Alaska is one of the most popular travel destinations today whether you plan to travel by air, land or sea. So, just about every major cruise line, airline, and rail offer frequent sailings to Alaska. While you can find travel to Alaska through any airline or cruise line, some modes of transportation are more exciting than others. It should come as no surprise that most Alaska-bound traveler’s choose a cruise!
Best Alaska Cruise Lines
Some of the best Alaska cruise lines also happen to be some of the world’s most luxurious cruise lines. These include: Silversea Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Cruise West, Princess Cruise Line, and Holland America Cruise Line. Before we discuss ratings, here is a bit of information about some of the top Alaska cruise lines and their best Alaska cruise ships.
Silversea Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, and Celebrity Cruises offer the utmost in pampering, spas, accommodations, and cuisine. And one of the best things about these premium Alaska cruise lines is the view as most cabins have private balconies. These luxury lines offer the best Alaska cruises for the sophisticated traveler with money to burn. Silversea Cruises offers all-suite luxury on four magnificent vessels including the Silver Cloud and the Silver Wind, as well as the Millennium Class Silver Shadow and Silver Whisper, and a wide variety of Alaska enrichment voyages and explorations. Guests can even personalize their Alaska voyage.
Regent Seven Seas also features all-suite cabins with private balconies aboard the luxurious Seven Seas Mariner, and world-class cuisine as well as enrichment programs with an Alaska theme, and adventure excursions. Celebrity Cruises is excellent for pampering as Infinity and Summit feature AquaSpas with thalassotherapy pools and a wide assortment of beauty treatments. Art aficionados on their way to Alaska will also appreciate the Celebrity’s impressive art collections as well. Guests aboard any of Celebrity’s 11 ships can expect an endless number of unforgettable cruises filled with excursions highlighting culture, wildlife, history, and geology. Alaska excursions will include all highlights along with everything from flightseeing and flights to the Arctic Circle to dog sledding.
Cruise West is perfect for Alaska adventure seekers interested in small ships cruising. Small ships allow the visitor to get up close and personal with marine life, nature, and the elements. Small ships cruises also offer the most ambitious itineraries. The smaller the ship, the more remote the destination will be. This basically means that guests will visit places big ships just can’t reach. The focus of Cruise West Alaska cruises is adventure, enrichment (lectures, learning activities), and tours led by naturalists and historians. Cruise West offers the very best opportunities for whale watching, canoeing and kayaking, wildlife viewing (bears, eagles, seals), and glacier exploration.
Princess Cruise Lines and Holland America Cruise Line are considered some of the best Alaska cruise lines for their excellent cruise tours. These cruise lines currently lead the industry in interior voyages (Alaska and Yukon Territory) and Holland has exclusive passage into the Yukon’s Kluane National Park, as well as Tombstone Territorial Park. Princess Cruise Lines’ 7-day Gulf of Alaska cruise should be noted as well.
The majority of the major cruise lines for Alaska cruises mentioned above are kid-free, so there are several cruise lines that top the list for families interested in an Alaska cruise. Carnival Cruise Lines and Norwegian Cruise Lines feature special shore excursions for kids and teens, as well as on board activities that will keep kids busy during long days at sea.
Cruise Ratings
Just about every cruise website under the sun has cruise line reviews and/or a cruise line ratings system in place to help potential cruisers determine which cruise lines are among the best. On some websites, cruise line ratings may be determined by the opinions of a small group of reviewers while other sites may have a more complex system in place. These complex systems for rating cruise lines typically involve large groups of reviewers from varied backgrounds.
Some of the more complex cruise line ratings systems may determine cruise line ratings through evaluating or calculating several areas including: specific aspects, value index and quality rating. Reviewers’ comments also make up a portion of the final cruise line rating.
In the most complex rating systems, cruise ship ratings evaluations are generally based on 12 or more specific aspects from passengers who have sailed on each specific ship. Passengers report on a volunteer basis and they are required to rate their experience in the 12 or more specific aspect areas, assigning each area a score, usually between one and 10.
The value index may combine as many as 30 or more separate factors that directly affect the cruise experience and weighs these factors against the per person/day cost of a standard outside stateroom. These separate factors may include issues such as passenger/crew ratio or say, passenger/space ratio. Other individual factors such as on-board entertainment are weighted according to how relevant it is to the type of cruise. For example, on-board entertainment may be weighted more heavily for a resort type cruise ship than it would be on a sightseeing cruise ship. This formula is designed to ensure the highest standards of fairness.
A cruise line with a high value index typically means that it offers “more bang for your buck.” In other words, a cruise line rating with a high value index is definitely a great bargain. Please note that the value index is price sensitive and it is based on full retail rates. Sales, promotions, discounts and other rate reductions greatly affect the value of the cruise a potential passenger may purchase.
A high value index measurement is typically weighed against a cruise ship’s total quality rating. Passengers who are looking for specific amenities or qualities such as world class cuisine, excellent spa facilities or top notch entertainment should balance the overall measurement against its scores in the categories of importance to them on a personal level.
The quality rating consists of the average of the individual category scores from the volunteer reviewers. In the quality rating, all specific aspects carry equal weight. The quality rating represents the reviewers assessment of the ship overall, typically carrying a maximum value of 10.0. In most cases, a quality rating of 8.0 or more represents a superior level of overall passenger satisfaction.
Because of the nature of cruise line ratings and the possibility of receiving a biased rating, it’s best to seek out sources that have a more complex ratings system in place. This way, passengers can be sure that the final published review will be well calculated using a proven formula.
Interested in cruise ship ratings and cruise reviews? Some of the top sites for cruise ship ratings and reviews are:
·Cruisecritic.com
·Cruisereviewsonline.com
·Cruisereport.com
·Cruisedirectonline.com
·Cruisemates.com
Cruisecritic.com offers more than just reviews, this site has several search functions to help you find everything from bargains and discounts to theme cruises, and exotic itineraries. The site also includes features, news, planning tools, and a variety of cruise message boards where fellow cruisers can exchange stories and information.
Reviews, ratings, rankings, and popularity contests — at Cruisereviewsonline.com find out which cruise ships are at the top and which ones are not. Get other information on cruise lines, as well as information, ratings and rankings on embarkation ports, and ports-of-call.
Cruisereport.com offers the lowdown on cruise lines from A to Z. Unbiased reviews, cruise searches, quotes, and feature articles are just a few of the sites extras. You can also search for “the perfect cruise,” and browse through news pieces about cruising. After checking out their ratings and reviews, you can also search for discounts and deals. With more than 50,000 visitors per month, Cruisereport.com has information on roughly 8,500 current sailings.
Cruisedirectonline.com relies on reader surveys to help keep reviews & ratings in check. In addition to cruise ship reviews and ratings, visitors to the site will find top ten and top thirty lists, as well as feature articles about the best of the best in the world of cruises. The site has other information about discounts, as well as information on roughly 12,000 sailings. Cruise Direct Online has been featured in Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine, and on MSNBC, CNBC, MSN Money, and more.
Cruisemates.com offers short reviews and ratings. The two types of ratings include: star ratings and value ratings. Star ratings are based on one question — “how good is this ship?” One star is the worst, five stars is the best. Cruisemates.com takes everything from age and accommodations to food, service, and entertainment into account when rating the worlds cruise ships. Value ratings or “thumbs up” ratings are all about the “Bang for your Buck.” Five thumbs up means the ship is an excellent value while one thumb up means you won’t find much of anything that resembles a value here.