I took my very first cruise a few weeks ago - a 7 day cruise to Alaska via the Inside Passage! It was quite the experience, both good and bad, and I wanted to share my thoughts about it.

Back in January we decided to try a cruise, and settled on a 7 day cruise to Alaska on the Royal Caribbean line. It was via the Inside Passage - which basically means meandering through the islands along the coast of Canada and Alaska, instead of just sailing on the open ocean. We went from Vancouver, Canada to Sitka, Juneau and Ketchikan, Alaska, and made one last stop in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, before returning to Vancouver. This area is filled with loads of natural beauty and fascinating history and cultures. We took our trip during the first week of August, which was nice as far as weather is concerned. Overall I have mixed feelings about the cruise, and wanted to tell you about it.

The Good

Let's start with the things I really liked.

• The Scenery: Simply beautiful! From Vancouver to Juneau and back, the landscape was awe inspiring! We were able to view the coast most of the time, except the first and last days of the cruise. Mountains, forests, waterfalls, glaciers and whales - we saw a lot of each of those. Having binoculars was nice, but they weren't really needed. My favorite spots: Vancouver was a wonderful city, the Tracy Arm fjord had stunning mountains, waterfalls and a glacier, and Ketchikan was absolutely charming. This was, hands down, the best part of the entire cruise!
• A chance to really relax: Seven days on a ship, with no internet access (it was available, but I didn't purchase it for myself) made for some greatly needed down time. I spent lots of time just watching the scenery, reading, watching baseball games, taking naps and chatting with people. It was great to disconnect from my usual routine and do something else for a change. By the time we came home I felt truly rested and ready to return - which is not something that happens with every trip.
• The Food: We had some great seafood (fish tacos and fish and chips) while in the ports. But the food on the ship was quite good too! When purchasing the cruise tickets I just went with the regular food options (although there are many upgrades - for a fee of course!) which gave us access to the nearly all-hours buffet, the main dining room with 5 course meals, and a small cafe with sandwiches and salads. The main dining room had some good stuff, but we spent most of our time eating at the buffet - which had some options that were available every day, along with daily specials. This was great because we could go at almost anytime and get as much of whatever as we wanted. My kids loved this option!

The Bad

There were, however, several things that I did not like.

• The cost: The overall cost ended up being way more than I had estimated, and there were several hidden fees which made it even more expensive.
  • First, the overall cost. When we first started looking at tickets, the cruise was advertised as "starting from" $799 per room. I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near that cheap, but when we finally chose a room with a full view balcony, with connecting room doors, it ended up being almost $4000 per room! OK, that was a lot, but I could still deal with it. And even though that included regular dining options, it did NOT include drinks other than water, lemonade, tea and coffee. I got the soda drinks package for my kids at a cost of $240 each - which gave them a special cup that had endless refills of Coke or Sprite (yes, those were the only options). They had to take their cup to a bar and have the bartender refill it, which was inconvenient. Also, to just buy soft drinks was $3.50 each, so they had to drink about 4 cups per day to make it worth it. We did buy some "other" drinks (non alcoholic) such as special flavor lemonades or smoothies, and they were $8 each.
  • One nasty hidden fee was the forced gratuities. Every day we were charged $18.50 each as general gratuities (tips) that would be shared among the crew. I didn't even mind that too much, though it is excessive if you don't use a lot of services. Also, if you pay for any extra service you are also asked to leave a tip. Worst of all - some of the pay restaurants automatically included an 18.5% gratuity to your bill! And finally, you were asked to leave a tip for your stateroom attendant if they did a good job. These gratuities added several hundred dollars to the cost of our trip.
  • Unlike most hotels, which include internet access with the price of your room, the cruise ship charged an extra fee for each device that accessed the internet, per day. I signed my kids up for the pre-trip special price of $19 per device per day! And believe me, there is no sharing internet access - they control it tightly. This ended up being another hidden fee that cost us several hundred dollars. The up-side is that the internet service was quite good and fast, so even streaming videos was no problem.
  • So overall our cruise ended up costing around $3000 per person. And while it was fun, I felt that it wasn't really a good value for the money spent.
• The crowds: Ugh, there were a lot of people, everywhere! I am not sure how many people were on our ship, but I would guess a few thousand? The dining locations always felt crowded and it was hard to find seats and move around without bumping into people. And if you wanted to attend any free/included events, such as movies or shows, then you needed to arrive plenty early just to find a seat. Yes, I know that lots of places in life are like this, but I was just hoping for a more balanced approach since we paid so much for our tickets. I don't know why I thought that, I should know better. Even offshore, most places near the port were packed with people. We did find fewer crowds farther away from the ship, however.
• Motion sickness: I have never really been prone to motion sickness, but my kids are. It wasn't terrible on the ship, mostly it is smooth and stable and you can't even tell you're on a boat. But there were a few times that the shipped rocked back and forth enough that you could definitely feel it. The only time I felt sick was when the ship turned a few circles by the glacier - I had to lie down for a few minutes there. Two of my kids who are really prone to motion sickness had to take Dramamine (motion sickness medicine) every day to keep from getting sick, and that worked good for the most part.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, I felt the cruise was fun and had some great sights, but overall wasn't a very good value. I would consider doing another cruise, but I would be more careful about picking one with less hidden fees and with fewer people - if that's even possible.