Lee Cruises, Dream Vacations

17/11/2024

Time for our 2024 National Conference on board Celebrity Ascent starting today! This week is all about connecting with travel industry leaders and fellow Dream Vacations franchise owners, learning, and networking so we can better serve you. Here's to a week of learning, laughter, inspiration and fun!

11/11/2024

Today we honor all who have served. Thank you Veterans! 🪖🎖️💙

23/10/2024

Getting so dang excited for this river cruise in the spring of next year with our group of 17! There are still a few balcony rooms available if anyone else would like to join us. Just message or give us a call and we can give you all the details. Thanks and have a great day!

With four restaurants, an expansive wellness studio, an onboard cinema and a full-sized pickleball court, AmaWaterways' award-winning AmaMagna is the ideal s...

27/09/2024

Just a heads up Viking is running a bunch of end-of-month promos that are good only through the end of September. Many of these promos are stackable and include discounted deposits, airfare and ship-board credit, and are especially good for first-time Viking travelers. Give us a call if you'd like to price a river or ocean cruise, in many cases we can even add additional ship-board credit through exclusive promos between our Dream Vacations Franchise HQ and Viking. Thanks!

13/08/2024

So we recently wrapped up a 7-night Alaska cruise onboard Princess Cruise Line's Royal Princess. As travel agents we always hear that Princess (along with Holland America) have been doing Alaska longer than other cruise lines and can offer an elevated experience compared to others. But is that truly the case?

THE BOTTOM LINE: Princess does do a great job and certainly offers some advantages over many other lines when it comes to Alaska. But that doesn't necessarily mean they would be best for everyone (see PROS and CONS below). We had a fantastic experience on this trip and Princess played a part in that, BUT I think we have to give the biggest kudos to Mother Nature - who really came through for us with 7 straight days of sunshine, temps in the 60's and 70's, and ZERO rain! That is EXTREMELY RARE for Alaska and we almost feel like we're doing false advertising posting all these sunny photos!

PROS:

1. Having been doing Alaska for so long, Princess does offer some perks that some cruise lines can't offer including the following:
- Access to Glacier Bay Natl. Park
- Preferred/premium docking locations at some ports
- Great pre or post cruise land tours into the heart of Alaska (Princess actually owns many of the trains & lodges that operate throughout the area, with emphasis on Natl Parks)

2. Princess always has an onboard Naturalist who gives lectures throughout the cruise on such topics as "Whales", "Glaciers", etc. These are very well done and draw big crowds. If you do a Princess cruise you should definitely attend these. In Alaska, Princess also brings local experts and park rangers onboard who do a great job giving presentations and narrating over the ship loudspeakers while sailing in Glacier Bay.

3. The itinerary for this cruise, which started near Anchorage (Whittier) and ended in Vancouver allowed for longer stays in most ports and less sea days than a typical Seattle round-trip itinerary.

4. The food and entertainment were great. We especially liked the buffet setup and felt like the food was a step up compared to many cruise lines.

CONS:

1. While the price of a typical Princess Alaska cruise is reasonable, you can usually find less expensive options through Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and maybe others.

2. Princess ships don't usually offer all the fun stuff that kids may expect on a cruise (like water slides, race cars, rock walls, rope courses, etc.). So although Princess does offer kids clubs, and there were many families with kids on our cruise, we did hear cases where kids got a little bored & restless while on the ship.

Check out the descriptions on the photos for more details. Also on this trip we took a lot of short videos that we'll be including in reels over the next few days. Kudos if you've read all the way to here! Thanks and happy cruising!!