For the full picture gallery, click here. 

Background
 
Recently, there was an online internet poll, covered by CNN.com, that orchestrated a vote to renominate the wonders of the world.  While the Pyramids and the Great Wall certainly are wonderful achievements of humankind, they do little to make the modern mind wonder.  After all, our anthropologists and scientific historians, in conjunction with The Discovery Channel, have done a lot to educate us on how those things came to be.  To wonder in awe, a glacial pause in your mind's time, is the true evocation of such a grand label as Wonder of the World. A natural wonder of the world?  Alaska delivers.  

This is a review of our cruise experience on the Celebrity Infinity Cruise Ship, journeying through Alaska's Inside Passage.  We left the port of Vancouver on July 29th, 2007 for a seven-day cruise, and returned the following Sunday.  A whole week of perfect weather materialized despite being sandwiched by the rain that preceded and followed it.  At this time of writing, I am 29 years-old and I am an entrepreneur from the San Francisco Bay Area.  My cruise partner, is my girlfriend who is 25 years-old and works in management for a medical response company.  We were definitely one of the younger couples on the ship, but it was by no means a Floridian scene of seniors-- it was a very mixed crowd.  We tended to look for things on this cruise that young people enjoy, and picked activities and excursions that were physically challenging.  It also will help you understand this review's point of view knowing that we are nature lovers, and I have been an outdoorsman since birth, on account of my father's influence.
 
I have been on two cruises prior to this one.  My first was on the Dawn Princess of Princess Cruises, on a 7-day sail through the Caribbean.  I was a kid and my criteria for vacationing has changed a lot.  My second cruise was in 2001, aboard Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody of the Seas with a Baja Peninsula itinerary.  This is my third cruise, and I have high expectations.

Cruise Experience   My cruise aboard the Celebrity Infinity was the best cruise experience I have ever had.   I am not a professional cruise critic nor a hard-core cruise vacationeer with over 21 cruises under my belt.  But given my travels to over 20 countries in my young life, from five-star hotels to five-degrees celsius in nothing but a sleeping bag, this trip to Alaska was nothing short of amazing.  Celebrity is classified as a premium cruise line, positioned as a little better, and a little pricier, than the major cruise lines such as Carnival and Princess.  In comparison to my last cruise onboard the best Royal Caribbean ship at the time, the Rhapsody of the Seas, the Celebrity ship was far superior.  This is especially relevant as both those ships were built in the same year.  The Royal Caribbean ship has a 2400 passenger capacity but a tonnage of 78,000.  The Celebrity ship, has a 2000 passenger capacity and a tonnage of 91,000.  So with a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the conclusion is clear why this is a premium cruise line. The service was a little better too, and the overall atmosphere, elegant.  The price range also compels fewer families with kids and teenagers make it aboard.  In my preference of a relaxing and romantic vacation for my girlfriend and I, this was a plus.  Here is a view of the space below the Conservatory that contributed to the elegant and contemporary decor:

 
We felt Celebrity took a lot of time to make the ship feel personal, and the pre-cruise literature and online cruise management were intuitively helpful.  In fact, you could change your dining options, book excursions, set up your expense account, and get all kinds of information specific to your cruise from the Celebrity website.  If you are part of the generation that prefers to take advantage of online resources than wait on hold for a representative, Celebrity does a great job at meeting your needs.  Our last act online was a full check-in process, entering our travel-document information, making our boarding experience faster at port.
 
After consulting with our travel agent, we wanted to try the Celebrity Concierge Class upgrade.  This is advertised as Celebrity's foray of making the traveler feel more personal aboard a 2,000-passenger vessel and to keep their clientele from straying to the luxury lines.  On this cruise, it cost us $230 per person to get this upgrade.  Among the many features you can find listed on the link above, we most enjoyed the welcome champagne, the upgraded towels, pillows, robes, nicer balcony furniture,  and especially priority embarkation/disembarkation privileges.  I would pay the upgrade for the first-in-line to get off the ship privilege alone.  Why waste time on your vacation waiting in lines?  The upgraded pillows were not only higher quality but you can choose any kind of pillow you want.  You can even have your Concierge-Class stateroom attendant deliver a different kind of pillow every night!  I asked for a large body-pillow my first night and I was happy for the whole trip.  The canapés every afternoon were a nice touch.  Concierge-Class cabins are also permanently designated as such, and naturally, they occupy the most premium real estate on the ship.  All the mid-deck, noise-free zones that are less prone to exaggerated motion while at sea all belong to Concierge-Class.

 
Fellow passengers on any cruise are typically older than your spring break vacations to MTV's hotspot of the summer.  I am going to give you an accurate picture here without reservations of political correctness.  The cruise had few families with children.  Thus, making it a quiet vacation without babies crying, kids screaming, and teenagers running on the decks.  In my observation, 5% of the passengers were under 20, 30% of the passengers were 20-40 years old, 45% were 40-60 years old, and the other 20% were... older.  Most were wealthy professionals or retired professionals, and coupled off with a significant other.  The clientele was mainly American, and then a pretty even split between Canadians, South Americans, and Europeans.  The majority of the passengers were Caucasian, then evenly distributed among Asians and Latinos.  While there were some singles' events onboard, they were few, and I did not attend so I cannot review this for you from that point of view.
 
Service on the ship was excellent overall.  Every crew member is trained to greet you, and they do.  Our stateroom attendant, Christine, went the extra nautical-mile every day to make sure our needs were met and we were having a great time.  If I had to put a face to the celebrity-like treatment we received, it would be Christine without question.  Our waiter in the formal dining room, Stan, was entertaining and professional.  He made sure our entire table's desires were met, even if it was off-menu or considering the way we ate, ... many times over what the portions the menu prescribed.  It's alright, we hit the gym every day as well and by the end of the cruise, I will have gained two pounds of muscle (I swear!) and my girlfriend actually will have lost a pound.
 
Gratuity on the ship was handled most professionally.  The most convenient way of tipping was to sign a form that allowed the ship to electronically charge your credit card at the suggested rate.  They would disperse the gratuities accordingly to the staff who attended to us after our cruise.  For a Concierge-Class Stateroom, it turned out to be about $80 per person for the seven days and for the high level of service we received, every dollar was worth it.  You are also provided with pre-addressed envelopes on the second-last night of the cruise in case you would like to dispense your gratuities in cash.  No crew members are allowed to solicit or talk about gratuities with you, and it is all handled by the Guest Relations Desk.

 
The Ship
 

The Pool Deck of the Infinity The Infinity was built in 2001, but 6 years later, there is no way to tell her age from the passengers' point of view.  Everything was meticulous and looked brand new.  There was not a single fingerprint on any inch of glass or the mirrored elevators upon boarding.  This crew takes pride of their ship and it shows.  The decor is contemporary with splashes of old-world class.  The glass column on the port side houses a breathtaking bank of transparent elevators while wood-paneled tea rooms and dim-lit lounges echo symbols of luxuries from the past.  The internet lounge is staged with frosted glass, the open-air decks with wood, and the central atrium with a vast under-lit stairway.  The ship's gross tonnage is just over 90,000, and she carries 2046 passengers on 12 decks.
 

The indoor pool and hot tubs on the Infinity Public areas are very efficiently laid out and convenient to access.  Unlike more dated designs, the Infinity sacrifices some traditional aesthetic lines at the stern, for maximum surface area on the facilities decks.  The highlights include the atrium-height, floor-to-ceiling windows of the dining room, and the Constellation lounge on deck 10 at the bow.  The gym, also located right up front, features a 180-degree-plus view of the water ahead of the ship.  When you run on the treadmill situated by the forward wall of glass, it feels like you're running on the ocean.
 
The gym staff were very courteous and taught multiple classes, every day of the cruise.  Most classes cost $10 per person, and were on a sign-up basis.  Some seminars were complimentary.  The spa is located next to the gym and featured ocean-view salon chairs for every spa service you could imagine.  The spa staff on the Infinity though, was the only crew unit that did not meet service-quality expectations.  One spa attendant was outright rude and I wrote an extensive letter with my comments card.  I would expect that Celebrity has rectified this situation by the time you, a potential passenger, make a reservation aboard the Infinity.

Originally, I wanted to economize and just get a standard interior stateroom as I was used to as a young traveler.  My sister and her husband chose this itinerary for their honeymoon with Princess Cruises and they demanded we must choose a balcony stateroom.  Our cruise agent advised us similarly.  Unlike other cruises where the ports are your highlights, the Alaskan Inside Passage is all about nature's beauty.  And you will want to enjoy it as much as possible without competing for rail-space on the public decks.  In reality, the competition for public deck space aboard the Infinity was non-existent, even for the Hubbard Glacier viewing day.  Still, there is no substitute for the experience of waking up and having Concierge-Class room service breakfast on your balcony as the surreal green and blue landscape floats by, just several hundred yards off your ship.  Waking up to snowy mountains and blue oceans in the same glimpse as you rub your eyes in the morning is priceless.  Getting a balcony was worth the almost doubling in price compared to an interior stateroom.  Worth it.  Our cruise agent also selected a midship location between passenger decks for us.  With their extensive experience in hand, we had the perfect room.  It is important not to be above or below a common-space deck, such as under the pool or above the dining room.  Oh did I mention the balcony room was totally worth it?

 
Dining, Drinking, and Entertainment

There are many choices from which to choose and you will end up choosing them all.  From our organic-food menu of light and healthy things we cook at home, we quickly became accustomed to a four, then a five-meal-a-day regimen.  You have breakfast, then lunch, then after-lunch canapés, then before-dinner snack, then dinner.  Sometimes you even have a midnight buffet or the oh-my-god chocolate buffet on the fourth night.  I have never seen five pounds of chocolate disappear so fast from our plates.
 
On a seven-night cruise, Celebrity has two formal nights, three informal nights, and two casual nights.  Make no mistake, casual night is not casual.  Coming from the Bay Area, where billionaires drive Priuses and wear jeans and sandals to work, we really had to dress it up.  Casual night for men is a collared sports shirt with slacks, and for women, a dress or a sporty pantsuit.  I am 29 years-old ... what is a sporty pant suit?  Formal nights called for dark suits or tuxedos, with ladies in fancy evening wear.  In all seriousness, it was very nice to dress up and our dining atmosphere was fantastic as a result.
 
The food was as good as can be, when you cook for 2,000 people at a time.  The main dining room was comparable to most three-and-a-half-star restaurants back home in San Francisco.  The cuisine was typically Euro-American, and catered mostly to American tastes.  The specialty French restaurant, the S.S. United States, was a special treat that could be had for $30 extra per person.  The fixed menu offered many delicious choices including the best foie gras I have ever had in my life.  In fact, it was so good, I am quitting ever eating it again.  Foie Gras is the French delicacy of fatty goose liver.  Unfortunately, this is made by jamming a feeding tube down a goose's throat and forcibly feeding it.  The goose spends its entire life in a cage to achieve this otherwise-impossible level of fat in its liver.  This is an unacceptable cost to me, even though it truly is a culinary treat.
 
There was a fair amount of gratuitously free alcohol on this cruise starting with the welcome flutes of champagne (oui, c'est le vrai Champagne de France, n'est pas le vin mousseux des Etats-Unis ),  the captain's cocktail party, and the cooking demonstrations by the executive chef in the Martini Bar.  Alcohol can be charged directly to your expense account, and can be brought onboard with some limitations.  The duty-free shop on the ship has some bargain prices on alcohol but you are not allowed to consume it until the cruise is over and you have disembarked.
 
Entertainment was varied.  From the stereotypical broadway styles for the older crowd, to an a cappella-beatbox boy band, to contortionists and stand-up comedians.  The options for keeping kids busy were limited.  Our favorite activity was soaking in the Thalassotherapy Pool, which was a bubbling salt-water bath in the greenhouse-enclosed portion of deck 10.  This indoor bath-water temperature pool along with two hot tubs are restricted to age 18 and up only.  There are four more hot tubs and two unheated pools on the outside deck as well.  The movie theatre played a different movie every day, and the casino was constantly busy adding dollars to the ship's coffers.   The main source of entertainment on this cruise however, is the natural Alaskan beauty.  Grab a book or a blanket, or both as the weather may require, and sit on the deck for some of the most awe-inspiring scenery on our planet.  If it gets too cold out, which it rarely did, you can enjoy the glass-covered portion of the deck in comfort and warmth without sacrificing any of the view.  At night, you had a choice of various ballroom dance floors in the Martini or Champagne lounges, to the disco in the Constellation Club.

 
Ports of Call and Excursions
 
Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and you need to see it.  Unfortunately, the dock for the Infinity is located in a rather substandard part of town in the middle of large commercial freight yards.  It is really too bad since another of the company's ships, the Celebrity Mercury docks at the pristine downtown location, Canada Place.  Our boarding experience was smooth, but because we arrived so early (you can check in at 11:30am to avoid the crowds even though your literature will say boarding is at 1pm), we did not get to take advantage of the Concierge Class priority boarding.  Lunch buffet was already in effect as soon as we stepped onboard so I strongly recommend checking in early.  If you have never been to Vancouver before, this will be the most metropolitan port of your cruise.  It is an amazing city.
 
Ketchikan is the first stop on this itinerary and with a population of 20,000, there is only one thing to do in-town: shop.  The onboard shopping director did a great job in whipping the passengers into a frenzy, convincing them of needs they never knew they had.  When the gangway hit ground at Ketchikan, the Infinity unleashed a horde of rabid shoppers who suddenly developed the need to buy tourist-oriented jewelry made from Tanzanite, Ammolite, Alexandrite, and all kinds of other sparkling earth deposits.  The entire town of Ketchikan that was built for the cruise tourists only exists six months out of the year.  The other half of the time, the shops are not open as the seasonal labor shifts south to the Caribbean.  Every store here is either a jewelry store, or a jewelry store, punctuated by the occasional souvenir t-shirt/jewelry store.  The town itself is quite walkable, and if you are willing to walk off some calories from the previous night's desserts, follow the creek to Creek Street, then up farther away from town.  We saw salmon jumping out of the water as they rushed against the current to reach their spawning grounds.  We saw luscious green as far as the eye could see.  Of the excursions available, the most talked about choice on the ship was the kayaking trip.  Feel free to book with a company directly online, or walk off the dock and book one for 10% less than what Celebrity will charge you, or accept the 10% convenience fee for not having to lift a finger.  They all use the same touring companies.  Whale watching also had moderate success.  The crew often remarked how rainy Ketchikan was.  Their nickname for the town was Catch-a-Cold.   They warned us to bring our rain jackets as the downpour can start at any time of the day.  We were fortunate, and along with the sunny skies, the passengers of all four cruise ships docked in town greeted the town's streets in t-shirts by afternoon.  Even though it was not cold, a hot chocolate station staffed by uniformed Celebrity crew awaited us at the dock before we embarked on the ship again.  It was a very nice touch.
 
The next port is not a real port, but it certainly is a destination you will remember forever.  The Hubbard Glacier really made my heart stop when I saw it.  I leaned outside our stateroom balcony and looked about 20 miles ahead through the clear icy air.  A 300-foot tall, six-mile wide sheet of ice diving into the Pacific Ocean, in an instant recaptures a glimpse of what Neil Armstrong felt as he looked back at Earth-rise: humankind is so small in the awe of nature and the universe.  It was quite something.  We saw pieces of the glacier fall into the sea, heard the crackling sounds of ice as the Infinity's hull sails past, and breathed the freshest air on the planet.  The experience on deck was made superlatively enjoyable with the hot chocolate and Baileys served with a side of woolen blankets.  It does not get any more perfect than this.  I highly encourage you, to look at my photo gallery as I cannot describe with an appropriate degree of justice the beauty of Hubbard Glacier.  The ship spent almost four hours here in Disenchantment Bay, and the captain informed us our sailing was the closest the ship has been to the ice wall this season.
 
Juneau, the Alaskan capital is a more populous town with less to do in it than Ketchikan.  The town is also easily walkable and you are rewarded with amazing views along the waterfront if you take twenty minutes to venture outside the main part of town.  On that August morning, we started out with light jackets but by lunch time, shorts and short-sleeves became common attire.  The Mendenhall Glacier is only fifteen miles out and you can either take a cruise-organized excursion tour to the base of the glacier, or take the local bus at a fraction of the cost.  We spared no expense though for the highlight of our trip: we booked the most expensive excursion possible at $515 per person.  We signed up for a helicopter journey, ascending 2,000 feet up the Mendenhall and landing on the ice field itself.  The flight offered views akin to those seen in Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" but even more dramatic.  For an extended three hours, we would trek up the ice face with our crampons and axes, and climb on what looked like an extraterrestrial landscape.  We saw blue-lit caves, drank the purest glacial waters on Earth, and witnessed melting waterfalls dive into the heart of the ice shelf.  This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and undoubtedly the best nature experience I have ever had. 

The company Celebrity books this trip with is NorthStar Trekking, and you can also book with them directly for a 10% savings.  If you cannot do the strenuous version of this trip, they have a lighter, more sight-seeing oriented itinerary for those wanting a less athletic challenge.  I cannot recommend this excursion enough!  This is a must-do for your Alaska trip.  Jaws dropped around our dining table as we shared the photos from that day on the ice (see below).  It truly was breathtaking.  Other excursions that got high reviews were the dog-camp trips to visit Alaskan Huskies.

Trekking on the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau

Icy Strait Point is a very small and poor native town.  There is nothing to do here.   The town is 1.5 miles from the dock.  You can walk it.  Or not.  There is nothing to do here.   Why did Celebrity build this port out of nothing?  There is nothing to do here.  We went on a bear-hike excursion and while we did see a bear, we felt the format of a large school bus driving nine miles out of town to a pre-built nature sight-seeing area, a let-down.  Especially compared to the vast array of options at Juneau.  Our friends had a successful whale-watching tour at this port and saw a grey whale calf and its mother fully breaching out of the water.  The world's longest zip line is here, and it looks like quite an adrenaline rush as you jump off a mountain that took 45 minutes to ascend by vehicle, and you reach sea level in 90 seconds.  Still, there is nothing to do at Icy Strait Point itself.  I would have rather spent the night at port in Juneau and had the opportunity to do more of the interesting excursions available there.

 
Conclusion

  This is a must-do cruise if you love nature and being in the outdoors.  The Alaskan landscape is truly a wonder.  The Inside Passage is not a cruise with exciting and exotic ports, and if you come with such an expectation, you will be disappointed.  The primary source of entertainment is the vast country you experience only by sea in this remote part of the planet.  The sights are amazing.  While you may understand the existence of forests and glaciers, it is not a lack of understanding that spurs the human mind to wonder.  It is simply those moments, when the mind does not see the source of wonder, but how small you stand before it.  Alaska's Beauty awaits you!

Thanks for reading, happy adventures! 

 To Do's for Prospective Travelers
 
1) Make sure you choose a good room, and get what you want out of your dollars.
2) Bring binoculars
3) Bring swim wear even though it is Alaska, do not miss the T-pool or the hot tubs.
4) Sign up for popular excursions early, they will fill up fast.

Photos taken with a Canon Powershot SD750.  All rights reserved.
Our travel agent: Vera Lee, Cruise Holidays of West Vancouver, 604.921.3393