Michael Jahncke

Age: 13
Occupation: Student
Number of Cruises: first one
Cruise Line: Celebrity Cruises
Ship: Summit
Sailing Date: July 19th, 2002
Itinerary: Alaska

This may be a lengthy review for a thirteen year old, but here it goes:

We heard of doing an Alaskan cruise from my uncle as a family reunion for the summer. We thought it was a great idea.

Getting there:
We flew into Seattle on Northwest Airlines (we would've flown Delta, but we live around Detroit so it's logical). We flew on an Airbus A320 which was very roomy and the flight was 4 to 5 hours (it wasn't that bad).

Staying:
We drove up from Seattle to Vancouver because I wanted to show my mom and my sister Seattle. The drive from Seattle to Vancouver was fairly long, but the scenery made up for it big time. It made me and my sister think if this is what we are going to experience on the cruise for most of the time is this lush, beautiful scenery which I cannot imagine being any greener than it really was. We got to Vancouver and spent the night at a Westin Hotel. We had a nice time there. (We really enjoyed catching up on our jetlag in those 'heavenly beds'.)

The day of departure :
I woke up with my dad and had breakfast after getting up. When I went back to our room I decided to call my friend who was taking care of my parakeet at the time just to check if Eddy (my parakeet) was doing fine. We headed up to the cruise port and waited to board our cruise (just like the airport only without the noise). We got on board and had lunch on board, and me as a teenager that I can eat to my heart's content, decided to fill my plate with food. We met up with our relatives and explored the ship together and headed to our cabins planning our little pranks to pull on each other (it runs in the family). I met up with my cousin Craig whose around my age and hung out with each other. We explored the ship as normal and bumped up into our cousin Chris from Dallas. We told him where everyone was and headed there. Then off we went with me realizing that they had an arcade on board.

The first night
You've heard the term 'love at first sight' ? Well the first night I fell in love with a French teenage girl (you think this is for high school but it really isn't) we looked at each other then I realized she was from France meaning if I truly fell in love with her we'd have to do a trans-atlantic flight just to meet each other. When I went to bed I had a lot of thoughts on my mind such as: the next day, Eddy, my dog Lily (which we justy recently adopted and is a wonderful member of our family) and my friends back in Detroit.

The first port of call
We first stopped in Ketchikan, Alaska. Ketchikan is a nice little town with a lot of tourism included. the women shopped as usual as me, my dad, and my boy cousins tried out the food. We found a place that sells a hot sauce that's named "Screaming Santa". The clerk gave out samples and thought I wasn't man enough to try it. Enthusiastically I dared her to try me and she had her jaw dropped when the second to hottest didn't even burn my mouth. We headed back to the ship and had lunch.

The Food:
I thought the food was great and it always put me in a good mood. The desserts were excellent overall.

The Entertainment:
The entertainment was okay. there were some things that were funny and/or good. There were some things that were horrible and some things were just plain weird. They had a little movie theater onboard that showed some very good movies like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or "Lord of the Rings".

The last night:
The last night I was busy saying goodbye to all the friends I made whether it was a Jamaican cook or an Asian cook or just teens my age. The last night I also thought that i might never see this beautiful landscape ever again.

The last port of call
The last port of call was Valdez which I didn't go to but according to my dad's words he said it was small enough to make a place like Smallvile look like a metropolis the size of the Big Apple.

The next day
The next day was full of tears because we said goodbye to some of my relatives I never knew I had (or barely remembered which the last time I saw them was when I was in diapers) and I probably wouldn't ever see again (whether or not they lived all the way in Los Angeles). That day we got off in Seward and drove up to Anchorage for our flight home. The drive was 4 hours, once again it was a beautiful drive. We got to Anchorage which seemed like a district of a city instead of a city itself. My sister stated that a city is not a city if you see a student driver driving around (she saw five of them in Atlanta). We got to the Airport and boarded our flight back home to Detroit onboard a Boeing 757. We requested window seats, but we didn't get any (should've flown Delta even if it meant we had to fly all the way down to Atlanta). The flight was 5 hours long overnight and I went crazy without a window seat. So I'd recommend to get a window seat because you might never see this place again.

Ups:
Great food
Friendly staff
Good entertainment
Nice terrain

Downs:
The weather wasn't that great
The captain was very rude the arcade games cost a dollar each

Overall:
I might not want to go on another Alaskan cruise again, next time I'm doing the Caribbean.

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