Disney Alaska Cruise Video

Abigail just finished putting together a video of our Alaskan cruise and it is awesome (minus a few not so flattering videos of me – haha)  I gotta include it here so that we can rewatch it when we look back on our fun week exploring the Last Frontier.  Thanks Abigail!

Alaska Cruise {Day 7} – Day at Sea & Disembarkation Day

This morning was an opportunity to sleep in a little bit. Everyone opted to skip the 10am tickets that we had for the Princess Gathering. I spent some time relaxing in my room this morning after showering. Justin and I had brunch reservations at Palo at 11am. It was delicious! I liked location of Palo better on this ship - the Disney Wonder versus the Disney Fantasy. The views were pretty fantastic.  We enjoyed the variety of food and particularly liked the chicken parmesan. 

After brunch Justin went down to the pool with Katie and Drew. I was surprised how warm and beautiful today was and I wished that I had a swimsuit to enjoy the sunshine (another item stolen from the van). Instead I joined them on deck with a book and relaxed.  Dinner came too soon but gave us an opportunity to catch up with the big kids - I hadn’t seen Abigail, Carly or Jason all day.  After dinner we attended the Disney Dream show with the three younger kids. 

I was so tired and certainly not hungry at all but since it was the last night of the cruise and I hadn’t yet ordered room service I couldn’t resist placing an order at midnight for Mickey bars, french fries, and a cheese platter. It is a sad thing when you get to the point that you are forcing yourself to eat.  I made Abigail come to the room to eat a Mickey bar with me.

Disembarkation day is always a depressing day. What makes it worse is that we have to wake up super early and get out of our stateroom by 7am to go to breakfast. During breakfast I looked at the girls activity rings from their apple watches and noticed that they already had five stand hours at 7am. I asked Abigail what time they went to bed last night and she told me that they went back to their stateroom around 5:30am – 5:30am! No wonder they were conked out when I went in to wake them up around 6:45am – they’d only gotten about an hour of sleep.

After we got off the ship Justin took a few of the kids in a taxi to go pick up the van from getting the window repaired. Turns out that Toyota didn’t vacuum up the glass very well so they had to get that cleaned up before they could come back and pick up the rest of us waiting at the port.  It took us much longer than expected to make our way home. We had to wait at the border for about an hour or so to get back into the states. 

The girls weren’t the only kiddos who were tired.

We picked up some Little Caesars to eat in the car and dropped off Justin at work around 2:30pm. Once home we kicked into gear and got all the suitcases unpacked and started cycling through laundry.  Carly went to her first cross country practice today as she decided to pursue that instead of volleyball and Katie jumped right back into her soccer practices as well. This begins the craziness of the fall.

Alaska Cruise {Day 6} – Ketchikan

We didn’t get into Ketchikan until 11:15 this morning. It was nice to be able to sleep in although even with a few extra hours of rest it still felt early. We had some rough seas last night. I took a sleeping pill and still ended up waking up close around 2am. It was a little unsettling. I sent a text to Abigail and Carly to make sure that they were in the room with the younger kids in case they woke up. They were not and Abigail especially wasn’t thrilled that I was having them call it a night at 2am. Funny how 2am could seem unreasonable. 

The plan was to meet up with my niece Ashley who was working in Ketchikan this summer; however, I got a text from her this morning saying that she was going to be working for a few hours. She wasn’t very clear about when she would be getting off so we decided to roam around town while we waited. We walked around the picturesque Creek Street, which has all the fun houses and shops up on stilts and spent some time watching the sea lions feast on some of the salmon making their way up the creek. 

Afterward we stopped into the Discovery Center and utilized Katie’s free national park pass to check out all the exhibits they had to offer. Very educational and informative however I think the kids just enjoyed running around for a bit and being indoors. 

We walked over a bridge that had thousands of salmon swimming in the water below it. There were so many salmon the water looked black.

Next was down to a totem pole place but when we found out that it wasn’t free we decided to bag that idea. 

By this time Ashley texted me that she was getting off of work and as we made our way back down to town we just so happen to cross paths with her and she took us back to her place so we could see where she’s been living. I thought she’d have some things in mind for us to do, but that really wasn’t the case. So we just walked along the port area where the ships were docked until it was time for Justin and I to catch our seaplane tour. 

Jason, Katie, and Drew went back to the ship and Abigail, Carly and Ashley walked around town a little bit longer on their own. The seaplane tour that Justin and I went on was incredible. We had two hours of flight exploring the Misty fjords. It was absolutely stunning. We had a beautiful day and seeing Alaska from the air really is the way to go. So much of Alaska is inaccessible so that’s really the only way to get into some of these areas. 

The only wildlife sighting today is that little tan dot=deer down there by the water

Midway through the flight our pilot landed on a lake (possibly called Manzoni Lake) and we were able to get out and roam around a little bit. It was stunning. It reminded me a lot of the landscape of El Capitan in Yosemite. 

Unfortunately I lost my footing and fell on one on the slippery rocks. It was painful but the worst part was that my DSLR camera was damaged and stopped working after that. This trip is turning out to be quite costly (lots of stolen clothing, car damage, busted camera).  I’ve wanted to replace my camera for several years and have been planning to buy a new one but the camera I’ve been waiting for won’t be released until 2020. That certainly put a bit of a damper on the rest of the afternoon for me. I sat in the co-pilot seat on the way back to Ketchikan.

Only phone pictures from here on out L

Our seaplane tour ended around 6:15pm and Justin and I headed back to the cruise ship and made it to dinner around 6:30pm. That was a little bit later than we had expected, the kids had already ordered and had started eating, but we were quickly able to catch up and enjoy the New Orleans performance and Tiana’s place that evening.  Always a character sighting or two before bed – I like their fun Alaska outfits…

And always a fun towel animal to greet us in our stateroom (and an ice-cream cone)…

Alaska Cruise {Day 5} – Juneau

Today we were in Juneau, Alaska. Juneau is the third largest city in Alaska, but that’s really not saying much. It still felt like a really small town. The weather predicted rain all day. I thought it was funny when I overhead someone at breakfast saying they weren’t getting off the ship today because it would be raining. Clearly they aren’t from the PNW because nothing stops us here because of a little rain.  We were pleasantly surprised that as we disembarked Disney had ponchos for each of us to use. So like a typical tourist we put them on and wore Disney ponchos most of the day. 

In an effort to save some serious cash we opted to catch a city bus to Mendenhall Glacier. The city bus cost our family $9 instead of the $300 that taking a shuttle would have been.  Looks like someone has been staying up too late at night.

The city buses don’t go all the way to the visitor center so we had to walk about a mile and a half after they dropped us off. The walk was easy and flat so it wasn’t a big deal. 

We got in free to the Mendenhall Glacier Park because Katie is an incoming fourth grader and all fourth-graders get a complimentary National Park pass – yippee!  Katie and Drew really enjoyed looking through the telescopes in the visitors center.

We first walked along the Nugget Falls Trail to catch some great views of the waterfall. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a waterfall that size before. We saw some tall waterfalls in Iceland but Nugget Falls was quite powerful and large. 

Drew isn’t the biggest fan of sand and decided to stay on the rocks instead of exploring.

The kids weren’t overly thrilled with staying at the glacier longer than necessary. We did a few other small hikes/walks. One of the routes was closed because there had been several bears in the area that day. We saw lots of salmon swimming in the creek, which explains the bears. We were able to find a taxi back to the cruise port, which saved us a lot of walking and time. Sometimes spending a little extra for convenience every once in a while is worth it. 

The plan was to head right back to the ship but Justin got distracted by the well known Tracy’s King Crab Shack and the girls were distracted by a cheap clothing store. Justin enjoyed his crab cake and we ended up getting some shirts for all the girls (and Jason) as well. We typically don’t buy souvenirs. We came home from Europe last summer without purchasing a single thing which seems pretty surprising, but I’m not much of a shopper and would prefer less stuff in our lives as it is.

Once back on board we of course got some ice cream cones and snacks including lots of french fries. Katie and Drew ended up back in our room watching TV while Justin took a nap until dinnertime. The rest of the kids basically have free reign but we were all looking forward to dinner in Animators Palate. We enjoy this particular dinner because we each get to draw a little character that comes to life on the big screens around the room. Unfortunately, our server must have directed us to the wrong screen because I didn’t get any video of our drawings dancing on screen. 

Not sure what was up with Drew’s name – he really does know how to write it properly

After dinner Katie and Drew went to the kids club until we all got together again, minus Jason, for the Frozen Musical. I love the quality of the shows that Disney has on their ships for entertainment and I especially love that they are so family-friendly.