The Disney Cruise to Alaska on the Disney Wonder was a splurge, expensive when you figured in flights, hotel the night before the sail away day, the cost of a 7 night cruise with a Navigator Veranda (7A), and lots of adventurous port excursions. But for our family of three, we were looking forward to the sense of adventure, the wondrous sites, and stepping out of our comfort zones. We are city slickers so a trip to the fjords and forests of Alaska was an already a stretch. We carefully selected our Port Adventures to include exploits like zip-lining through a rain forest, kayaking in a glacial lake, a whale watch, and an adventure, observing bears from a wooden platform as they feasted on salmon. To get ready for our trip we made some key purchases. These are the top three things we would suggest you do not leave home without if you are planning an Alaskan cruise.
Binoculars: We purchased these two types of binoculars but we only ended up using the compact ones. Size does matter, the smaller PowerView on the right was the most useful. We carried them with us everywhere and used them all the time, to spot whales, seals, admire waterfalls and glaciers. I kept them in my pocket or around my neck and accessible at all times. I even did some whale watching through the large portholes while playing the trivia game in the pub, Diversions. Leave the larger binoculars at home, but do get a good pair of compact ones – 12x or 10x amplification is ample. In fact, get a couple of them.
Camera: Purchase or borrow a good camera with plenty of optical zoom capabilities. We are a point and click family but for this trip, we went ahead and splurged on a Sony Cyber-Shot with 50x Optical Zoom. I think we spent about $450, including the bag. I also purchased lots of extra memory (two 32GB memory cards), plus I brought along a few other memory cards I already had. I ended up getting extra batteries and made sure they were charged. We let our daughter take creative photos all over the ship, and we did not have to worry we would not have the memory or power for capturing the bears. It was worth it, we got some great photos of eagles, king fishers, bears and each other! Great family memories. Being able to zoom in made all of the difference in the quality of the photos we took.
USB Charging Station: To keep the peace, recognizing there is a shortage of outlets in the room, I purchased this handy travel charging station with ports for up to 4 devices at once. I think I will be taking this with us on our all of our vacations.
Other things we needed were a good raincoat, some light gloves, and a hat. It was August, but it did get cold a few times during the trip.
We had a wonderful time and have already booked another destination cruise to the Mediterranean for next summer. I think I will be bringing these three favorite things on that trip too.
