In a little over a week we leave on the Disney Wonder, where we will be sailing on the Pacific Northwest repositioning cruise from Los Angeles to Vancouver, followed by the very first Disney cruise to Alaska! We’re pretty excited.

This will be a new cruise ship for us – we’ve been on the Disney Magic and I’ve been on the Disney Dream, but this will be our first time aboard the Disney Wonder. I know it’s the Magic’s sister ship, so I’m hoping the layout won’t be too much different. For those of you who have been on the Wonder, do you have any suggestions of cool things that we should be sure to take a look at?

The repositioning cruise will have two At Sea days, plus we’ll have an overnight visit to San Francisco, so we’ll have most of two days in San Francisco. We plan to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum. And Ghirardelli Square. 🙂 We’ll also visit the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada. It’s been over 30 years since I last visited Victoria, but I remember how beautiful it was, and I was very happy to learn it would be one of the ports on the repositioning cruise. I’ll be taking an excursion to the world-famous Butchart Gardens. I love flowers, and since my other two trips to the gardens were in the summer, I’m looking forward to seeing the spring flowers this time.

We dock in Vancouver on May 3, and leave that same day for Alaska, so we won’t really be spending any time in Vancouver this time.

There will be a sizable group of All Ears fans on board for the Alaska cruise, and I think Deb Wills and Beci Mahnken (and the rest of the fine folks at Mouse Fan Travel) have been planning some fun events for us. Picture This! photographer Barrie Brewer designed an awesome logo for our AllEars Alaskan Adventure:

Isn’t that great? We can order some merchandise through Cafe Press – I have a t-shirt and a tote bag that I’ll be bringing with me.

On the Alaska cruise we will have two At Sea days, and we will be visiting the ports of Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. We will also spend a day in Tracy Arm Fjord – no port there, but we’ll be cruising in the fjord to the twin Sawyer Glaciers. So we hope to see some glaciers calving, and also see some wildlife like seals and birds. And who knows, maybe we’ll get really lucky and see a bear!

I’ve been on an Alaskan cruise before but it was way back in 1983 – this will be Lee’s first time in Alaska.

Packing for this cruise is certainly a lot different than for our Caribbean or Mediterranean cruises – the weather is going to be a lot colder (and probably a lot rainier) than for either of those! Forget the shorts and tank tops – it’s going to be jeans and sweaters and lots of layers. Are UGGs considered appropriate footwear for formal night? 🙂

I plan to blog while we’re on both cruises – internet permitting, of course. Though while we’re in our Alaskan ports we should be able to use our cell modem, since for a change we’ll still be in the United States! 🙂 Hope you will follow along on our AllEars Alaskan Adventure!.