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TwitterAlaska Cruise . 2012 . Sep 15
Having survived a long flight halfway round the globe to reach Vancouver where our Diamond Princess Cruise ship begins its sailing to Alaska, it was with great relief and jubilation when we hauled our luggage and made our way to the Canada Place Cruise Ship Terminal to board the cruise ship. The sun was out, the sky was clear, the wind was slight and the temperature at a comfortable 18 – 20 Degrees Celsius. We kept our fingers crossed and hope for such glorious weather to be repeated in Alaska.
Boarding starts at 11am, so we made sure we were one of the early birds to arrive on time to beat the crowd. Apparently, many other passengers also thought the same. We were greeted with a first hint of chaos when we stepped into the Canada Place and saw many marked queue lines and instructions for passengers, which kind of confused us even more. After stumbling around for a while, we realized that we had to deposit our luggage at the concierge for the porters to send up to our cabin. We were allowed to keep two of our hand-carry luggages containing personal items and valuables with us.
If you forget to bring your binoculars or having second thoughts of bringing one, there is a counter before the immigration area that sells binoculars at a reasonable price of CAN$49.95, which we thought it was quite a good deal, considering that we got ours from Mustafa shopping centre in Singapore for around SGD$120 although the specifications of ours are better. From our experience, binoculars is a must for an Alaskan cruise. You will definitely need them to have a closer look at wild life on board the cruise ship. You can still buy on binoculars at the shops on board Diamond Princess if you are still hesitating.
We were told by the immigration officers on duty that there was another cruise ship (ms Zuiderdam) from Holland America sailing on the same day, and so you can imagine what it is like to have to queue up with close to 5000 other passengers streaming in within those few hours for security clearance.
Logistics, however, was superbly managed by the immigration officers who must have been used to such chaos every season. Immigration officers led us to an area where each passenger was given a seat in accordance to their place in the queue while procedures and approximate waiting times were explained to us.
We could see the need for this after a while. It took us close to an hour before we were given a place at the standing queues for our turn at the immigration counter.
Clearance at the immigration counter took only a matter of minutes, but it was another round of queuing again, only that this time, passengers were separated based on the ship that they were boarding.
At the Princess counter, we were given our room keys which also double up as a card to record all purchases on board, and a map of the ship to help us navigate around.
And finally at about 1pm, we stepped onto the gangplank leading to the Diamond Princess cruise ship which will be our place of residence for the coming 7 nights as we sail along the gulf of Alaska.
Before we were allowed entry to the ship, cruise staff was already stationed at the end of the gangplank to take our individual pictures to be linked to our personal cruise card as a form of photo ID.
Finally, it was peace and quiet and comfort at the welcoming atmosphere of the Diamond Princess.
Coming up next:
Check out our Balcony cabin at Caribe Deck!
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