Hello everyone!

This is a reminder that we are coming up on an important deadline for next year’s Alaskan cruise. After the end of October, our travel agent will not be able to guarantee that he will be able to hold the group reservation (which means if you book after that you may not get some of the group benefits). Additionally, the prices that we have previously quoted will likely be going up. As an example, I’m glad that we locked in out suite reservation when we did, since last week it went up $60.00 per person; it’s a safe bet that other rates will be increasing as well.

We have heard from the following folks that they have booked the cruise (and I apologize if I leave anyone off the list – my memory can be faulty on Monday mornings!) – Duncan, Takaza, Roho, Genet, Plonq, Atara, RB, Rusty, Rasslor, Brophey, Karwood, Sirius, Austin, Foxfeather, and Mbala. People who have expressed interest, but I’m not sure if they have booked yet: Linnaeus and Thomas. There’s plenty of room for anyone who would like to join us, too!

The general details: This is a seven-day cruise from Seward, Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia on the Celebrity Millennium. The cruise departs Seward on Friday, May 27, 2011 and arrive Vancouver on Friday, June 3, 2011. This page has the basic information on the cruise: http://goo.gl/VFf1

You have several options for which kind of room you want, from Interior, to Ocean View (i.e. with a window), to Verandah (i.e. with a balcony), to a suite. Approximate prices are: Suite – $2,024 per person; Verandah – $1,324 per person; Ocean View – $924 per person; Interior – $774 per person. A full breakdown of costs can be found on this spreadsheet: http://goo.gl/xIvr

Dan and I will be in a Sky Suite, specifically Room 6145 on the Penthouse Deck. If you choose a room with any kind of view, make sure that it is on the left (port) side of the ship – since we’re sailing from north to south, this is the side that will always face the shore and therefore have the best views. These are all odd-numbered rooms. While it might be nice to get rooms close together, that’s not really a requirement. We expect that we will be hosting folks in our suite a lot, but otherwise we’ll generally be meeting out in the public areas.

The link above has a lot of useful virtual tours and pictures to give you a good idea of what you’re looking at, but you can also find useful information at these sites:
Google Images room pictures: http://goo.gl/jQv9
YouTube Videos of the ship’s interior: http://goo.gl/r9od
CruiseCritic.com’s stateroom reviews: http://goo.gl/80nQ

For general information about the ship, see CruiseCritic.com’s great collection of reviews, from the all-encompassing main review (http://goo.gl/gpn7) to the hundreds of user-submitted reviews (http://goo.gl/hKch). I would highly recommend reading over their forums as well – there’s a whole lot of really useful information there!

So, you know which stateroom category you want, now what? Well, now you contact the travel agent. Because there’s not much he can do for us outside of the cruise (besides tack his commission onto the price), we are only using the travel agent for booking the cruise. His name is Kevin Grubb, and he’s with Cruise Holidays in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Their website is http://chicagonorth.cruiseholidays.com and their phone number is (888) 744 7397. Kevin is a really nice guy, and great to work with (the fact that he’s a big ol’ queen doesn’t hurt either!). Make sure you say that you are with the Tom Brady/Dan Hauschild group (if we get enough people we can get some nice benefits, like on-board credits, etc.). When you call Kevin, you can talk about the room that you want, and he will be happy to answer your questions and get your reservation set up. Payment is handled this way: a $250.00 deposit is due immediately, and then the balance is due by March 11, 2011. You can pay that in one lump sum an

For the rest of the trip we will be providing the itinerary and booking information, and let folks set things up for themselves. This will include the air travel to Anchorage and return home from Seattle, hotel accommodations in Anchorage, train reservations from Anchorage to Seward, train reservations from Vancouver to Seattle, and hotel accommodations in Seattle. We’ve got plenty of time for this, and we probably won’t start moving on it until December or so. We’ll talk about shore excursions and such at that time as well.

If you have any questions, please let me or Dan know. We hope that you can join us, and we look forward to an awesome vacation!