore by ourselves as we have to be back onboard for 1pm.

Anyway - massive planning cruise point reached and conquered!! Under 70 days until we are onboard - 56 days until we leave for Calgary!!
It’s definately starting to feel real now - especially as I finished our fish extender gifts aswell.
I have also pretty much decided I’m going to book a future cruise onboard aswell - I’m currently going back and forth between placeholder or a specific cruise out of Miami for next April - think I’m officially hooked!
 
We are booked for the Sept 2020 cruise aboard the Wonder to Alaska. Have you done a Trip Report? I'd love to hear how it went! We'll have 3 teens and a 12 yr. old at sailing next year, what did your girl think about Vibe?
 
We are booked for the Sept 2020 cruise aboard the Wonder to Alaska. Have you done a Trip Report? I'd love to hear how it went! We'll have 3 teens and a 12 yr. old at sailing next year, what did your girl think about Vibe?

Aaaaaahh you will love Alaska - I will be doing a trip report - just getting pictures organised ready. We had a truly amazing trip - the ship and its crew were second to none. She visited edge for the first time and although she liked it she really connected with our table mates daughter who was 10 and spent most of the time in the lab with her in all honesty!! I’ll get posting soon
 
Aaaaaahh you will love Alaska - I will be doing a trip report - just getting pictures organised ready. We had a truly amazing trip - the ship and its crew were second to none. She visited edge for the first time and although she liked it she really connected with our table mates daughter who was 10 and spent most of the time in the lab with her in all honesty!! I’ll get posting soon
No hurry! I'll keep an eye out! :cool2:
 

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