Alaskan cruise trip report - Day 5 - Endicott Arm

Endicott Arm 

Another grey and drizzly day dawned and I was again awake around 6:30, despite the time change that offered us an extra hour. We were now on Alaska time (one hour earlier than Pacific time). Once again, I was awake before Roger and Emmaline so I made my way up to deck nine for a croissant, some fruit and some hot cocoa. The previous day I had tried to sign up for spin class at 8:00, but by the time I signed up, there was already a wait list a mile long and I was the last person on the wait list. When I went to ask them when I should try to arrive for the next sign up, they told me just to come anyway because a lot of people don’t come often times.

I decided that I was going to go to the fitness center regardless and if I didn’t make it into the spin class, I would do my own thing. I brought some food back to the room for Roger and Emmaline and got changed and headed upstairs at 7:45. The spin instructor arrived right at 8 and there were two people missing from the class. One person was there from the wait list ahead of me and jumped on a bike, but some friends of the other missing participant assured the instruction that he was DEFINITELY coming. I jumped on a nearby stationary bike to start warming up. By 8:05, the instructor explained that the friend was too late and she needed to give the bike up so over I went and hopped on with a big smile on my face.

Spin class was great and the view was lovely from the floor to ceiling windows on the forward section of deck 9. That is, until we all huffed and puffed so much that all the windows fogged up! The instructor, Carlin from South Africa was really energetic and I had a great workout. At 8:45 I was back in the room showering. After that, we started some laundry in the laundry room and had second breakfast at the buffet in Parrot Cay. We had tried to go to Tritons but it was closed for breakfast because the serving team was already busy with the character breakfast in Animator’s Palate. It was fine, but we were bummed because we accidentally left our little bottle of real Canadian maple syrup in the room. Oh well, there would be other days.

After breakfast, we did some laundry stuff. Unfortunately, the low heat setting on the dryer was ineffective so we had to restart it so we were rushing a bit because we wanted to make the 10:45 showing of Alice Through the Looking Glass. We just made it as the movie began. Emmaline went to the kid’s club instead. After the movie, we had planned to head up to the grill they usually have on the glacier day. But when I left the movie, I had a message from Heather that the cook out had been cancelled due to weather. It was cold and windy with light rain.

We grabbed Emmaline from the club and went up to Beach Blanket buffet to have lunch at the buffet, anyway. That was fine. I’m not always a huge fan of the buffet, but it was better than I remember. It’s just hard to find a table. After lunch, we went back to our room to hang out while we awaited the arrival at the glacier.



At one point, while cruising through the fjord, we met with Donald Duck on deck 9 for a photo op in his cute Alaska outfit. After that, we went up to deck 10 to take in the view, but it was cold and windy and rainy so we grabbed some cocoa and went back to our cabin until we arrived at the glacier. We had a lot of hot cocoa during this trip. We were pleasantly surprised that the cocoa out of the machine at the drinks station on deck 9 was actually pretty good. We brought marshmallows from home so we were prepared!



A quick note about where we were. Our cruise (and every other Disney cruise to Alaska this year as well as cruises on lots of other lines) was originally scheduled to make it’s way up Tracy Arm Fjord to the Sawyer Glacier. Due to some kind of ice flow situation, there are too many icebergs in Tracy Arm to safely make it to the glacier, so instead, cruise ships have been traveling up the nearby Endicott Arm to view the Dawes Glacier. I don’t know any difference but both Endicott and the glacier were amazing. They were absolutely stunning.





We arrived at the glacier around 2:15 and the ship turned so that the starboard side faced the glacier and we headed up to deck 10 to see. The weather was improving. It wasn’t as cold and windy and the rain had let up. There were a fair number of people on deck 10 where we were, but it wasn’t totally insane. We got in a few pictures here and there, both of the glacier and the beautiful scenery of the fjord around us. After a short period of time, the ship rotated, turning the port side towards the glacier. By this time things started thinning out on deck 10 a bit. We stayed, took more photos and waited for chunks of glacier to fall off. When they would fall off (called “calving”) it would sound like thunder and depending on the size of the chunk, would make a wave that would rock the ship slightly. We saw the glacier calve several times, but never got it on video. I took lots of photos both with my regular lens (and 18-55mm) and my new lens (a 55-250mm). After a little while longer, the ship rotated again back to face the starboard side of the ship towards the glacier and we moved to the other side again. By this time, there were hardly any people up there. We were still comfortable in the out wear we had brought. I had on a long sleeve top, a light cardigan, a fleece jacket, a rain shell and a hat. I didn’t wear gloves or mittens to I could operate the camera, but my hands weren’t cold. I’m guessing it was low to mid 50’s. I now present you with too many photos of ice, water and mountains.









The ship was at the glacier for over an hour, departing around 3:30. We saw that Chip and Dale were beginning to meet on Deck 10 so we went to get a picture with them at 3:30 and hung watching the fjord go by until around until Mickey arrived in the same spot at 4:00. We saw some seals at a great distance on the icebergs. I was able to get some pretty good shots of them with my new lens. Captain Hook was also running around deck 10 but didn’t have an official meet and greet, but Emmaline and Roger chased him down while I was taking seal pictures and got a picture with him.








On the way back down on deck 9, we found the iceberg that the crew had brought on board and had a quick picture of it. We hadn’t seen them go grab it. I had been hoping to get a picture of that happening, but at least we got to get up close and personal with a big chunk of ice.



We stopped back into the room and shed our outerwear and Emmaline went to the kid’s club to make chocolate chip cookies while we relaxed in the room a bit, downloaded photos of the camera and watched the scenery go by through the porthole. I really liked our room down on deck two. It was so easy to see the ocean and the shore go by at that level while sitting on the couch or chair in the room. Initially, when booking this cruise, I was a little sad we couldn’t afford the same room on the Magic we had with a verandah on deck six, but honestly, I loved this room. I don’t know how much time I would have spent out there in the chill air. Our porthole was large and deck two was very convenient to the lobby atrium and dining on deck three as well as the theatre on deck four.

At 5:20 Emmaline had an appointment in the gift shop for a mini princess makeover (“Glitter and Go”) so I picked her up in the club. They weren’t done with their cookies so she was a little reluctant to go, but the makeover would be fun so we headed down to deck four for her princess makeover. She got makeup, hairstyle, face sticker, lots of glitter, a hair clip and a tube of lip gloss to keep. While she got her makeover, I bought a shirt I decided I wanted. It wasn’t the Alaska one I had been hoping for, but it was a cute retro Mickey in his captain hat design.



After this, it was time for dinner so off we went to Triton’s, the third of the three main dining rooms on board. While eating, the lights flickered and the ship came to a stop (we were lucky that we had a rare window seat in Triton’s). Heather sent me a message that they completely lost all power in Animator’s Palate and the emergency lights were on. A few minutes later the captain came over the speakers and said that power had been lost in various places around the ship and crews were working to restore power. After about 10 minute or so, the lights flickered again and Heather messaged me that power was back on for them. The ship was dead in the water for quite a bit longer, though, probably 30 minutes or more. Eventually near the end of our meal, we were underway again.

After dinner we found the line for Minnie Mouse in her Alaskan attire and got a photo with her before going into the theatre to wait for the show to start. We had been going into the theatre fairly early because we found seating difficult on this cruise. The theatre was extremely full for the show. For the previous two cruises, we did second seating for dinner, so that was show first from 6:15-7:15, then a break, then dinner from 8:15-9:30ish. For this cruise, we decided to try main dining which mean we did dinner first from 5:45-7:15ish, then a break and the show from 8:30-9:30. Unfortunately, we found that we had less time between dinner and the show because we had to get to the theatre a little after 8 to make sure we could get seats together. Given that we were done at pretty much the same time as when we did second seating for dinner, but started earlier and had less time between dinner and the show, I think we will stick with second seating for the future.



The show that evening was Michael Harrison, a ventriloquist. He was pretty good, but unfortunately, the bar had been set pretty high by Lynn Trefzger on the Magic last October who was absolutely hilarious. I preferred her dry and sarcastic deadpan style humor. Michael Harrison had some funny moments, but overall, I wasn’t as impressed as I was by Lynn Trefzger. After the show, we were zonked and we went to bed to get an early start for our first day in port on Thursday - Skagway.

Click here for Day 6.