The WHAT, WHERE, WHY and WHEN:

It has been quite awhile since we have traveled for Disney – our last trip to Land in California was back in June 2018, and our last trip to World in Florida was in May 2019. So in the summer of 2023 when friends mentioned an Alaska cruise for 2024 and asked if we wanted to join – we quickly put a deposit down!

Going on a cruise (specifically to Alaska) was something that has been on our radar for awhile, and we even had a deposit down a few years ago with a different company (that we ended up cancelling for a multitude of reasons). Now that we have a princess-loving daughter, we figured Disney would be the best bet for us (and our friends who invited us were already booked with Disney – and had previously sailed Disney).

Our cruise dates were August 26 – September 2, 2024 on the Wonder. The cruise departed and returned to Vancouver, British Columbia – as Albertans, this is extremely easy to get to for us, and is only a short flight for us. We decided to fly in the day before, on August 25th, and booked one night at the Pan Pacific. We don’t typically splurge on hotels, but we figured it would be worth it for this, especially since we were traveling with a four-year old – it was worth every penny!

We chose to book all excursions direct through Disney (I know you can save a few dollars booking through third party vendors, but when I priced things elsewhere it was only a few dollars in savings – we didn’t do any of the big ticket excursions). We had three ports of call – Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan, and we did end up booking for all three. For some reason, we thought you could cancel 24 hours in advance if we changed our mind – this is not correct, which we found out when my Mom tried to cancel her Ketchikan excursion. If booked with Disney, they must be canceled 3 days before boarding – the charges for all excursions hit our account on embarkation day. Not a big deal, but something we’ll keep in mind for the future.

We did book the photo package, even though it was pricey (I think it was $300USD for our 7 night cruise). Since this was our daughter’s first introduction to a Disney trip, we knew we’d want the memories. I think we ended up with ~150 photos – some of which are fantastic – so we would buy that again.

Now on to the WHO:

I’m Fallon, and my husband is Luke. We are Disney Adults through and through, even though our first trip to Disney was a bit of a fluke back in 2015. We went on to get engaged at Animal Kingdom in 2017, did engagement photos at Disneyland in 2017 and then we had a Disney wedding in 2018. This was the first cruise for both of us. Here’s a picture from our wedding day, taken at the Old Key West resort at WDW in Florida –

Joining us on a Disney trip for the first time ever – our four year old daughter, Jocelyn <3. She is smart and sassy and fancy, and she loves all Disney Princesses (leading up to this cruise, she told us she was most excited to meet Cinderella, even though that is far from her favourite movie). She loves dressing up, and we came prepared with multiple Princess dresses for her to wear during the week.

Also joining us was my Mom! She’s the only family Luke and I have who lives in the same city as us (Luke and I are both imports to the province we live in, and my Mom decided to move here as well a few years after I did). Her and Jocelyn are extremely close, and it was so nice to have her with us! Her only trip to WDW was for our wedding, and she had to cut her trip short due to a family emergency back in Canada, but she did come with us to Disneyland later in 2018. It won’t be difficult to get her back to the parks or on another cruise with us in the future.

We also met up with friends who we hadn’t seen in person since 2019 (we live in different provinces). We were seated at the same table for supper each night, but did different excursions/events during the day. I’ll introduce them once they appear in the trip report 🙂

I’m notorious for starting trip reports and then taking years to finish them – so fingers crossed I can finish this one quickly!