I am excited for you. Enjoy your vacation.

Sounds wonderful! Know you'll have a wonderful trip. Don't forget to share details of your cruise.

That's nice that it's all inclusive. I'd rather pay more up front then be nickel and dimed-well now a days it's more like $20 or $100 here and there every day. It adds up on a week long cruise.

I spend a lot of time on cruisecritic.com when I've planned a cruise, to find out what shore excursions are worth the money, what's available close to port stuff like that. It's a message board like this one, you find the cruise line you are cruising and read about what people thought of their cruise.

Ask your doctor for an Rx for the patches and put one on BEFORE you get on the ship. When sailing to Alaska the water can be choppy as you get more into cold watet. When we went with another couple she denied that she would get sick and would use dramamine if she did. Well, she really ruined our lovely formal dinner as well as for everyone sitting within "smelling" distance of our table.

How lucky! I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to take a cruise, but DH swears he'll be seasick the whole time (says he gets seasick watching a rocking boat on TV!!) In Vanuatu, we get 5 or 6 cruise ships a month come into town-and have talked to so many passengers in my cafe, and always wanted to go. The closest DH has gone is a harbour cruise for 2 hours on a twin-masted sailing ship, and only when the harbour looks like glass when he boards. Once, we were scheduled to go, drove to the harbour and he said "I'll pick you up in 2 hours!" Refused to go at the last minute because he couldn't count the hairs in his eyebrows in the water's reflection-(well, an exageration, but you get the point!) Have a TERRIFIC time!

Oh! I am so excited for you! I went on my first cruise a couple of years ago, it was FUNtastic! The whole experience was great. We did a Carnival cruise to Cozumel, left out of Mobile AL. Hope you have fun planning, shopping and going!

Congrats! I can't even begin to imagine going on a cruise but if I did It would be Alaska for me too!

Sounds wonderful!!!!

I told my husband we should think about taking a cruise someday. He said sure - we'll just go to the local lake, rent a paddleboat, and cruise around the lake!! All we need to do now - he said - was save up enough energy ( not $) to make sure we're able to get back to the shore!! Somehow, I don't think a "ship" is in my future! Ha!

runninL8, yeah, being in Kansas does make it pretty expensive which ever port you cruise out of. Espeically now when the flights are so expensive on top of the cost of the cruise. It really adds up.

But hey, there's still time. You may be able to enjoy one yet.

About motion sickness, you may be surprised about how little you feel the boat moving. Unless it's rough seas and they have the motion sickness bags hanging over everything. That was always the signal we were heading into rough water when you see the motion sickness bags coming out.

Everyone is different so I'm not saying you won't get sick, but you may be pleasantly surprised.