Alaskan cruise trip report - Final Thoughts

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Final Thoughts

Wow. What a vacation. I’m really trying to come up with a way to accurately distill our vacation down into some final feelings about everything we saw and experienced. I did so much research, looked at all the options, read so many trip reports and nothing really prepared me for the unbelievable beauty and immense scale of the scenery. It was just so amazing.

One of the really neat things about an Alaskan cruise is sailing the inside passage. The water, for the most part, is smooth and glassy. It’s not like being in the ocean at all. And often land is visible on both sides. Obviously, we had some fog and that caused some issues with scenery viewing, but when we didn’t, it was almost like you could reach out and touch the mountains.

I was really happy with all the excursions we chose, our room choice and the choices we made in Vancouver. If I had it to do over again, the only thing I would do differently is book second seating (instead of main dining). The only time it was a benefit was the night they were showing the movie. We were able to be “done” for the night a little early that night because we didn’t attend a show later. Otherwise, we just really felt like we have more time on second seating and it seems to work better for our internal clocks.

We came home with over 1,000 photos from our camera, two iPhones and the ship photography. Unfortunately, this was the first time I was unhappy with our photos from the ship photography service (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here).

Our service was amazing all around. Our serving team, our stateroom host and everything in between was fantastic. We were so happy with everything on board. The ship itself was great but I think it will definitely benefit from the improvements that were made to the Magic. It was little things, but I think the changes made to the Magic were generally positive.

Coming off the ship this time around was definitely the hardest transition in our three cruises. Ordinarily, after a longer vacation, I’m getting homesick and I’m ready to be back home. Not this time. I could have stayed on that ship longer! It really felt like home away from home after a week on board. Our next cruise (a 5-night) is going to feel so short in comparison!

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