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Friday, November 14, 2025

Ruby Princess - Alaska Inside Passage Cruise Review (08/11/25 - 08/22/25)



(Ruby Princess - Courtesy of Wikipedia)


The Ruby Princess is a 17 year old ship in Princess Cruises' fleet, refurbished in 2018. It was the last of the 3 Crown Class ships built for Princess Cruises. According to Wikipedia, it gained notoriety as being the source of over 10% of Australia's early Covid-19 cases.

There are many options one has to choose from to determine which Alaskan cruise is right for you. A prior blog post describes all the important options offered by the major cruise lines, and gives an idea of what we had to wade through to select this cruise on the Ruby Princess.

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My partner and I flew from NYC to San Francisco for a 3-night stay before embarking on the cruise. These were our invoiced expenses before shore excursions:


When we booked this cruise, we planned a mini vacation in San Francisco before embarking on the cruise. A benefit of this itinerary was that we had full days in Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway, coupled with a scheduled period of cruising through Glacier Bay. We would not "Hot Dock" at any American port, nor would we make a meaningless night time 3-hour Canadian port stop to comply with America's Passenger Vessel Services Act. Instead, our ship would make make port in Prince Rupert, BC, to comply with the requirements of this act.


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Ground Transit:

When we arrived at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), we proceeded to the luggage claim area where a representative from Princess greeted us. She helped us with our luggage, then proceeded to summon a Yellow Cab (Princess has a transit arrangement with the firm) to take us from the airport to the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill.

Post cruise transportation is a little simpler. If one buys the post cruise airport transfer package, one's luggage tags are associated with the transfer. Once a person and bags clear the disembarkation process, the cruiser will take his/her bags to the airport transfer bus, and they will be made available at the appropriate airport terminal.

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Hotel:



Princess uses the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel for pre-cruise hotel stays. It is an excellent hotel, and I would gladly stay there again if booking my next cruise, flights and hotel stay through Princess. Both my partner and I were impressed by the hotel's elegance, as well as the feeling of comfort one gets the minute one enters the property.

There is one important drawback to this property, as well as the other "Big Name" hotel (the Fairmont) found at the top of Nob Hill - there are no convenient stores nearby where one can pick up some inexpensive snacks, nor is there a place where one can dine inexpensively. For snacks and dining, we ended up using San Francisco's mass transit system to reach other parts of the city for these purposes.

One thing of note: The Princess representative who met us at the airport told us that for this cruise, very few people were arranging pre-cruise stays via Princess. We were the only people she would be meeting until the day of the cruise. (Alaska and Mexico cruises are popular among Californians, and they often fly into port cities on the day of the cruise. I might be doing the same, if we had California's weather on the East Coast.)

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Embarkation:


Last year, on our Norwegian Fjord Cruise, our Princess Medallions were waiting for us at the Southampton cruise terminal. This year, they were delivered to us 10 days before our cruise. (Sadly, Princess Plus and Princess Premier fares will no longer include free medallion shipping as of 2026, so we will need to pay extra to be on the Green/Express Lane for Embarkation for next year's cruises.) Given our cruise history, we weren't sure of what to expect in San Francisco.

Arriving at the San Francisco Cruise terminal, we encountered a long line in front of the terminal building for people waiting to drop off their bags with the porters on duty. This process is more orderly than that in the Manhattan and Brooklyn Cruise Terminals, and yet takes more time. Once one's bags are dropped off, one has to walk a distance to get on a second line to enter the terminal itself. Although the line moved tolerably quickly, it was not as an intuitive process as it could have been. (I would have liked to see an unbroken line from the point where one reached the terminal, to the porters, then to check in, and finally onto the ship.) Yet, these lines moved tolerably quickly, and we were on the ship in less than an hour.

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Stateroom:


We chose a full sized balcony cabin for this cruise, as we wanted to see as much scenery as possible while sailing through Alaska's inside passage. Although this picture doesn't show it, there was more than enough space in the cabin to store our stuff, and the bathroom was more than adequate for our purposes. However, there was one important thing of note: the placement of electrical outlets. There were 2 North American outlets next to each other by the desk, another in a corner where a TV must have been placed before a cabin refresh, and one in the bathroom. However, there were NO European outlets for those who might need them.

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Itinerary:


This is one of two itineraries the Ruby Princess sailed during the 2025 Alaskan cruise season. The other itinerary sailed by the Ruby princess substitutes Sitka, AK and Victoria, BC. for the Prince Rupert, BC port stop, and Endicott Arm for Glacier Bay sailing. On this cruise, they had a naturalist giving enrichment presentations on the things we should expect to see on this cruise. Although the presentations were a little dry, they helped to put Alaska into context for those cruising here for the first time.

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Port Stops:

Skagway, AK


The town of Skagway is noted for being the home to the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad. Most shore excursions at this port involve the popular 2½ trip to White Pass and back and other Klondike Gold Rush related venues and activities. Although we could have purchased our trip on the railroad directly from the White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&YR), we chose the safety of purchasing it through the cruise line, because of the guarantee that the ship will wait for excursions purchased through the cruise line.

Why was purchasing this excursion through the cruise line important to me? The answer lies in the history of one trip sold through the cruise in 2024, when landslides covered both the tracks of the WP&YR and the single road that connects Skagway to the rest of North America, stranding passengers on one shore excursion. Cruise ships arranged for buses to deliver the stranded cruisers to Haines, AK, 6+ hours away by bus, where they would be picked up by their respective cruise ships. Knowing this bit of history reminded me that Alaska is still an untamed land, and that a smart cruiser should embrace that while cruising the Inside Passage.

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Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, AK


This is one of the more unusual destinations I've been to on a cruise, as one can not get off the ship for a shore excursion. The destination is the excursion, and one does not get off the ship to enjoy it. Princess has a naturalist on board who gives enrichment presentations on Alaska, the most notable for us was the talk on glaciers. This talk helped us appreciate Glacier Bay more than if we had never attended the presentation.

Upon entering the park, a Park Ranger from the US Parks Service come onboard to give additional lectures about the park. This would be more informative than the naturalist provided by Princess. Assuming one sails into Glacier Bay, we highly recommend attending these lectures.

One will see several glaciers while cruising through this park, while park rangers explain what people are seeing and what they should be looking out for. The one drawback is that we could find no audio channel on the ship's TV system to listen to the presentation from the comfort of our cabin. However, it wasn't hard for us to find a place to sit in a warm lounge and listen to the rangers' presentation while sailing by the glaciers.

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Juneau, AK


This city is Alaska's capital, and is not accessible from the North American mainland, unless one is traveling by air or sea. The main tourist attractions in this city are the Mount Roberts tram, and the Mendenhall glacier, which we visited using an excursion not sold by the cruise line.

Shore excursions not sold by the cruise line must either be purchased in advance from vendors such as viator.com and shoreexcursionsgroup.com (the latter being our choice for this excursion), or from independent vendors selling their excursions in the center of the tourist district. All piers are within a short walk of this district, whose center is the tram that takes tourists to the top of Mount Roberts. Like many ports on the Inside Passage, there are stations nearby where independent vendors sell shore excursions to frugal travelers.


On our visit to Juneau, it was raining, and there was no dry place to sit and wait for our independent excursion. We got a little confused, as we were directed to a waiting area not large enough for the people waiting for our excursion (and others taking place that day), with our bus coming late to the assembly point. Once on the bus, it was smooth sailing. We were delivered to Mendenhall Glacier park, where we took photos of the glacier and killed time in the visitors center to keep dry. Would we take this excursion again? Maybe. But I'd consider looking into ways to purchase it on the day of arrival, so that one doesn't have to go out in the rain.

One of the highly recommended things to do in Juneau is to have a meal at Tracy's King Crab Shack. We did just that, and enjoyed feasting on fresh Snow Crab Legs. Although this place is expensive by "Lower 48" standards, it is worth the visit - if one can wait on line to get into this crowded, informal restaurant. Word of note: be prepared with a hefty appetite!

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Ketchikan, AK


This city is the Southernmost major settlement on the inside passage. Like Juneau, it is only accessible by air and sea. With the exception of glacier related excursions, it may have the widest variety of things one can do in the Inside Passage. We chose the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, a pleasant diversion where 2 teams of 2 lumberjacks have a friendly competition using their timber sports skills.

Once we left the lumberjack show, we walked to Creek Street, where we visited Miss Dolly's, a former bordello in the heart of Ketchikan's once red light district. After prostitution was banned in Alaska in the 1950's, Dolly lived in the house for the rest of her life, with the proviso that her house be turned into a museum. Many houses on Creek street once housed "loose women", the true female pioneers of Alaska.

When the Salmon run takes takes place in July and August, one can view these fish rushing upstream to spawn from viewing platforms on Creek Street. However, by the time we got here, the salmon run had ended and all we could see were the remains of some dead salmon in the creek.

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Prince Rupert, BC


In other blogs, this quiet little town has been called one of the most boring ports in the world. I won't go that far, but it is one of the most quiet ports that I've visited. If one hasn't arranged a shore excursion via the cruise line, one will not find the usual groups of independent excursion vendors near the pier, nor will one likely see any excursions offered by viator.com and shoreexcursionsgroup.com.

There are a couple of museums near the cruise terminal, the most notable is the Museum of Northern British Columbia. If one needs to pick up some snacks at a reasonable price, there is a supermarket a little bit beyond the museum on West 1st Avenue. A little beyond that is a mall, where my travel partner had to replace her lost cane.

Luckily, Prince Rupert is not yet a major Northwest Pacific tourist town. The streets are not lined with jewelry stores, souvenir stores, or restaurants. It, for now, remains a pleasant place where one can get off the ship, walk a little, take care of some basic needs, and return to the ship with one's wallet intact.  Sometimes, that's all what one wants from a port of call.

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Return to San Francisco


Like any cruise, returning to a ship's home port is almost always a sad affair. In our case, we didn't plan to be awake as the ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, as there would be nothing to see except for fog. And we saw a lot of that fog as we sailed into port.

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Entertainment:

Unlike most of our cruises, we didn't go to the entertainment venues that often. The first time we went to the ship's theater, we were unimpressed by the show "Colors of the World." This was a show designed to combine songs from around the world into a single setting. Unfortunately, the only songs I liked from this show were the medley of "Somewhere over the rainbow"/"It's a wonderful world", the performance of "Nessun Dorma", and the woman singing Alicia Keys' "New York". To make things cringeworthy for me, the performers ruined "Girl from Ipanema" and "Mas que Nada", both songs I loved from when I was young. The next night, Trenyce performed songs from Diana Ross and Whitney Houston - and she made up for the prior night's mediocre entertainment. This woman captures the sound of both artists and makes each song her own.


Food Venues and Availability:

Buffet:

The first day we ate breakfast in the buffet, we encountered something new: Buffet staff who would find a table for us, and delivered our plates to the table for us. This is an improvement over most buffets, as it helps eliminate the need to hunt for a vacant table while holding food, and it helps prevent people from bumping into each other with overflowing plates of food.

Breakfast selections were decent. My travel partner noted that the breakfast sausage was among the best she had on a cruise ship. As for me, it was as good as the sausage I usually have at home. Lunch selections were also plentiful. However, there wasn't as much variety as I've found on Princess's larger ships. Given that I prefer sit-down dining with wait staff, I tried to avoid the buffet, except when I wanted to get something to eat "right now!"

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Room Service  (Balcony Breakfast for Two):


On our last "Bucket List" cruise to the Norwegian Fjords, our travel agent treated us to Breakfast for Two in our cabin. It was delicious, and he did it again on this cruise.

Looking at the base menu above, it comes with sparkling wine, pastries, smoked salmon, fruits, berries, and a crab quiche. Yum! Of course, we've also asked for tea and coffee with the meal.

We were called early on the second day of our cruise to find out when this breakfast should be served, and we said 10 am the next day. Unfortunately, on the next day, we had to call to find out where our meal was, as it was over 30 minutes late. When the meal arrived, the server apologized, saying that he had awakened late this morning.

Our meal was pleasant, but not everything was top notch. The crab quiche was lackluster, and lacked flavor. However, the pastries, fruits and smoked salmon were good, and they were the best part of our meal. (We saved the sparkling wine for later.) Given that the crab quiche was the one thing we couldn't get at the buffet, we're not sure whether the package was worth the $55 charge on this cruise.

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Main Dining Room (Botticelli):

We planned to have occasional breakfasts and lunches, as well as 8 of our dinners in this dining room. On the first afternoon of the cruise, we made our way to the dining room for a pleasant, non descript lunch. It's not fair to judge a dining room by a first day seating, so I will only mention that the Orange Souffle is offered only on the first day of the cruise, and it is well worth ordering.

On the first night of the cruise, we were seated at a shared table with another couple. (I highly recommend being seated at shared tables if one likes the opportunity to converse with people of different backgrounds.) Our waiter, Marco, was both very professional and very entertaining - a pleasant oxymoron when dining. We made sure to try to sit at one of the shared tables to which he was assigned. This made our dining experience more pleasant, as we had a continuing group of new people to talk with, along with professional service that didn't miss a beat.

Breakfasts and lunches in this dining room were not up to the same standard as our dinners. This is not a complaint against Botticelli staff. Instead, the varying wait staff at our breakfasts and lunches never had the chance to become familiar with our preferences, as the single group wait staff group who served us our dinners. The food served is of the same quality as that served for dinner, and we preferred eating at this restaurant than going to the buffet.

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Crab Shack (A Pop-Up Specialty Restaurant in Crown Grill - Extra Charge):


 
(A cloth apron/bib to prevent clothing stains)




This restaurant within a restaurant pops up only on sea days. Usually sited in the Crown Grill, the Crab Shack is well worth the $55 (plus gratuities) charged for this meal. (Note: Crab Shack is NOT included in the 2 specialty meals that are part of the Princess Plus or Premier packages.)

My word of advice: Go to Crab Shack hungry!

We started with the clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. It was tasty, but I've had better chowder on other Princess ships. Next came the main course - I found that the (chilled) Seafood Bucket for Two that we ordered is enough to feed an army. Neither of us could finish off the bucket. This was the best part of our meal, as the Crab Shack exceeded my taste expectations for this course. Finally came dessert. I had the strawberry shortcake, while my partner had the key lime pie. Both were good, but not up to the high standard set by the seafood bucket.

The question for many: Is Crab Shack worth $55 (plus gratuities)? In my case, given what we had at Tracy's King Crab Shack in Juneau, the answer would be: Yes!

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Sabbatini's (Specialty Restaurant - Extra Charge):




Sabbatini's is the Italian specialty restaurant found on almost all of Princess's ships. There are only two specialty restaurants on the Ruby Princess, and we decided to visit this restaurant first. Assuming one has ordered the Prix-Fixe dinner, one will choose from among five courses. Of these courses, I recommend the Ribolillita (Soup), the Seafood Stew, the Spaghetti and Meatball, and the Osso Buco. (All the desserts are delicious, so I can't recommend a favorite.) Service was very good, and I would go back to this place again if I had more specialty dinners on my meal plan.

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Crown Grill (Specialty Restaurant - Extra Charge):



I've been to the Crown Grill on other ships, and was never disappointed. I ordered the Veal Chop, and my partner ordered the lobster. Both were excellent, as was the service. Unlike some of our prior cruises, we only had to wait a minute before we were shown to our table. From there, things only got better. The "Black and Blue" Onion Soup was very tasty, and the Veal Chop was superb. Beverage service was quick, and we wished we could eat here more often.


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Disembarkation:

This process was relatively straight forward. Both "self-assist" and porter service was available. If one chooses porter service, one would use the luggage tags provided by the cabin attendant and place their suitcases in the hallway the night before disembarkation. On the night before disembarkation, one is expected to have their porter service bags in the hallway between 5 & 10 pm.

The morning that the ship arrived back in San Francisco, self-assist passengers may leave the ship as soon as the ship is cleared by US Customs. All other passengers are expected to go to the assembly points associated with their luggage tags by 7:30 am to wait until they are told they can leave the ship. Once called, passengers leave the ship one last time and proceed into the terminal towards baggage claim area.

Given that we had cruise line arranged airport transfers, our departure group was called immediately following the groups going on post-cruise excursions. Since our flight would leave SFO around 1 pm, we would not be able to choose any post-cruise time in San Francisco. This is just as well, as we left for the airport after rush hour, and before the freeway got crowded with Friday afternoon traffic.

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Miscellaneous:

Princess offers a wide variety of shore excursions to its cruisers. We chose the 2½ hour trip from Skagway to White Pass and back, and the Lumberjack show in Ketchikan. (We used another vendor for our trip to the Mendenhall Glacier when in Juneau.)

Those people who choose the Princess Premier fare have a nice perk - they can download all of their Princess photos for free, and get up to 3 8"X10" prints for free. Word of warning for those choosing this option: Princess uses facial recognition to associate a photo with a cruiser. If one doesn't see their photos available for download, one must go to the photo store to get one's face rescanned, so that they can associate one's pictures with one's account.

As of the time I wrote this post, the Princess Premier fare was an extra $100 per day. It now includes unlimited casual and specialty restaurant meals, as well as unlimited beverages. Instead of getting unlimited specialty desserts and exercise classes, one gets cruise credit to use on shore excursions sold by the cruise line. It is still a good value. It's just a different value proposition from the package I booked in 2024.

Transfers from airport to hotel, hotel to ship, and ship to airport were organized well. If I do this (or a similar) cruise again, I will let Princess handle the logistics, as it is way too easy to make costly errors with transit in San Francisco.

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Conclusions:

This vacation was good value for the money. Each of us spent around $5,300 for this vacation, inclusive of shore excursions and incidentals. Choosing a balcony cabin is a must for this cruise, as one must be able to enjoy viewing the landscape and wildlife while cruising the Inside Passage.

We chose the Princess Premier fare to avoid feeling nickel-dimed while on the cruise. Although neither of us are heavy drinkers, we felt that we got our money's worth from the included drink package in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. There are few things better than glacier watching with a mug of Hot Chocolate fortified with Bailey's.  This package (when we bought it) provided "unlimited" adult beverages, unlimited soft drinks, 2 meals at the ship's specialty restaurants, unlimited specialty desserts, 3 photo prints (with unlimited photo downloads), exercise classes, and having our medallions shipped to us before the cruise.

Shore excursions offered by the line were reasonably priced in comparison to independent vendors. Additionally, Princess offered some excursions in Prince Rupert, BC, a place where we found no independent excursions.

As much as I enjoyed this trip, I felt there was something missing - Alaskan wildlife. When I took an Alaska cruise in 1997, I didn't pay attention to the wildlife that makes Alaska so great. This year, I was looking for salmon runs in Ketchikan that were already over.  But we did see sea otters near the ship as we cruised Glacier Bay, a larger Mendenhall glacier than I remembered seeing in photos, and awe inspiring views from the passenger car on the White Pass & Yukon Route. Don't go to Alaska expecting to be awe struck by everything one sees. Instead, look for the subtle things that still make an Alaskan cruise great, and you won't be disappointed.


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Port Guides for Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan:

Skagway







Juneau





Ketchikan




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Miscellaneous Menus:

Please note that Princess doesn't make a downloadable print version of the menus available to cruisers. (I have sent an email to Princess, hoping this gets changed in the future.) As a result, my photos are distorted and can not do justice to what was on the printed page each day.


Day 1




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Day 10



Day 11


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