Planning

In 2012, we were considering upcoming vacation alternatives.  We had been on multiple trips to Walt Disney World over the years.  We considered ourselves to be Disney World pros, we knew where to go and what to do.  However, one Disney experience we had not done was a cruise.  We debated it back and forth  — would we be bored on a ship?  Did cruisers do anything other than go to islands and lay in the sun?  We aren’t really beach people and were concerned whether the activities on the ship would keep us interested.

In April 2012, I was listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, The Dis Unplugged.  They were detailing a Disney cruise to Alaska.  I was immediately hooked on the idea.  We had never been to Alaska and we love the mountains.  We thought it would be a great way to experience Alaska and see what we thought about cruising.  We felt that the Alaska itinerary had enough sea days and port days to keep us active.  Even if we didn’t like the ship, we could always enjoy the views.  A quick poll of the family had everyone excited for the opportunity!

Disney had very limited sailings to Alaska, all of them on board the Disney Wonder and sailing out of Vancouver, British Columbia.  The sailings take place only in the summer between May and September.  Obviously, we were going to be restricted to traveling June through August because of the school schedule.  We had been to Vancouver almost ten years prior to this trip and loved everything about the area, so we were excited to return.  Vancouver is a fantastic city with so many great things to see and do.

We were a bit behind on the booking schedule, so the prices had already started to climb by the time we looked into the trip.  The verandah rooms started at $8,000 for the week we identified (early August), so that wasn’t going to work for us.  We ended up selecting an Oceanview Room (2612) for a total price of ~$6500 including trip insurance and taxes.  We could have gone later in the season (the next week or two) and the price would have been less, but we were concerned about our school district’s start date potentially getting moved.

As always with our trips, we started by planning for flights and lodging (in addition to the cruise itself).  We needed to arrive a few days before our cruise.  Once the cruise was over, we wanted to spend some time exploring Vancouver and the surrounding area with the kids.

Flights

Flying four people to the west coast can be expensive.  Each ticket can cost $500 or more, so getting four of them would increase the cost of our trip significantly.  Nancy and I both took advantage of the the United MileagePlus Explorer Card to each get 50,000 United miles each.  We used the 100,000 accumulated miles to acquire four saver-level round trip tickets between Dulles and Seattle.  We planned to fly into Seattle, rent a car, and drive to Vancouver.  We then would have a car to use after the cruise as well.

Rental Car

Once we had our flights, our attention turned to the rental car.  We used our favorite car rental website, costcotravel.com, to get our rental car.  There was a bit of research involved in how to pay for the car.  We never pay for rental car insurance, as we have a number of credit cards that provide this benefit.  The issue this time was the length of time of the rental.  Most credit cards only offer 14 days of coverage, but we planned for a 21 day rental.  Fortunately, after checking through our cards, we found that our American Express credit card offered 30 days of coverage, including coverage if the car was taken into Canada.  You will want to make sure you check your coverage in this situation to ensure your insurance would cover the required length of rental and taking the car out of the country.

Once we had the rental car, we also prepaid for cruise parking at the cruise terminal.  It seems silly to rent a car for a week and then park it as the cruise terminal.  However, I did this so we could use the car to store the suitcases that we were not taking on board for the cruise.  I also didn’t want to mess around with dropping off a car and trying to get to the terminal, then getting another car after the cruise.  Then there was the whole cross border issue of renting a car in one country but trying to return it in another.  It was just easier to keep the car for the entire trip.

Lodging

We needed lodging in a number of places for this trip, including a room in Seattle and one in Vancouver for the nights before the cruise.  There were numerous rooms we needed after the trip as well, since we planned to spend two weeks taking in Vancouver as well as Vancouver Island.  I won’t go into detail about the various rooms that we got after the cruise, since this post is strictly about the Alaskan cruise.

We used some of the IHG points I had accumulated on work trips to get a free night at a Holiday Inn Express in Seattle near the airport (since we had a late flight) and a Holiday Inn Express in Richmond, British Columbia.  Richmond is about 30-40 minutes away from the cruise terminal in Vancouver.  Our plan was to fly into Seattle, visit with family the next day as well as travel up to Richmond.  We would spend one night in Richmond, then head to the ship in the morning.

Lost opportunities

Unfortunately, we planned this trip before we started getting serious about discount travel strategies.  We paid for the cruise using a premier Disney Visa card that provided a 5% bonus for any Disney trips we charged to the card for the first 3 months.  We used this card to pay for this cruise and for a Disney World vacation, so we ended up with a huge rewards card balance.  Had we known, we definitely could have saved additional money on this trip by using the Target 5% discount as well.

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