Cass, Rob & Kira - July 2022 Disney Wonder Alaska Cruise - Worth the covid!



Just gorgeous views!!!! I've said it before...but everywhere you look there is beauty!
I am so excited for your next adventure (Wonder)....and then the one after that too (Magic).
 
Love your flexibility with the port excursions. My dad lives in Sitka and not all cruisers are this pleasant. In SE Alaska resources are extremely limited and they haven’t seen this level of cruise traffic the last few years.
 


Loving your trip report! Glad the views finally cleared up some. My husband would love to do Alaska, but I have really bad arthritis and hate to be cold. We'll have to see. In the meantime, we head to the Bahamas in 3 weeks and Bermuda next year. ;)
 
July 14th, Part 3

Our next stop on this very cool journey was Caribou Crossing. This is a popular excursion for cruise passengers. They have dog sled rides (not on snow or ice and not on a sled! :rolleyes:) a petting farm, wildlife museum, restaurant and gift shop.

We were here for one reason: PUPPIES!!! :dogdance:

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I was a little worried when I saw this gigantic mosquito. :scared: I was prepared, we had bug spray in our bag but we never saw any mosquitos.

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Just as we were walking in, a big bus dropped off a group of people.

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It was a little confusing just exactly where to go but we eventually figured it out. We bought our tickets, $15 CAD each, inside the gift shop and then we headed through the shops, which lead you to the petting farm area.

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I popped a $5 bill in here and grabbed two bags.


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Kira had an absolute blast feeding all of the animals.

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Rob did too. He gave away almost his entire bag just to the goats! :rotfl:

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Oh my dog! Alpacas named Thelma and Louise!!! :love: :rotfl:

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They were pretty funny!


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I can't remember the name of the donkeys.

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If you look above the property, up in the mountains, it looks like there's some big horn sheep. Don't be fooled, they are not real! I didn't realize this until we were leaving and I noticed that they were in the exact same position they were in when we first arrived. :rolleyes2

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But the real reason we came here...puppies!!

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We waited and waited and waited. No one came, no one was around. We walked around looking for some signs. They were in this pen that was closed with a clip but it didn't say do not enter. There was another pen with puppies, that did have a sign that said do not enter. We finally spotted these signs after walking around and we assumed that we could go into the pen to pet the puppies. So we did.

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They were sooooo cute!! :love::love::love:

The brown one that Rob is petting here was the most affectionate, she came to all of us in search of some love and we responded accordingly. :lovestruc


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The sleepy grey/white/black one is the one I fell in love with. Let's just say it's a good thing we couldn't bring them home with us. :rolleyes1

I mean, come on! Those eyes!! 😍

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Just as they were waking up and enjoying all of the affection we were ready and prepared to give, one of the staff showed up and told us that we weren't supposed to be in here. Wooops!

He was good about it. We explained that we had waited a long time and tried to find someone to ask but no one was around. He said it wasn't our fault, it was his for not being there. They were understaffed and he was elsewhere.

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What is supposed to happen is that he's supposed to pass a puppy over to us so we could snuggle. So, he passed the friendly one to Kira and she was in heaven! :cloud9:

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It was very short-lived as someone over at the dog-sled ride area called him over to help. After only a few minutes of snuggles, the puppy went back. Rob and I didn't get the chance to snuggle them at all so I'm glad we got a few pets in before he showed up.

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Here's the vehicle that the dogs pull you in, if you paid for a ride.

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We waited for a while for the guy to come back but he never did so we had to drag a very sad Kira out of there because we still had over an hour before we got to Whitehorse.

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She gave away the last of her treats and then we headed back to the car.

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Rob bought her a jade necklace that she was eyeing in the gift shop and then we carried on. Next stop, Whitehorse. :flower:
 
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Love your flexibility with the port excursions. My dad lives in Sitka and not all cruisers are this pleasant. In SE Alaska resources are extremely limited and they haven’t seen this level of cruise traffic the last few years.
We LOVED Sitka on our cruise in 2014, we were sad there wasn't a 10 day offered this year!
 
I'm so glad you got to go to Alaska this year too! I'm so sorry that you returned with an extra souvenir though!
 
July 14th, Part 4

I forgot to add the time lapse in the last chapter! The GoPro battery didn't last all the way to Whitehorse, so I just included the journey from Skagway to Caribou Crossing. I slowed it down a little so you could see Kira's funny poses. :rotfl:



About 20 minutes north of Caribou Crossing, we came upon the intersection between the Klondike Highway 2 and the Alaska Highway 1. This is where we turned left onto Hwy 1 to get to Whitehorse. Until now, there were literally no turns, just Hwy 2.

Shortly after the turn, we were in Whitehorse! :woohoo:

We finally made it! We turned off before hitting the main city (more like a large town than a city really) because I had wanted to see Miles Canyon.

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There was a group there waiting for a narrated group hike.

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Rob and Kira with the Yukon River behind them.

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And a suspension bridge over the river. We didn't stop at the Yukon Suspension Bridge because they were charging $20 each just to cross the bridge, no thanks! We did this one for free. :rolleyes:

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Kira took this one of me. :lmao:

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It was very pretty, we loved this stop!

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We walked to the other side and then back. We hiked back up to the car and then continued on Miles Canyon Road, the views were spectacular! :love:

We made one more stop once we climbed back up level with the town. You could see the suspension bridge if you zoomed in.

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We continued on to the sign that I had really wanted a photo of Kira with.


To the right of the sign was this...

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I posted this photo on Instagram and tagged her school. I thought it was a cute little nod to the year and the weird, wild circumstances. :teeth:


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If we had more time, we might have stopped here to check it out, they offer free tours.

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The day was getting on though so we drove through downtown and stopped at Timmy's for Rob and Kira. There were actually TWO Timmy's here, this was the first one we came across.

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Snacks procured and coffee fix for Rob, we headed back into the car. While they ate in the car, I took the time to post that Whitehorse sign on Instagram, while we had cell service. :p Most of Highway 2 does not have any kind of service at all.

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It just so happens, I was standing right outside of a Travel Agency and I saw this in the window. :rolleyes:


Actually, this is kind of the middle of our magical voyage :rotfl2:

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We drove through the main part of Whitehorse and then back onto Highway 1.

Gas is cheaper here than we thought! Not much more than Calgary.


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And just like that, our visit to Whitehorse was done. I am so glad we did this. It was fun and we created some awesome memories and Kira finally made it to Whitehorse, after all! :p

You might think a March trip to Whitehorse would be crazy cold but we learned that Whitehorse actually gets mild winters. The high in March is around 0ºC. January is a little colder but nothing compared to the -30ºC or colder that we get in Calgary! We also learned, right before this trip, that Rob's dad lived in Whitehorse when he was young. He said it wasn't too cold and that the first time he had ever owned long johns (winter undergarments) was when he moved to Saskatchewan. I thought that was funny. :lmao:

And back onto Highway 2....

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We drove to Emerald Lake and got out to take some photos. This is just before Caribou Crossing and as far north as most cruise passengers drive.


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It was very pretty, it reminded us of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, which is just over an hour from our house, in the Rockies.

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Our next stop is Carcross, where we are supposed to get our lunch that is included in the price. Stay tuned to find out...will we or won't we. :scratchin:rolleyes:
 
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just stunning views! I love the colors of the river and lake. I just can't get enough of those pictures
 
Alright, finally caught up!! lol I made some notes as I read so I'll do them in bullet form since we have already discussed a lot of my cruise over messenger.

-I ordered those perogies for dinner and mine were FLAT and huge. How can they make them so different from night to night? Also, defo needed more sour cream. :rotfl2:

-was that the prime rib you had one night? My hubby had it and loved it. Again....come on quality control!

-the only thing I ever ate from quick service was pizza and shawarma, hubby had both a burger and a hot dog during the cruise and enjoyed them but I didn't take any bites so who knows lol

-I coveted the same pink/purple shirt in the store but they didn't have my size :( I did end up buying a different shirt my last night of the cruise.

-I've heard so many good things about the key lime pie but we never ordered room service (except the morning we did Palo so the girls could eat in the room and we ordered it through the door hanger). Something to try in December!

-let's see.....I think the Wonder didn't get quite as close to the glacier when we went to Sawyer, I remarked to dh about it keeping its distance when we were on the glacier explorer. On your next Alaska cruise (or the one after that or the one after that :rotfl2:maybe you can do the excursion if people in your group want to. LOVED IT I have many of the same photos you do from that day haha

-Super jealous of your Skagway day esp since our train excursion was a bust. Skagway has always been our least fave stop on all 3 Alaska cruises (eventhough we did have a fantastic excursion in 2019) and I'm kicking myself for not doing something similar to what you did.

Ok I think that was it for now lol
 
July 14th, Part 5

Good Lord, this day just goes on and on, doesn't it? :rolleyes1 :rotfl:

We finally made it to Carcross. :hyper:

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It's super tiny! They have a Canada Post building though. They used to stamp passports here, so we thought we would try but they were closed.

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We made a quick stop to see Bennett Lake. Just gorgeous!

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Rob was standing in the water with his water-proof boots and yelling that he was standing in glacier water or something like that. :lmao:

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This building had bird houses in the shape of actual buildings in Carcross. SO cute!

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Carcross is the final stop on the White Pass Railway. They are not crossing the Canadian border this year though, due to covid, so it was pretty quiet here. I think this railway used to go all the way to Whitehorse though.

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Here's the train station.

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In the guide, it mentions that we might be able to get our passports stamped in this store. It's not official, just a fun, decorative stamp. The guy was just closing up but he was kind enough to let us stamp our passports. :thumbsup2

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We made sure to put some $$$ in the box.

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This was the place we were supposed to get our free lunch.

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We did try but it was closed. :worried:

It had just turned four o'clock when we pulled up and we thought we had just missed it but since Alaska has it's own time zone, which we stayed on because we always stay on ship time, this was Yukon and they were 1 hour ahead so we actually missed it by an hour.

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We stopped here to use the bathrooms. They were very nice and clean.

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We drove through the town a little bit. It was cute and quaint.

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We found the Catholic Church.

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It had a cute Shrine to Mary, Rob took the time to say a little prayer.

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Back into the car and just around the bend, we stopped off at the Bove Island turnout.

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Back in the car, we started to see some amazing scenery! All of that fog had now burnt off and we got to see what we had missed that morning. I took SO many photos and videos of that ride back, it's ridiculous! I was trying to charge my phone, it was down to 16% but I kept taking it off the charger to take more photos and videos. Around each bend, it got better and better! :love:

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You can see the deteriorating Venus Mill here. This was built in 1908 to help facilitate moving silver ore from the mine up above on the mountain, down to boats on the water. It was only used for two years apparently.

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We pulled in at the Yukon sign, we had missed the Welcome to BC sign earlier, they are literally at the same pull out. At this time, there wasn't a single person at any of the stops and we only saw one car going in our direction.

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Like I said, better and better. 😍

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A few minutes later, we spotted a bear on the side of the road. I got some video of him chowing down on something and then a few minutes later, he ran up the hill. We were all thrilled that we got to see a bear on this trip! :dance3:

We've seen lots of bears around Banff and Lake Louise but this was an Alaskan brown bear! We've never seen one of those before! :thumbsup2

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I'm at my photo limit for this post, so I will continue our journey back to Skagway in chapter 647 of this very long but awesome day. :rotfl:
 
July 14th, Part 647

This ridge was our favourite of the entire day. The way the highway twisted around, we saw it from many angles and it was just gorgeous! We called it Razorback Ridge but really, I have no idea what it's called. :rotfl:

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We were coming up on USA Customs. We were technically already back in Alaska but the customs house was way down and miles away still.

By the way, I should mention that when we passed into Canada, they used our ArriveCan code that we used for getting on the ship, so I had to redo the ArriveCan form again. The dates were off as it would only let me select a cruise start date as of our current date but it was no big deal, it still worked.

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We were talking about whether or not we wanted to stop at the Alaska sign again. We were all quite tired and spent and I had told Rob that if the scenery was nice and there were no other people, we would stop. Otherwise, we would keep going.

Well.........we finally made it to the sign and just...well....ummm.....

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Heck yeah, we are stopping!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Look at THAT!!!

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Can you believe it!!!!????

WOWZA! Look at what we missed that morning!! o_O

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Standing at the Alaska sign, this was the view behind me! 😍

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WOW...so glad we got to see that! That was one of the most memorable moments of the day. Not knowing what we had missed that morning just kind of hit us in the face coming back. WHOA!

The rest of the drive was all downhill, all the way into Skagway. Another great view of my Razorback mountains.


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And then we finally went through USA customs. He was a LOT more serious than the Canadian one but still super nice and he even stamped our passports, with a different stamp than the one we got in Carcross.


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Here's a view we missed this morning...

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We returned the car at 5pm, exactly one hour before it closed. We had filled up across the street, cost us $50 USD to fill the tank.


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And check this out. 🤩

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We were back on the ship at 5:15pm. I had wanted to walk around town a little since we didn't really get to see it but Kira was anxious to get back on the ship and to Vibe for a bit before our dinner.


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In our room, I stepped out on our verandah and saw the Quantum of the Seas heading out.


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And now a clearer view of all of the landslide.

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It was now time for dinner and for the first time on this cruise, Animator's Palate! Kira was not happy about how close the table next to us was but thankfully no one was seated there tonight. I really do miss the covid days of having lots of personal space. :rolleyes:


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Kira only had a muffin all day, she was starving! Rob had had a light breakfast, a muffin and a donut at Timmy's so he was really starving. I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before, so yeah, we were all ready for some food. 🤤


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Purseittes were as good as always!


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Rob's soup was good.


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And the Pennette Bolognese is Kira's favourite meal of every cruise. She devoured it!


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My filet was less than spectacular, full of fat. :crazy2:


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Rob's...can't remember if he enjoyed this or not?


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Also Rob's...


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Desserts were all very good!


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Zaldy even did some magic tricks for us. :wizard:


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Stay tuned for the final chapter in this Skagway saga. This last part was just as spectacular as the rest of the day. 😍
 
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Loving the report so far, Cass.

We were on the West Bound Panama Cruise in March 2022 and the food SUCKED. And we are not picky eaters. It was bad. Our servers were bad, slow and stressing "excellent" for reviews (they did not get it). Guest services was bad. Our stateroom host was not good. Our stateroom had major, dangerous issues. And more. It was so "not Disney" that Disney gave us a 25% discount on a future cruise.

Huh, we were on the WBPC too. My opinion of the food was that it was mostly fine, sometimes bad, sometimes good, but pretty meh all around. That really sucks about your servers though, we must have lucked out on that and our stateroom hosts were also good (we had two connecting rooms, but one room was at the end of one host's route, and the other was the start of another host's). I'm really glad DCL gave you a discount for your future cruise though!
 


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