Wanting to see Canada and Alaska for my 40th next year in September. Does anyone have any experience on either a planned tour like this one; https://www.tripadeal.com.au/deals/1591-18-day-usa-alaska-ca…
or planning it all yourself or even going through an American or Canadian Travel company?
That'll be a fantastic trip.
Not sure about self-planning vs. tours, but IMHO the highlight will be Banff
Why dont you goto the Kimberly on a cruise ship, support Australia and all that ?
THere are plenty of providers that take you on very nice medium size boats and they provide activities like day trips to all the sites on land.
That tour seems to have lots of travel time so I hope you don't mind sitting in a coach.
Personally I'd just go on the cruise and do the rest myself.
did it a few years back
Flew into Anchorage, did some day tours there before a cruise down the inside passage to Vancouver, flew to calgary that afternoon and did a roadtrip back through the rockies over a 5 days (enough time to do enough, nowhere near enough time to do everything unfortunately)
Expect the ports you stop at (and the major cities) to just be tourist-centric with the same trinkets/fudge/jewelry shops all along the route. leave a decent budget for activities as some of them can get expensive, but totally worth it.
I'd organise it myself any day over using a travel agent or packaged tour. Some of my favorite moments of the trip were nowhere near planned (such as pulling off one of the backroads into a picnic area, getting my feet into a glacial river on a 36 degree day, and my girlfriend finding flakes of gold on the riverbed. you cant do or experience stuff like that when you're being carted from one place to another by a bus (it was painful enough on the trip from Anchorage to the cruise port)
Any chance of being able to do it for the $10,000 mark? (That's for 2 adults)
depends on your level of comfort and how much you want to do. if you do a bare-bones tour you can likely get it done for around $6-7k
we flew premium economy with airNZ to LA (2200ish return for both of us)
cant remember the cruise cost but i want to say around the $4k mark
excursions were about $1700 (but we splashed out bigtime on these)
keep an eye on the cruise lines for specials and pre-book the shore excursions. Also shop around in the ports ahead of time (keep track of the tour times and allow for time to get back to the ship). The more expensive ones can work out cheaper if you get an earlybird specials
the road trip part was fairly easy and didn't cost us too much as we stayed in basic motels
I'd say load up a spreadsheet, grab a map and start plotting down your ideas!
Thank you. Sounds like it's a good thing I've got 18 months to plan
We decided to do Canada in style so we did the gold class and Fairmont Rocky Mountaineer followed by a sleeper across from Vancouver to Toronto where we did Niagara falls on the Canadian side. We splashed out for one night at a good hotel at Niagara because the fireworks were on that night across the falls.
It was a magic trip but not for those on a budget.
I would look at hiring a car dependent on the weather; Lake Louise, Banff, Jasper and Vancouver are certainly worth a visit. The scenery was amazing, the smoked salmon and steaks are great, but the wine was terrible.
Enjoy
Unfortunately, the only way we'll be able to do it in style would be if I got a big windfall…I can dream but I'll plan for reality
We don't do it often either but we thought "we will only go there once". We had a friend who hired a car and drove his family around and he said it was amazing. Just be aware that Canada's weather can be unpredictable so you will need to keep on top of the conditions whilst you are travelling. It truly is a lovely country and the people are great fun and the sense of humour is fairly similar.
Disney do an Alaska cruise. I've heard it's amazing.
https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/cruises-destinations/itin…
We did the TAD Canada/Alaska tour in September 2016. There were about 4 groups at the same time, each doing different upgrades. We had a great tour director and driver and a wonderful bunch of fellow travellers. The whole trip was well run and we saw all that we wanted. You can't help the weather and both Lake Louise and Lake Moraine were rained out. I've since been on another TAD trip to China and that was good also. The Alaskan cruise was fabulous. We didn't go to Yellowstone, instead bussed around British Columbia. Meals were extra, so with that and drinks, it was a bit more of an expense. We were in a group of 6 friends and mostly ate out.
interesting to go there as well. friends said if possible go with smaller cruise/ship form canada so you can go to smaller ports in alaska which are more beautiful than bigger ports. is this true?