Yep, This internet thing is great for matching up people with common interests, and this one specifically for cruise newbies to match up with cruise enthusiasts who have experience and are willing to advise.
I appreciate your comments about timing. I was thinking that I might need to wait until the first of the year to book for summer '05. I'm now thinking that maybe we had better book as soon as I can nail down exactly what we want to do, which will likely dictate the length of the trip. And the cruise line of choice.
What we want to do will be of course subjective, but I'm still wondering how to find the best value on a cruise line. I'm trying to avoid booking our cruise and then finding in February that I could have gotten the same cabin for half of what I paid.
Another area of uncertainty is flights. I've gotten pretty savvy on using internet sites to get the lowest fares for common city pairs (we're thinking Raleigh <-> Seattle) but booking the one-way flight to the Alaskan point of departure for the cruise is a huge unknown. The reason that we're not planning to use the criuse to book the flights is cost and we're planning to take a few days in the Seattle/Portland area. On the cost angle, I can book round-trip tickets from RDU to the NW for about $200 today. The additional cost PP for having the cruise book our flights appears to be ~ $800, but includes the Alaskan one-way ticket. Surely, the flight e.g., from Fairbanks to Seattle won't be $600!
Anyway, next important decision is what cruise we want. We're fairly open to 7-11 days and natural beauty (wilderness) is our objective, so we plan a couple of land excursions also. We don't plan on any dog-sleds to the interior, but would like maybe a 2-5 mile hike or two to see some good scenery. Maybe this is available in Denali?
