To Cruise or not to Cruise to Alaska in 2026

Jennie discusses the decision about whether to cruise to Alaska or travel on your own.

This episode is sponsored by the Alaska TourSaver! One lucky listener who leaves a review for the podcast on any platform by midnight Pacific time on December 31st will be entered to win a 2026 TourSaver! EMAIL A SCREENSHOT OF YOUR REVIEW to jen@ordinary-adventures.com

Save 20% on my Book your own cruise without a travel advisor workshop until Saturday night December 27th at 11:59pm with code: SELF20

Transcript

 Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co-host and full-time husband, Jay, and I bring you accurate, helpful, and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and life in Alaska.



Hello everyone. Jennie here. I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season, and I'm not sure if you're in a job that is very busy this week or very slow this week and you're on vacation, but either way, I am thinking of you and grateful for you being here, and listening to the Alaska uncovered.

Podcast and looking forward to continuing to bring you amazing episodes every week in 2026. Today is the first of 6, the first of six in a row, daily special episodes. So from today until. December 31st. We are going to have an episode every day, a short episode every day. These episodes are focused on jump starting your planning for 2026 Alaska Travel.

Of course, this is what we, you know, do every week. But um, today we'll be talking about cruising versus not cruising. Tomorrow I'll be talking about planning a trip to Alaska on your own, and then the next three days we'll have a rundown of various discounts and some favorite. People to book through, uh, for your trip.

And then finally, on December 31st, I will have a special episode that is about all the ways that I can help you with your 2026 or beyond trip. So I am excited to bring you these six special episodes this week, and there will be a couple deals for you here and there along the way.

And then on January 6th we will resume our weekly Tuesday episodes for the year. So. For today, we have a sponsor and our sponsor is Alaska Tour Saver. You. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you have heard me talk all about the Alaska Tour Saver and Scott and Gary who run the Alaska Tour Saver, who are long-term experts in Alaska Travel.

They are going to help me with a giveaway for you. I have not been good enough about asking you to leave ratings and reviews, and I've never really explained why that's so important. So I'm gonna do that today. Before I do that, I want to just tell you, if you don't know about the Alaska Tour Saver, it's a coupon book.

Or app, right? So the deals are the same. You decide whether you want to have the paper book or the app. Either way, it costs $99 and you get a ton of great deals. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes because there are so many different things in there. Really what you wanna do if you're going to buy a tour saver.

Is, look at what all the offers are. You'll know what they all are in advance, and then figure out if you're gonna save money by buying it or not. If you're doing some bigger ticket items like flying to Alaska on Alaska Airlines, or you are taking the Alaska Railroad, you could easily save. Thousands of dollars, right, right there. There's lots of two for one, coupon books, but of course you need to make sure that these things line up with your itinerary enough to make it worth it. So probably if you use one or two coupons, it will be worth it.

Scott and Gary are going to give one lucky listener a free tour saver in January. However, there's a catch. You need to leave a review for the podcast to be entered to win. It's free, it just takes a couple minutes.

It doesn't matter where you leave the review doesn't make any difference. It can be Apple Podcast, it can be o uh, overcast, it can be Spotify. It doesn't matter. Um, it's a little clunky for you to send it to me because I know this sounds crazy, but most podcast platforms, I can't see all of your reviews.

I can see what the average rating is and I can see. A handful of reviews and I can see how many there are right there. Right now there's 41. And, um, so I'm gonna explain how you enter to win after leaving your review, but first I wanna talk about why it's important. So for a podcast like ours, one of the ways it grows is that if there are.

Lots of high ratings for a podcast that helps it get recommended to people more frequently. And the reason that that's helpful is as the podcast grows, that helps us find more partners, like the folks we're gonna meet later this week who want to extend. A discount to you as podcast listeners to show their gratitude for visiting Alaska, but also because they believe in podcasting and that supports us financially and allows us to continue to bring you these awesome episodes.

So this is something you can do. Leaving us a review that doesn't cost anything, but it helps us financially a lot. So that's why, um, I was so excited that Scott and Gary were willing to partner with me this way. Okay, so you go to your podcast player. You leave your review, then take a screenshot of it and email it to me.

Okay? I'm gonna put my email address in the show notes, but I'm also gonna give it to you verbally right now. Alright, here we go. It's JEN at. Ordinary adventures.com. I'll put it in the show notes as well. Um, so take your screenshot, email it to me. You'll get my out of office. 'cause I'm working on some special projects like this one, uh, this week.

That's okay. Um, the contest closes on December 31st at midnight. You need to email me with the screenshot of your review by midnight Pacific Time on December 31st, and I will draw and email a winner on January 8th. So good luck everybody. Win your tour saver.

Again, it doesn't matter what podcast app it is. Um, yes, if you want to leave a review on more than one, like for example, if you wanna leave it on Apple Co podcasts and Spotify, then you can have two entries. Sure, why not? Um. And thank you so much in advance for taking the time to do that and good luck. So once again, the contest is gonna end December 31st at midnight.

You need to email me your screenshot. By the end of 2025. Alright, and thank you so much to the Alaska Tour Saver for sponsoring today's episode. It's such a fantastic product for visitors in Alaska and they have been doing it, I believe this is their 26th year. Um, they started in 1999 and you can find them@toursaver.com.

I will also put the link in the show notes. Now that we've gotten that, taken care of, I would love to talk a little bit about the decision to cruise or not cruise on your trip to Alaska in 2026. And if you've already decided. No problem. That'll be great if you're still deciding. I hope this will help you decide, and if you're traveling to Alaska in the future or considering an additional tour, I hope this episode will help you with making that decision.

I. Keep in mind that I am a big supporter of Alaska cruising. I am also a big supporter of Alaska Independent travel, and that means planning a trip on your own, not with a tour company, not with not on a cruise. So I think that those are both. Wonderful ways to travel for different people at different times in Alaska.

I've done both of those many times by myself personally since 1998. And as you know, um, I. Work quite often with guests who are on cruises, but not always. Some of my guests are not on cruises, so I don't have a particular skin in the game on this, which means I think that I'm a really good person to help you make this decision.

Okay. I. So if you're considering whether or not to do this, here is the bottom line. If you are someone who likes to see as much as possible when you travel, cram as many things in as you can see, all the most famous places than a cruise is right for you. And the reason for that is that to do the things.

Go, let me rephrase that. To go to the places that you will go on a cruise, especially a cruise tour, which is when you book a land and cruise trip through the cruise line, to go to the same number of places in the same amount of time by yourself is impossible. Um, it is technically possible on like certain days of the week, but it's not enjoyable.

Because traveling between places in Alaska is time consuming and expensive. So if you were going to say go to Juno and Ket A Can and Skagway or Juno and Sitka and Hayes and Anchorage and Denali National Park. You are going to do that in 10 days by yourself. Every single day would be on a ferry, a plane, or driving for a long time, sometimes in the middle of the night, so, or at very inconvenient hours.

So that will not give you time to. See anything in those places, and I just promise you that this is true. Just trust me on this. If you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna figure out how to make this work in southeast Alaska, taking the ferry, or I'm gonna take these small planes to all these places and then I'm gonna go up to Denali for a day or two, um, it's going to be really frustrating.

So I think there are. I, I think if you are someone who wants to go to as many places as possible. A cruise and specifically a cruise tour is gonna be right for you. And if you hate that idea, then hold on a minute and I'll explain how to navigate that. But I think that's the most important thing if you, if your goal is to see as much as possible, and what I mean is as many.

Different places as possible because I would say you can sleep in one place for a week and see all kinds of amazing things and have all these incredible experiences. But you'll be based in one geographical area. So I mean, very specifically, if you want to go to lots of places all over the state, a cruise is the way to go.

So that is one situation, um, where a cruise is a clear winner. There's two others, so I'll talk about those and then I'll talk about, um, the benefits of not cruising. Okay. So one of them is going to as many different places as you can in a short time. I'm gonna define a short time as less than two weeks.

Um, okay, so that's the first one. The second one is financial. So. Most likely you are not going to find a way to travel on your own in Alaska for less money than cruising. I know that sounds a little counterintuitive. That people often are like, that can't be right. Now, of course, you can spend a lot of, well, first of all, visiting Alaska is expensive.

I, if you're listening and planning a trip, you know that by now. Um, so given the fact that it's an expensive destination, I. Of course there are many thing, you know, cruises are at different price points, right? Depending on how big the ship is and what cruise line it is. But also some of the biggest things that increase the cross cost of cruising is doing, say a balcony cabin, having a drink package, booking a lot of short excursions, and those are all wonderful things to do.

But if you're looking to save money on your trip, an inside cabin on a cruise ship. Is going to by far be the best bargain, um, for a similar amount of time. Now, there's an exception to that. If you are, say, a family of four, you're gonna share a rental car and a vacation rental, as opposed to having two hotel rooms for like a week.

You could probably get the price pretty close to, um, an inside cabin on a cruise ship. Uh, but. Other than that, it's going to cost more to travel on your own unless you're camping, which is a whole, whole different thing we can talk about in another episode. I've learned that most people are not camping, uh, not tent camping specific.

RV camping is more of a similar cost. Um. And so if you are tent camping, then tent camping on your own will be significantly less expensive because where you are staying is the most expensive thing in Alaska for the most part, in most situations. Okay. The third reason why a cruise can be, um, a really good option for certain people is if you like nice hotels.

So Alaska does not have nice hotels. Um. I, I hate say, hate saying that, but it's true. It, it has, it has really good hotels. It has expensive hotels, and there are lots of awesome, uh. Ins and places to stay that are amazing. Like a couple that we're gonna talk about later this week, but they're not really hotels, right?

So in the realm of hotels, most hotels are just kind of an average hotel in the lower 48. So if you like really nice accommodations, cruise ship accommodations are much nicer than any hotels in Alaska. Um. Crew. Now again, you could be at a remote lodge, um, or even one that's not remote, that has a few rooms that's gonna be even more even nicer than a cruise ship.

But I'm talking about in general, like a hotel in Anchorage, a hotel in Fairbanks. Um, cruise ship cabins are small unless you get a suite, which of course costs more, but they're really nice and, um. You know, if you want more of a luxury experience, you will not find that on land in Alaska for the most part.

So, uh, and that includes land tours on, uh, that you book through cruise ship. By the way, the cruise ship accommodations, um, are much nicer. So I think those are the three situations where a cruise is really a clear winner. I think other things to think about are just the fact that a cruise is less complicated.

So if you're pressed for time. Um, as far as planning your trip, everything will be taken care of for you. You will pack and unpack once, if you add a land to it, there'll be a couple more times. Food will be figured out. You don't have to figure out where you're going for dinner. So as far as something that's really a vacation, um, where no one has any.

Like real responsibility for making it work. You can't beat a cruise for that. Um, a land tour, there's gonna be, or let me say that again, a. Trip that you plan on your own will have lots of complicated logistics and decisions for someone in your travel group to make every day. So it'll be an awesome adventure, but it'll be also a lot of work.

So that, that I think, kind of pulls together my thoughts in general about the benefits of cruising before we move on to the benefits of not cruising. Um, I wanted to tell you that I decided to offer a little discount on my booking your own Alaska cruise. That is just for today and tomorrow. So if you're listening to this in real time on December 26th, this code is only good until 11:59 PM tomorrow night, December 27th at, uh, Pacific Time.

Okay? So in my shop. Which is um, shop dot ordinary adventures.com. I have a bunch of planning tools for Alaska and one of them is called. How to book a cruise on your own. And it's important because, and as opposed to through a travel agent, I really recommend working with a travel agent for cruising for sure.

But if you don't wanna do that, or you don't have someone, you don't wanna find someone and you're gonna book on your own, pick up this workshop. It's a. It has, um, materials that go along with it, but it's a video, it's an on demand class with me, um, where I talk about the important things not to miss and to think about and how to figure out what the total cost is going to be.

So. Um, it costs, uh, $17, so it's super affordable all the time. You should definitely pick this up if you wanna book a cruise without a travel advisor, but if you wanna pick it up before tomorrow night, it's 20% off and there's a code for that. It's self. SELF 20 and just use that by tomorrow night at 11:59 PM Pacific.

I'll put it in the show notes as well. Both the link and the, uh, 20% off code. Okay, so moving on to planning on your own. Now, tomorrow's episode is going to be devoted to planning a trip on your own when you're not taking a cruise or for the non cruise part of your. Trip. So, um, I, I do wanna talk about some of the benefits of that today.

So if we've talked about the benefits of cruising, and we're gonna talk about the benefits of not cruising. Okay. Um, the first one, the biggest reason I think to not do a cruise on your trip to Alaska as if you are a solitude seeker. That means you are someone who. Isn't, it's not as important to you to see, to go to a lot of different places.

It's more important to you to have downtime, to get to know a place. You know, if you miss some of the, you know, top 10 Instagram photos, that's not gonna bother you. Um, for you. Solitude seeker. You, you might prefer, you will prefer a trip on your own. Um, that's not on a cruise because there are so many places in Alaska that you can go, uh, that um, are.

Places that other people don't go. So the trip that Jay and I are leading in June, and by the way, we're reopening registration on January 8th for the last couple spots. So, um, you could send me an email if you're like, oh, I definitely wanna do this and I'll get you in. The places we're going on that trip are places that there are not other visitors.

Basically. Um, so you can definitely do that, but you're not gonna do that on a cruise or a cruise tour, and you're not gonna do that on your own, you know, sticking with the places that most visitors go, like the entrance area at Denali National Park, for example. So if you're okay letting go of some of those sort of top 10 things and you'd prefer instead to just, um.

Kind of spend more time in less places than a trip on your own is gonna be awesome for you. I think another situation where it would, it's a really good way to go, is if you just wanna be able to do things really flexibly, right? So if you're like. I wanna just get up and I, if I feel like sitting on the deck and drinking coffee all day, then I wanna do that.

If I wanna go for a hike, then I wanna do that. Um, if I wanna go for a drive somewhere, I wanna do that. I think if you're that kind of traveler. Uh, the reality is you're gonna need reservations for where you're sleeping in Alaska unless you are camping and okay with boondocking. And only then in certain locations you are gonna need reservations for where you're sleeping.

But, um. Other than that, you could say have a vacation rental in Fairbanks or Anchorage or Juneau, and you could just do whatever you want every day. If you want that kind of a trip, then a trip on your own is also gonna be the right fit for you. I, I really wanna encourage you listeners to think about.

Doing it that way as opposed to saying, I'm not a cruise person or I am a cruise person. I hear people say that a lot and then sometimes that, um, means that they choose a trip that is not. The right fit for them and then ends up being really frustrating. So I think just being honest with yourself, don't worry about whether or not you're a cruise person, whether or not you're a road trip person.

If you're traveling on your own in Alaska, it's gonna be a road trip, or you're gonna be in one spot in southeast Alaska, or one spot anywhere. You know, you could be in Anchorage without a car for a week. No problem. So. Try to put that out of your mind and instead be like, what kind of a trip do I and my family, my friends, if it's just you, yourself, what kind of a trip do we want?

How do we like to travel and then which way is gonna fit in best with that? I will also tell you that a lot of people cruise for the first time in Alaska, and I have had many of those folks on my tour. I've had many clients who have booked planning sessions with me who have, you know, kind of been struggling with this and said something along the lines of.

I don't think of myself as a cruise person, or I've never done this before. I don't like the idea, but I want to go to all these different places and I can't figure out another way to make that happen. And then in those situations, I try to reassure them that this is gonna be awesome. And there are some things you can do on a cruise to find more solitude, to get more of what you're looking for, even while you're on a cruise.

So in this episode, I am not trying to talk you into cruising. I am, I want you to consider cruising if you are number one, the kind of person who wants to go to as many different locations as possible if you are on a tight budget. Although definitely pick up that workshop I have 'cause it'll help you figure out all the hidden costs of which there are a lot.

Um, and also. You know, if you really want it to be a vacation and not a lot of work, um, you know, the way to do a trip in Alaska without it being a lot of work on your own is to stay in one spot or rent an rv because then you're not moving all the time. You can make some of your own meals in an RV or a vacation rental.

You know, you don't have to, every single meal have a decision about restaurants and things like that. So. That's what I would love for you to think about. If you are planning on cruising, um, definitely pick up my booking your trip without a travel advisor. If you have a travel advisor, then you don't need that.

They'll take care of all that. Figure that out, all out for you. Those of you who are not cruising, I've got a deal for you in tomorrow's episode, so I'll share that with you. Then I hope that this gives you a little more confidence to feel good about choosing to. Cruise or not cruise in Alaska this year and beyond.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.  📍 Bye for now.



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