NW to Alaska: Rating The Services

I’ve written a number of post on our recent Alaskan Cruise trip sharing some of the locations, photos and activities but I’ve not taken the time to offer our experiences and opinions on some of the various services we encountered during this trip.

Perhaps something here will be of help to someone planning their own travels to Alaska:

Travel Associates, Salisbury NC (planning and arrangements), Rating 5 of 5 –

The trip went off like clockwork. All the arrangements made by Travel Associates of Salisbury were spot on and we never missed a step.

US Airways (Flying in General), Rating: 3 of 5 –

I hate to fly these days and it’s not surprising to find many other people feeling the same. There’s been significantly fewer flights recently due to the hassles involved. Let’s look at a few of my pet peeves we dealt with flying US Airways.

• Any checked bag is limited to a base weight of 50 lbs or less unless you wish to pay an extra penalty fee. A single bag weighing from 51 to 70 lbs will cost you an additional $50. If the bag weights from 71-100 lbs there will be a $100 penalty fee. This applies even if you’re checking one bag of the two bags you’re allowed. So you could check two 50 lb bags with no penalty (except for the cost listed below) or one 51 lb bag that cost you $50 in penalties. I’m not sure what the logic behind this is.
• Speaking of that second bag, US Airways is now charging $25 (fuel surcharge) for that bag. It’s $100 for bags 3-9 and heaven help you if any of them weight over 50 lbs. There’re some exceptions to this second bag fee. These days the cost of your ticket is only part of your total flight cost, unless your traveling light.
• There are no longer any free snacks on US Airway flights, the free pretzels are gone. For the moment they still offer free drinks.
• If you’re flying all day you’d better grab something to eat at the airport while you’re waiting in line for security or running to the next gate to catch a connecting flight. US Airways offers what they call snack boxes and lunch boxes for $5 and $7 dollars respectively but they don’t carry many of them per flight and if you’re lucky they’ll run out before they get to you.
• Planes have been configured for maximum capacity and that means that a large guy like myself must sit for hours in a numbing folded position while trying not to succumb to claustrophobia. TIP: In an Airbus A320 avoid seats 8D/E/F at all cost! They’re scrunched up an extra amount to make room for the mid-fuselage emergency exit.
• Carry on luggage (2 pieces), what a mess when trying to load a plane. Eventually they’ll cut back on it or start charging for the second piece.

On the plus side, the planes were on time and our luggage arrived at the proper locations.

TSA (Airport Security), Rating: 3 of 5 –

The security checks were as expected. There does seem to be discrepancy in the professional level of the staff from airport to airport. In Charlotte, NC, I forgot to take my laptop out of my backpack and it passed through the scanner without anyone noticing or saying anything. Scary! However, in Portland, OR, the TSA agents were pissed because I’d placed my shoes over part of the laptop when passing it through the scanner. Rescan!

My wife and I were playing the “can you spot an Air Marshall” game during the flights, but we conceded that if you had a gun they couldn’t force you to subject yourselves to these terrible air travel conditions. You’d no doubt shoot your way out. :-)

There were no strip or body cavity searches so I guess overall it was okay.

Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) FreeStyle Cruising, Rating: 5 of 5 –

People seem to have strongly diverging opinions of NCL FreeStyle Cruising and after some thought I believe which side you take depends on what you expect from your cruise.

If the cruise ship and onboard activities are the highlights of your trip then you may be disappointed. With NCL Freestyle, you may not have all the structured and formal social gatherings you wish. There may also be less occasions to dress up and “party hardy” as you would find on a structured cruise.

However, if the cruise represents comfortable accommodations and transportation with the focus of your trip being the destination and sights, then NCL Freestyle may just be your cup of tea. With Freestyle you’re free to set you own schedule and dressing up is optional. We spent the cruise in blue jeans and found it to be wonderful (it’s a vacation).

The NCL staff were professional and friendly. They also worked hard at being engaged with the passengers.

We loved this style of cruising and have decided that any future cruises will be NCL FreeStyle.

Various Cruise Excursions, Helicopter, Float Plane and Train Rides, Rating 4 of 5 –

We booked all our port cruise excursions through NCL and they were excellent.

There was some confusion at a couple of locations due to multiple ships arriving in port at the same times but it was handled fairly well.

Thrifty Car Rental, Rating: 2 of 5 –

We’d made arrangements for a Thrifty rental car to be picked up at the dock we returned to. What should have been a simple process of picking up a pre-arranged car turned into car rental nightmare. Filling out the rental form at the dock site was like starting over from scratch (plus, the Thrifty attendant was using a Windows terminal that crashed once while doing the forms of the people ahead of me).

After finally completing the forms, we and our luggage were bussed a mile down the road to a location to pick up the actual car. Here, I stood in line for almost 2 hours just to get the keys to the car I’d already rented. The most maddening part was there was no sign of any Thrifty management trying to smooth the process for me or the other 30 people trying to rent, pickup or return a car. The two clerks were in over their heads and no one was helping them.

The car return and check-in at Portland was excellent (the only reason I gave a rating of 2 instead of 1), but I’ll not be renting from Thrifty again.

Hotels.com, Rating 5 of 5 –

I made hotel reservations in Oregon for three nights in different locations and hotel chains for after the cruise. The user reviews on Hotels.com were accurate and very helpful.

Alaska, Rating 5++ of 5 –

What we saw of Alaska was amazingly beautiful and awe inspiring. I’m ready to go back and see more of it and if I was a younger man I’d seriously consider moving there.

I’ll do another post with some opinions on the camera gear I packed for this trip and how well it worked for me while shooting over 5,000 photos. Stay tuned!