This is my review of our amazing cruise onboard the Carnival Spirit on her final voyage ever in Alaska. Born on April 27, 2001, the Carnival Spirit was the first “Fun Ship” to cruise Alaska, and has done so each season since. This September 11 sailing was her final trip to Alaska as at the time of this writing she is sailing towards Hawaii and finally on to Sydney Australia where she’ll reside on a full time basis.
This review is organized in two sections:
1.The Trip – all about our experience in Alaska
2.The Ship – details on the Carnival Spirit
I organized it this way so that in the future if someone is searching for details on the ship but isn’t interested in Alaska, they can simply jump down to section two. So if that’s you, simply scroll down. This review is fairly detailed, and I’ve included a number of pictures. I’m not a “travel log” writer, so apologies in advance for not capturing everything in the right order. I’m happy to answer questions if you have any.
Section 1 : The Trip
This cruise was booked intending to be something special, and that it was! It was designed to be a celebration of my wife’s birthday, and an opportunity for us to get away together for more than 2 nights for the first time since our first child was born nearly 17 years ago! We couldn’t have picked a more wonderful experience.
I booked the cruise the very day it opened up, nearly 18 months in advance. I specifically wanted the Glacier Bay sailing, the Carnival Spirit, and the top floor aft wrap, so I checked daily for weeks waiting for the cruise to open. I booked cabin # 8268 which is the port side aft wrap visa suite on the Panorama deck. Details and pictures of this room are below in section 2.
The room we selected wasn’t cheap, but we wanted this experience and were willing to pay for it. When I booked the cruise I paid the required deposit and prepaid gratuities. Six months later as a Christmas gift to each other we paid the balance of the cruise, added insurance, and booked travel.
The itinerary for this cruise was:
Tuesday Sept 11 – Depart Seattle
Wednesday Sept 12 – Sea Day
Thursday Sept 13 – Juneau, AK
Friday Sept 14 – Cruise Glacier Bay
Saturday Sept 15 – Skagway, AK
Sunday Sept 16 – Ketchikan, AK
Monday Sept 17 – Cruise Inner Passage
Tuesday Sept 18 – Vancouver, BC
Day 0
After months of waiting, planning, preparing, and wondering, the day to depart to Seattle finally arrived. We spent the weekend prepping Grandma and Grandpa on our crazy life of taking care of four very busy and active kids (2 in high school, 1 in middle, and one in elementary). We’re grateful that they were willing to spend the week with their grandkids, and hope they’ll start talking to us again in the near future. :)
One thing we did that really helped was that we created a daily hour by hour schedule for Grandma and put it on a clipboard. That way she could cross off each activity as she went through the day, staying on top of various football, gymnastics, swimming, band, scouts, church, and school activities. We also created a medical care permission for caregiver document that came in handy when Grandma had to take one of the four to urgent care. Eeek!
Anyway, we were dropped off at Denver International Airport where we checked in our bags. I had booked Classic Plus tickets on Frontier Airlines which allow for two checked bags per person without extra fees. We decided to check three of our four bags, placing in the fourth key items that we couldn’t live with in case the airline lost our luggage, and we carried that one on. The flight was on time and smooth and after watching the finale of Hell’s Kitchen on board (Frontier has TV’s at each seat) we arrived in Seattle.
Since our tickets were Classic Plus, our bags had been marked as Priority and were the first to come off at baggage claim. We stayed at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront, which from experience I knew to be about a $38 cab ride from the airport. When we went to line up for a cab, we saw parked next to the taxi line a limo company offering flat rate $45 to downtown, so we splurged and took it. They put us in a big stretch limo! Wow, now we’re traveling in style!
Upon check in at the hotel they upgraded us to a junior suite on the water side. Again, wow! How fun for us. Our room was HUGE, with a big sitting room and separate bedroom. The bathroom was enormous and had two doors (a detail that would come back to bite us later). We decided to order room service for dinner and stay in.
I took this photo with my cell phone from our hotel room as the sun was setting. This was going to be a good vacation!
Day 0 Highlights:
•Getting upgraded to a Junior Suite at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront
•Riding in a stretch limo
Day 0 Lowlights:
•Nothing so far!
