Alaska Family Cruise

My family just returned last week from an amazing Alaska Glacier Cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas!  We gifted the cruise to our kiddos for Christmas and then recruited other extended family members to join us!  Altogether, there were nine of us in four staterooms – luckily all on the same deck.  There were also three other Pineapple Escapes agents on board with their families!

We made plans to spend the day before embarkation touring the city of Seattle.  We met up with friends to see popular sights including the Original Selfie Museum, Gum Wall, Pike’s Place Market, and the Space Needle!

As soon as we boarded the ship, it was time to explore!  Cruising Alaska is definitely a different experience than cruising the Caribbean… luckily, Ovation of the Seas has so much to offer in terms of indoor entertainment and activities!  My kids gravitated toward the SeaPlex, the largest indoor active space at sea.  It offers a full-size basketball court (also used for dodgeball, bumper cars, roller skating, and more).  The upper level offers an Xbox gaming lounge, foosball, air hockey, and ping pong tables.  The SeaPlex is also where you can find the Dog House, a fun spot to grab traditional hot dogs, brats, sausages, and more! 

Some of their other favorite activities on the ship included the rock-climbing wall, FlowRider, Hush silent parties, pools & hot tubs, and of course soft serve ice cream on the pool deck!  As a family, we really enjoyed the trivia, game shows, and snacking on cookies and late-night pizza at Sorrento’s.  

But what we enjoyed the most were our stops in Alaska and exploring “the last frontier” firsthand!  Our first stop, dubbed Adventure Day #1, was in Sitka, the former capital of Alaska and also the setting for the movie Proposal (although it wasn’t actually filmed there).  We didn’t have an excursion planned so our entire extended family ventured out together.  We hiked through beautiful Sitka National Historical Park, saw the totem poles, and enjoyed watching lots of bald eagles in the wild!  Afterward, we made our way to Harbor Mountain Brewing Company for delicious wood-fired pizza and drinks.

Adventure Day #2 was a stop in Skagway!  My brothers-in-law visited a Musher’s camp and had the ultimate sled dog experience.  They loved it!  Our family hiked part of the Chilkoot Trail, retracing the steps of the prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush, and then floated down the Taiya River.  Our awesome guide Owen (also my husband’s and son’s name) wore flip-flops during our entire adventure through the forest and on the glacier-fed river.  Again, the scenery was beautiful!  On our way back to the ship, we strolled through town stopping for some ice cream.  Are you sensing a trend??

We spent Adventure Day #3 in Alaska’s capital city, Juneau!  The girls & I visited the Mendenhall Glacier followed by a mouth-watering salmon bake while the boys had a blast river rafting!  We had rainy weather at the glacier but still hiked our way to Nugget Falls, a waterfall downstream of the Nugget Glacier.  The skies began to clear up as we were leaving, which gave us a better look at the glacier’s intense blue color.  At the salmon bake, we warmed up with hot chocolate and filled our plates with an incredible meal of grilled salmon, salad, cornbread, baked beans with reindeer sausage, and scalloped potatoes.  And as we rode the bus back to the ship, we saw a bear crossing the street!

Our last cruise stop was Victoria, British Columbia. We only had a few hours in port so we walked to town, visited a few shops, and stopped for a drink with friends at the Bard and Banker pub.

While the weather wasn’t perfect (we had to skip seeing Endicott Arm & Dawes Glacier due to heavy fog), I think it was pretty typical for Alaska.  We were perfectly comfortable in our layers, which is key when packing for a trip like this.  The sun reappeared on our last day at sea and was perfect for all the whale watching as we cruised the coast of British Columbia… I think everyone in our group saw several orcas, humpbacks, or both!  Our Alaska cruise adventure was truly an unforgettable experience for our entire family.  If Alaska is on your bucket list, we’d love to help you plan your trip!

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