Disney Cruise Alaska Review: Day 5 – Juneau, Alaska
Hello and thank you for continuing reading my nine-part series detailing my experience on board the Disney Wonder sailing around Alaska.
Our first port of call was Skagway, Alaska, but today I will write about our second port of call: Juneau, Alaska (pronounce like Juno, I soon found out).
The town of Juneau was the biggest of the three ports of call. There was a bus you could take from the port to the town where you could choose to walk around or book a tour. Just like the day before, we had booked a port adventure directly from Disney which included a bus ride to Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls, followed by a bus ride to whale sightseeing on a boat.
(this time we had Rapunzel). We waited a while for our group to be called, almost fifteen minutes, so much that the 8:45 a.m. adventurers started checking in while we were still waiting.
Once our group was called we followed the crew member out of the boat, always by scanning our Key to the World before leaving the ship, and boarded our bus. We had an excellent bus driver. She talked to us how she went took college during the Fall and Spring and she and her husband rented a house during the summer to drive tour buses. I thought that was very interesting.
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| View of Mendenhall Glacier from afar |
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| Trail to Nugget Falls |
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| Nugget Falls |
Once back in the bus, we headed to a boat that would take us whale watching. We saw black and black porpoises that almost looked like orcas, sea lions, and whales in the distance. We were a bit far off to be able to see them in detail, but we saw a few tails and shapes coming out of the water. The tour guides explained about tail patterns and how no two whales have the same pattern. Also, they pointed out the babies, but I couldn’t tell them apart from the adults.
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| A lighthouse |
After watching the whales in action, the captain took us to a sea lion gathering place. There were dozens of sea lions just hanging. It was fun to watch, but to be honest, I would have preferred to go back to the bus about an hour earlier. It would have let us go back to the ship in time to have lunch at the buffet. The last hour on the whale-watching boat was a bit of a drag, and we ended up eating a sandwich and a soup outside on Deck 9.
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| Sea lion galore |
In the afternoon, there was a Pixar Party on the boat. The kids weren’t interested, nor were the adults. I went by myself and stood looking down at the atrium from Deck 4. Several Pixar characters showed up from Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out, and Ratatouille. They danced in pairs to themed songs. Mostly, there were a lot of little kids in attendance.
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| Pixar Party |
We went to our evening show (a hypnotist) and then to dinner. Our restaurant for the night was Tiana’s Place and it had a Mardi Grass theme. They gave us themed necklaces and they had a parade after dinner. The kids danced and had fun. By the way, Tiana and Louis the Gator were always in attendance, but our table was in a corner where Louis couldn’t fit to visit, so all he did was wave in our direction from afar. Bummer. The good news was we had a table by a window and it was nice to watch the sea or land outside as we had dinner.
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| Louis the Gator at Tiana’s Place |
That concludes our fifth day on the Disney Wonder.
cheers!
