The Last Frontier: A Disney Wonder Cruise Report - June 2025 (Intro and Travel to Vancouver)

It’s true what they say… Alaska is a “once in a lifetime” trip. Until you take it, and realize there’s just gotta be a next time, right?!

About eighteen months ago, we were discussing our favorite vacations at dinner and tasked the kids with doing a little research and letting us know where they would like to go on a future vacation. Penelope went home, hopped on my computer, and a couple hours later shared an entire powerpoint presentation with us. On ALASKA. It felt like it was out of the blue, I’d never heard her mention wanting to go there, and yet here she was excitedly making a case for dog sledding on glaciers and northern lights.

For the record, Lucas just said “more cruises!”

We put a cruise to Alaska on our radar and that’s when this trip was born, but it wasn’t booked until a great cast rate came out (about six weeks before setting sail). So planning and execution was a whirlwind.

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to researching vacations. With social media today, you can pretty much watch a video of every physical step and little moment of an experience. It’s helpful, but it’s also incredibly annoying. When planning a trip, I try really hard not to over index into “too much research,” in an effort to preserve the experience. Because I want to actually EXPERIENCE it and see it unfold in front of me in the present.

Our itinerary:

Day 00: Travel to Vancouver, BC
Day 01: Board the Disney Wonder
Day 02: At Sea
Day 03: Glacier Day with a boat excursion
Day 04: Ziplining in Skagway, Alaska
Day 05: Helicopter and Dog Sledding in Juneau, Alaska
Day 06: Explore Ketchikan, Alaska
Day 07: At Sea
Day 08: Debark and spend the day in Vancouver, BC, Canada
Day 09: Travel home

This itinerary is not for the faint of heart! To all the friends who told me cruising Alaska is so relaxing… we had VERY different experiences. :) Days 3-6 were nonstop and jam packed. Of course, we did that to ourselves with the excursions, but it’s worth noting.

Our stateroom:

For our stateroom, we booked an Oceanview Deluxe Category GTY (the best option available to us). Basically, it means you are guaranteed to receive that category at minimum, and you don’t get to pick your stateroom. They slot you into one a couple weeks out from your sailing. In all honesty, we’ve never not been upgraded to a better category when booking this way. Until now. :)

I was worried about not having a verandah, because all you ever hear about Alaska sailings is that you SIMPLY MUST have a verandah for taking in all those majestic views. So we decided we would check for upgrades when checking in at the port.

Tips on packing:

Prepare for rain and bring all the layers. Hats, gloves, scarves, long johns, hand warmers, extra socks, waterproof outer layers, you name it, we had it (including swimsuits). Our temps ranged from 40s-60s Fahrenheit. And the 40s were cold because we were out on the windy water with no sun.

We’re normally pretty good at being carry-on only travelers… not this time. We had 4 carry-ons and one checked bag. It was nice to know we could easily do laundry on the ship if we needed to, but I don’t actually want to do laundry on a vacation, so I packed with that in mind. We wore most of what we took, with the exception of some of our nicer “evening” cruise wear.

Also, I know packing cubes are all the rage (and we do use one for each person for things like underwear/socks/swimwear), but I promise you can maximize your suitcase space if you take a lay flat approach to clothing and fill that suitcase from bottom to top.

If you’re traveling as a family, and have multiple destinations (or would need to repack at any point to change hotels) I recommend packing by itinerary not by person. By doing this, it meant we only had to open up one suitcase when we got to Vancouver. The other four stood by our door ready to be rolled right back out the next morning.

Excursions:

Simply put, the excursions on an Alaskan cruise are expensive. It’s worth noting if you’re planning on booking one of these sailings, because the overall price for a family of four adds up really fast if you want to do anything remotely adventurous. Even the more passive experiences had hefty price points, all things considered.

Interestingly, sometimes when you looked at the price to book excursions through DCL vs independently, there wasn’t much difference. For example, there was only about a $40 price difference (total for all of us) for the zipping excursion we booked. We paid the little bit extra and booked that one with Disney because we liked the tour time better. But when it came to the helicopter/dogsledding excursion, it was a significant savings to book directly (like $800) with Alaska Shore Excursions. I also felt okay taking the risk because we were scheduled to return five hours before our ship departed, and Alaska Shore Excursions collects important information from you, like which ship you’re on, and offers a guarantee of getting you back in time. Additionally, the tour outfit was the exact same one we would have been with if we’d booked through Disney (in this specific instance). So, I definitely recommend doing your research here.

DAY 00: Travel to Vancouver

Our travel day began with a 3:30am wake up for a 6:30am flight from MCO to LAX where we had a three hour layover before connecting to Vancouver. And I’ll admit my anxiety was having a field day. I’ve been through enough airport nightmares to have me concerned over flight delays (ask me how a three hour flight home from NYC turned into a 46 hour event sometime).

Luckily for us, we had an uneventful trip filled with movies at 30,000 feet, overpriced Wolfgang Puck pizza, and endless rounds of Uno and Lowdown. We landed in Vancouver 4pm local time. Waiting for our checked bag at the luggage carousel, a suitcase came by with the front pocket nearly ripped off and a couple of flip flops hanging out of it.

Brett: Sucks for that guy!
Me: You’re that guy! That’s ours!

Luckily all we had in the front panel was a couple of pairs of flip flops and they were all present and accounted for on the luggage belt. Note to self: don’t put anything important in the front panel of your checked bags.

We considered staying at the ever popular Pan Pacific (for the views and the convenience) for a hot second before realizing we could use points at the Hilton Vancouver Downtown about a mile away and save quite a chunk of change by doing so. I would absolutely do it this way again.

Room ready, we stowed our stuff and made our way to the hotel restaurant to get something to eat. The hostess seated us in a rounded corner booth and I had an absolute deja vu moment. I was immediately transported back to our arrival night in Paris two years ago (image on the right), when we found ourselves in the corner booth of a cafe, jet lagged, punch drunk, and happy to be at the very beginning of another adventure together. Magical. THIS is why we travel.

This was also the first of three very specific throwbacks to our Paris trip.

After dinner, we went in search of a way to Macgyver the front panel of our suitcase on. We ended up with a pack of heavy duty safety pins and that did the trick. We spent the rest of the evening zoning out on devices, and keeping our eyelids open with toothpicks, until we reached an acceptable local bed time.

Coming up: we set sail for Alaska on the Disney Wonder.