Day - 14 Skagway!

We finally get to step foot on dry ground today.  I love the boat, but I have to admit it will be good to walk on some good old fashion dirt.  Shortly after breakfast, we join our group in the forward section of the third deck and are quickly put on a bus and taken out of town to a place called Carcross (short for caribou crossing).  It is our tour guide’s final trip of the season and he was great.  Turns out he is reporting to the Air Force in a couple of weeks for flight training in Texas and is leaving.  His wife is also here with him and is driving another bus with the rest of our group.  

We make several stops along the only highway (road) out of town.  Lots of glaciers, mountains and lakes as we follow the old Dawson trail out of Skagway.  Thousands of would be prospectors took this very path on their way to the gold fields hundreds of miles away.  We entered the Yukon by bus and continued on to lunch at a small little tourist stop just outside Carcross.  It had dog sled teams pulling buggies with tourist around and a small petting zoo.  It also had some great ice-cream.  

We watch a train come in to town to get turned around and we get our passports stamped (we are in BC at this point), but before we leave, our driver starts to tell us of the Carcross dolphins.  Almost all of us are skeptical, but he and his wife both get out of the bus and start walking towards the water and clapping to call the dolphins.  They get to the waters edge and then both jump in fully clothed and start jumping around in the water like… well, you know, dolphins!.  We are all a bit shocked, but it is their last tour and this is Alaska, so it’s as good as a way of celebrating as any.  They both come back to the buses and dry off a bit before driving us off to catch our train.  

After about an hour, we pull up to a train station to catch our ride back to Skagway.  The White Horse pass train is a narrow gage railway that served the minors in the years after the big gold rush.  I was surprised at how many actual trains and cars there are as it is very busy and you see trains going back and forth all over the place.  Most are restored to back to almost new condition and are a lot of fun to ride in and offer a fantastic view.  The ride last about an hour and a half, with a couple of stops along the way to pick up some hikers.  We pass back through US customs and take a quick walk through town before heading back to the ship.  

Honestly, you can probably see all you want of Skagway in a hour or two as long as you don’t need to spend any time in the jewelry stores that are everywhere.  The town has about 500 full time residences, but swells up to several thousand with workers for the tourist season.  Add on top of that the three to five cruise ships that stop multiple times per week with several thousand people each on board and you start to see what drives the economy in this town.  But in another month the snow will start to fall and this place will return to being a tiny little remote village.  

Dinner tonight was in the Animators Palate and was pretty cool.  After the meal, the entire wait staff put on a short show along with Fantasia Micky.  The whole place went from black and white to color over the course of dinner.  We were thinking about seeing a movie, but all of us are too tired and we retire early.  

Day - 13 ICE!

More beautiful scenery this morning, but all I want to see is ICE!  The plan is for us to enter the Fiord around noon and sail up until we reach the Tracy Arm glacier.  Just after lunch we start to notice people taking their places up on the upper decks.  We grab a spot on the upper deck and watch the show as we cruise up the narrow channel towards the glacier.  The wind is cold, but we are rewarded with lots of Humpback whale spottings.  After entering the fiord, the shore line on both sides of the ship gets very close.  The ship snakes along and we have to look almost straight up to see the tops of the mountains that guide us along our route.  Soon enough we start to spot ice floating in the water.  First only a few small ones, but very quickly we start seeing many more.  There is a naturalist that is giving us information on what we are looking at on the PA system and he is very good at story telling.  We finally decide to duck back down to our room, but the show continues from there.  If we did not already appreciate the veranda in our room, it more that paid for itself today.  We relax in the deck chairs on our very own balcony and watch the world roll silently by.  

After a few hours in the channel, we finally arrive at Tracy Arm.  Now due to the fact I have never heard of this glacier, I did not hold out much hope of being impressed.  I was wrong!  Wow!  With crystal blue skies and sunny conditions, we sail within a quarter mile of this amazing glacier.  There are seals everywhere relaxing on floating ice.  My guess is there were well over a hundred, but it is probably closer to double that number.  The glacier flows down from up the mountain somewhere beyond our view, but it cascades down like the worlds slowest waterfall until it breaks apart in deep blue shards.  Even the naturalist was excited as he babbled on and on how it simply does not get any better than the conditions we were treated to today.  And just to finish it off, the glacier decided to calf a large chuck of itself in front of us.  We were in our room and I was taking a picture from our bed and out through the veranda when I hear a loud noise and see the glacier calving.  I simply pointed my camera and took a couple very quick shots, but I did get a little piece of it splashing.  It was huge and amazing!

Another excellent dinner finished off our day.  We are getting very spoiled by our wait staff of Emily (from France) and Petra (from the Czech Republic)  Petra is our waiter and Emily is her assistant and they are both great.  Emily is young and chatters on in a heavy French accent while she teases and plays around with all of us.  Petra keeps everything coming on schedule and makes sure we have what we need.  They are both funny and are constantly fussing about making sure we don’t want for anything.  Petra is also our crew insider and makes sure we know what is coming up or to make sure we know to order Micky Bars from room service (even though they are not on the menu).  

Every night before we retire back to our room, the house keeping staff prepares our room for sleep.  They lower Jacks and Mackenzie’s bunk beds and turn our bed down, leaving chocolates for all.  But what we really look forward to is the animals and shape they create with the towels.  Each night we come back to a different animal sitting on our bed waiting for us.  We have had elephants, a squid and a couple of bears.  It’s a nice way to end each day.  

Tomorrow is Skagway!

Day 12 - Day at Sea

This morning there was no land to be seen and the ocean was rough enough to toss the ship around a little bit.  Luckily for us, we weren’t bothered by the movement, but we did see a number of people that were not feeling well.  Everything calmed down again after noon as we cruised back in to the inland passage.  After getting cleaned up a bit, we headed to the aft end of the ship for breakfast.  Breakfast and Lunch is a matter of choice aboard ship, but we decided to eat on the fan tail buffet.  The food in a word is…Wow!  There was pretty much anything you might want and as much of it as you could eat.  Food is available pretty much anytime you want it.  In addition to the different restaurants and buffets on the ship, room service is also included in the price and is open 24 hours a day.  There literally is no reason for anyone to go wanting for anything on this boat.  After breakfast we discovered the coffee bar on the bow of the ship.  While premium drinks are charged, it was worth it for a good latte.  Oh, while Kate and Jack were away from the table during breakfast, the captain came by and spoke with Mackenzie and I for a couple of minutes.  The entire staff here is pretty much out and about and is always asking how you’re doing and if you need anything.  It was pretty cool the captain came by, but we keep running in to the ships officers and they are all awesome.  Disney has always impressed us with their customer services, but they take it to a new level on the cruise line.  

The boat passed through some very tight passages today and we watched the scenery pass by from the comfort of our balcony.  It pretty much justified the upgrade to a veranda as it sure beat competing for rail space up on the upper decks.  Wildlife spotted was a small whale and fish jumping from time to time.  The rest of the day was movies, swimming, or playing until dinner.  

Tonight was formal night and the Golden Micky’s and that meant jacket and tie.  Dinner was a formal affair at Tritians and the food rocked!  We stuffed ourselves and then went to see the Golden Micky’s show at the theater.  Lot’s of singing and dancing.  We finished the night was ice cream bars delivered to our rooms.  Tomorrow is the Tracy Arm glacier and we have to get up early and start looking for whales.  

Day - 11 Boarding Call

Oh yeah!  Finally get to board our ship to Alaska!  We load up for the 10 minute trip to the Pan Pacific Center and find our parking.  Of course we are a couple of hours early, but it beats the heck out of being late.  So the boarding process pretty much goes as follows:  First we take all our luggage and drop it off at the baggage area.  Once that is done, we hit US immigration (you know, as we are going to Alaska and all).  After that, we check in with Disney and get our boarding assignments and ID cards.  We are giving a boarding number of 22, so we are told we will have some time to wait in the holding area.  Soon enough they call out group one, then two and three.  After an hour or so, we are up to twelve and we are settling in for long haul when they call out they are boarding all groups.  Yee Haw!  

As we are boarding, I notice the attention they are putting in to germ control.  We are giving disinfecting wipes and there are signs about keeping everything clean.  They are taking on board virus control pretty seriously.  At every entrance to dining facilities they are passing out those wipes.  They don’t force it on you, but they sure make it easy to keep your hands clean.  

As a Disney tradition, they will call out each families name over the PA and welcome you aboard.  When you get to the entrance, you are asked how to pronounce your name and they will announce your family and a small line of Disney staff will clap and welcome you on board.  This goes on for the entire boarding process and you will hear the announcements over the next several hours as you are moving around the ship.  It made the kids cringe a bit, but I thought it was a nice touch.  

Once on board, you are welcome to have your lunch at one of several buffets (or at all of them if you wish as it is all you can eat) while you wait for your room to be ready.  We filled our bellies and started finding our way around the ship.  It has ten decks and takes a bit to figure out.  Some decks are entirely made up of rooms, while others are public decks where the restaurants and other areas are located.  Jack quickly found the play area for his age group and made himself right at home.  We also took a quick guided tour of the ship from one of the crew members.  Before we knew it, our room was ready and we quickly went to see what it looked like.  While probably small in comparison to a standard room, we found it to be fantastic.  It consists of a single room partitioned in to two areas.  One partition has our large bed and the other has a couch and a bunk bed that folds down from the ceiling.  There is a desk and quite a lot of storage areas.  Once we unpacked and put everything away, it was very nice.  Of course the best feature is the balcony.  We decided to upgrade to a veranda and are very happy with our decision to do so.  

Our first nights dinner was at a place called the Parrot Cay.  It was one of the three main dinning rooms that we will be eating in and we were introduced to our wait staff who will follow us from restaurant to restaurant for the remainder of our trip.  We have the choice to eat elsewhere or to have the included room service, but most seem to stick with their assigned dinning room for dinner.  To put it simply, there is far too much food to eat, but so far it is very good.  

It was when we finally went to bed that I noticed how smooth the ride of the ship was.  At times, it was difficult to even know we were moving.  Later that night however, we hit open ocean and finally felt the ship rock a bit.  All of us felt great, but I especially enjoyed the movement of the ship as I laid in bed.  It was relaxing to hear the room softly creaking and feel the gentle rocking of the ship as I laid in the dark.  

Day 10 - Tea for two!

Today was the day for high tea at the Empress hotel.  We left our luxurious accommodations and ventured downtown ahead of our scheduled tea time so we could visit the Victoria BC Museum.

Before long, it was time to take the girls over for their tea.  We walked across the street to the hotel and were immediately impressed with Empress.  It is a historic old hotel perched on the waterfront and is immaculate.  We ventured inside and it was just as impressive as the outside was.  High tea proved to be very popular and it was a good thing we had made our reservations months earlier as it was completely packed.  I'll leave the actual description of tea to those who attended it as Jack and I decided to pass on it, but it certainly impressed Kate and Mackenzie!

Jack and I spent our tea time back over at the museum going through the areas we missed or rushed through earlier that morning.

After tea, we walked down Government street looking for a tea shop and just happened to stumble on Murchies (murchies.com).  Turns out that this is where the Empress gets its tea, so the girls went in and stocked up on several teas while Jack and I warmed a bench for a bit.

Victoria turned out to be one of our favorite cities.  It was beautiful and full of interesting things to do and places to visit.

The day ended with a swim at the hotel pool, where we watched the boats sail by.  

Day - 9 Time for a hike

So after a fun filled day in Victoria we awoke fresh this morning and regrettably left our swank digs at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel for Vancouver.  The Oak Bay Hotel was one of the nicest places we have stayed and we hated to leave it.  Last night we soaked our tired bodies in the pool that overlooks the ocean and finish up with an invigorating hot tub soak.

Today was our forth ferry ride and I think our kids have had just about enough of them for this trip.  While I really loved riding them, everyone else was getting bored with all the waiting around.  Unlike the previous ferry trips using the Washington State Ferry system, today we rode on the British Columbia ferry and had a much easier trip.  The wait was less than an hour and the ferry was pretty modern.  It was also a very large boat and had a lot of modern amenities aboard.

Once back on the mainland, we headed to Vancouver and to our hotel.  After a short drive, we found our lodging and quickly checked in and went off to take a quick hike in the woods.  There is a famous suspension bridge, but the clerk that checked us in warned us it was expensive to visit and could be very crowed.  Instead, he pointed us to a closer site that also had a suspension bridge and was free.  Once we found the place, it turned out to be a great little hike in the woods.  While there were still a lot of people, we had a great time getting out and stretching our legs.

Well, we get back to our hotel and notice that the room has a very strong oder.  It smelled of cigarette smoke, even though the place has been non-smoking for over a year.  Kate was able to talk her way in to another room despite the place being booked solid.  So now, while we are not living quite the highlife we have been the last few days, we are all tucked in and doing well.

Day 8 - Tea for two

A couple of things to add about yesterday...The hotel we are staying at the "Oak Bay Beach Hotel" is beyond our expectations. The heater in the our room is a faux fire place with a big screen T.V. above the fireplace. The bathroom has a sunken bathtub with a sliding window above the tub, made of two wooden panels, that you can open up into the bedroom. No we haven't kept it open. The bathroom has a separate shower and a separate toilet that has it's own door. As you can guess we are very impressed and are enjoying the luxury of the hotel. There is also a beautiful outside swimming pool with an ocean view that is heated and a small beach with tide pools.
Today we slept in until 8:30am and had breakfast at the little cafe on the main floor. It had a very "Harry Potter" feel. We went to the Royal BC Museum. What a great museum! It was a bigger version of the Oakland museum. Not far away from the museum was the Empress Hotel where Kate and Mackenzie had late tea. Scott and Jack went back to the museum and saw beautiful totem poles.
We all went to the IMAX theater which is part of the Royal museum and saw "The Lemurs of Madagascar". This was Mackenzie's and Jack's first IMAX movie, it was great. Too bad all movies aren't IMAX movies. - Kate