It's off to Alaska!

 

By the time you read this, I should be home from my cruise.  We flew out to San Francisco from New York, then spent 3 days there until the cruise started.  I expected a different experience than when I took my first cruise to Alaska on this line almost 30 years ago.  Then, I was still filled with grief, having lost my wife the year before.  Now, I'm with a partner with whom I expect to spend the rest of my days.

Over the next few days, I plan to journal my daily activities.  Unfortunately, I could not take this trip as Marian for several reasons, the most important of which is that my feminine wardrobe is not geared for Alaska's climate. And now, with the Orange Snowflake in power, I would not feel safe going through any TSA/CBP checkpoints as Marian.  We now have a repressive political regime in power these days, and I don't want to be caught in its crosshairs while it's in power.

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Assuming one is interested in an Alaska cruise, one has several decisions to make when choosing a cruise itinerary, a cruise line, and a cruise ship.  Since I am very comfortable with Princess Cruises, it was topmost of the 3 lines allowed to sail into Glacier Bay:

• Princess
• Holland America
• Norwegian

Other cruise lines are allowed to cruise these areas for glacier viewing:

• Endicott Arm
• Hubbard Glacier
• Tracy Arm 

I had several port requirements:

• The cruise must make port in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway.  
• The cruise must spend a full day in each Alaska port. 
• The cruise must make port as close to the Alaskan town as possible.
  (This ruled out Norwegian, which makes port at Ward Cove, 6 miles outside of Ketchikan.)

These requirements limited me to choosing a Princess cruise sailing out of San Francisco. Unlike my last Princess Alaskan Cruise package from this port, they did not have me stay at an airport hotel.  Instead, they booked me into the Mark Hopkins in the heart of San Francisco.  It's one of San Francisco's more well known places to stay with prices to match.  But then, this is a "Bucket List" type vacation and I feel that Princess now wants to make sure that people feel they are getting something special when they book their Alaskan cruise.

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San Francisco will always be a special place for me.  My late wife always wanted to live there, but couldn't do so.  After visiting the place once, I wished I could live there.  But life made other plans for me.  It's just as well, as San Francisco lost much of its vibrancy with the Covid pandemic.  Businesses left town, and storefronts were shuttered.  It has yet to recover, and I doubt it will in my lifetime.

On my last visit to San Francisco with RQS, we visited the Japanese Tea Garden, the Musee Mechanique, and had a meal at the Swan Oyster Depot.  With 3 days in town, our choices have expanded, and I will document them in later posts.  Needless to say, we knew where to feast..... 

 

Global Entry / Pre Check

 

A while back, I posted an entry which commented on a couple of options I was considering for a Hawaii cruise, and then mentioning my choice of Global Entry for TSA Trusted Traveler status.  Well, I dropped the hammer on a deal, and I should be saying "Aloha" to Hawaii sometime within the next 12-14 months.  Additionally, I have started the process of getting my Trusted Traveler number, so that I can get past airport security with as few hassles as possibles.  And therein lies a problem for many that I wish our government would resolve.

TSA Pre Check provides 99.9% of the benefits I would want when going to the airport.  Given that most of my airport experiences will be domestic in nature, I could save $15 by using this option.  Since this program is "designed" to pay for itself, there are many more places one can perform the in-person interview than available for Global entry.  Because of its supposed self funding, Pre Check interviews didn't stop during government shutdowns.   However, Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that is not meant to be self funding, its interviews were halted during government shutdowns. Yet, this is not the big problem I have.  They do not have enough available interview slots to handle the demand for this variant of Trusted Traveler certification.

In the above image, I have captured a list of Global Entry interview sites that have at least one slot open between January 15, 2022 through June 30, 2022.  Doesn't seem like much....  If the government had been smart, it would have treated Global Entry in the same way as it does Pre Check.  If anything, it would have been wise to combine the two programs, and do what is necessary to process as many people as possible, collect as much money as possible, and benefit both domestic and international travelers as much as possible.  Instead, I had to wait until June for an appointment at Newark airport.

If I change the filter to select sites that have at least 2 slots open, the list shrinks even further.  No wonder why people are upset at government. 

At least, I now have an appointment.  And I expect that I'll be taking a day off for this interview.  It could be much worse - it could be jury duty in Downtown Manhattan during the summer....

 

 

 

PS: They opened up a month's worth of extra appointment slots in NYC. (See above.)  So now, I have an earlier appointment (in May) at a place easier for me to get to (Bowling Green).

PPS: A spot opened up for 9:00 am this morning at JFK.  If it weren't for the snow, I might have gone for it.