Alaska is a go!

Today, eight months after we first started discussing it, Nick, our mom and I booked our cruise to Alaska. I've spent the last few weeks researching and trying to come up with the absolute best deal, and we ended up deciding on going on Norwegian. Most of the cruise lines tend to go to the same places and you can get the same excursions, so it basically comes down to what kind of boat you want to go on, and for our price point Norwegian was the best deal. I went into some pretty exhaustive detail, too, creating a spreadsheet with each potential trip listed and filtered by its start and end points, stops, dates, days of the week, and prices. We factored in holidays for vacation time. We considered the flight prices to Vancouver versus Seattle, and didn't consider Seward at all because that would include more time and money to get there from Anchorage than I was willing to spend. I learned that May and September are cheaper even though July and August are the best times to go, and decided that oceanview rooms are kind of pointless because for $150 more all they offer you is a porthole. I checked out the best decks if you get seasick (not an issue with us, but just in case) and took the advice to stay away from kid friendly decks if we wanted something quieter. I considered ports, and how much time we had in them.

There is a lot of information out there, if you search it out and/or a crazy person like me.

Most of the total is paid, with a little less to pay up for before February. We don't go until May, and excursions are not close to being bookable yet, but now I'm doing my research on those. The excursions through the ship seem to be pricey, so I'm doing a bit of a deep dive to try and find deals and see if it's worth it to take a van up to the Yukon instead of a train ride to save $70 per person, etc.

So if you have any tips on things to do in Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan, feel free to drop a comment! Particularly if you know the best place to see a moose.