Round up granny, grandpa and the cousins and head for the Last Frontier, Princess Cruises has announced a 12-night cruisetour option geared to families (who don’t mind taking the kids out of school to do it!), with five departures offered in May, 2012. The cruisetours include family-fun stuff to do, from a sternwheeler boat ride to panning for gold.

“This is really the ultimate family vacation,” said Charlie Ball, president of Princess Tours. “Alaska is a wonderful travel destination with kids, so we wanted to make it easy and affordable to plan the perfect Alaska experience for everyone in the family.”

The cruisetour includes a seven-night Voyage of the Glaciers cruise plus a five-night land tour featuring one night at Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, one night at Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge and two nights at Fairbanks Princess Riverside Lodge. On sea days, families can also take advantage of Princess’ onboard programs geared to children, including a special Junior Ranger program in Glacier Bay National Park.

In addition, special tour extras included in the fare are daily breakfast, Riverboat Cruise and El Dorado Goldmine Tour (from Fairbanks, travel on an authentic sternwheeler for a fully-narrated cruise along the Chena River and try gold panning), ”Direct-to-the-Wilderness Rail Service with Lunch” (gets families to wilderness lodge faster), Denali Natural History Tour (intimate tour of Denali National Park), and a visit to the Alaska Wildlife Center.

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Research shows that most people planning a trip to Alaska want to see two places: Glacier Bay National Park and Denali National Park. You can get to Glacier Bay aboard a cruise ship and admire the national park’s stunning scenery from the comfort of your balcony stateroom. But to get to Denali (a.k.a. Mt. McKinley), you’ll have to get off the ship, lace up your hiking boots, and trek inland. That’s where a cruisetour comes in.

Cruisetours combine a cruise voyage with a fully escorted stay on land. The cruise lines have streamlined their product so that you’ll pay one price in exchange for two vacations: one at sea, and the other on land in the Alaskan interior. You’ll also enjoy two completely different travel experiences. While at sea, you’ll gaze out at glaciers, fjords, and lots of marine life. While in the interior, you’ll see snow-capped mountains (on a clear day, you may want to “fly by” Denali, North America’s tallest peak), wildlife, and what some have called “the real Alaska.” While a cruise offers travelers an excellent taste of Alaska, a cruisetour serves up the complete five-course dinner — the total Alaska experience.

Celebrity Cruises, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, and Royal Caribbean International are all among the major cruise lines offering cruisetours. Each line employs their own tour guides, owns their own fleet of comfortable buses, and operates private glass-domed railcars that hitch up to the Alaska Railroad for the journey between Anchorage and Denali. The rail journey alone is spectacular — on a clear day, you’ll spot Denali’s dome several times from along the rails.

In total, a cruisetour will last anywhere from 10 days to three weeks. That includes the cruise portion of your trip, and you can choose to add your land stay either before or after you sail. Some cruisetours include two full days in Denali National Park, allowing you plenty of time to spot grizzly bears and admire the mountain scenery.

Travelers can explore Denali via 90 miles of semi-paved road that reaches deep into the park, or take to the skies and see Denali from an aerial perspective. Along the way, you’ll have the opportunity to stay in back country lodges or mountain chateaus, and you’ll likely spend at least one night in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city.

Some cruise lines offer close to thirty different cruisetour options. With so many variations available, it’s always advisable to speak to your cruise consultant about which option is best for you. Cruisetours also fill up quickly, so plan as far in advance as possible. The greatest number of cruisetour bookings occur in October and November — for the following year’s peak season — but it’s never too late to see what’s available.

Alaska is enormous. At 586,412 square miles, it’s more than twice the size of Texas, and cruise lines skirt only a small portion of the state’s 33,904 combined miles of coastline. For many, the real Alaska lies in the vast wilderness beyond the shorelines — and a cruisetour can take you there.

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Selecting an Alaska cruisetour can be daunting for the uninitiated. With more than 50 cruisetours offered by the major players, how do you sift through the options to find an Alaska cruisetour that’s right for you?  To find out, we sat down with Paul Allen, vice president of sales for Holland America Line.

Q. Why should someone do a cruisetour in Alaska in the first place?

A. We do research all the time asking people what they want to see in Alaska. The two places that get mentioned the most are Glacier Bay National Park and Denali National Park. You can get to Glacier Bay on a cruise ship, but if you want to get to Denali, you have to get on a cruisetour.

Q. How does the cruisetour work? There’s a cruise and then there’s a tour. The cruise ends and what happens next?

A. You can do a cruisetour in one of two ways. You can travel on land and end up on a cruise, or you can travel on a cruise and end up on land. Some of the cruisetours have more cruise content than others. Some cruisetours are combined with seven-day cruises; others are combined with three- or four-day cruises.

Q. With so many cruisetours, isn’t choosing the right one a little daunting? Holland America Line alone offers close to 30 cruisetours, grouped under three types, and each of those are staged in different regions of Alaska. Some people, me included, don’t even have a good grasp on the geography of Alaska or the distances between destinations.

A. It is daunting, but it’s my mission to educate people about the distinctions and identify what’s important to people. Most want to see mountains, scenery, glaciers and wildlife. These are the most important motivators for most people. There are many opportunities to see these things all across the state.

Q. How do you begin to choose a cruisetour from the ones offered?

A. It really depends on what you want. The avid cruisers may want to go with the seven-day cruise combined with four to six days on land where they either go to Denali National Park, Fairbanks and Anchorage, or get all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. Or maybe they want to go to the Kenai Peninsula or stay at Alyeska Resort, a beautiful chateau property. All of these are possibilities that can be combined with the seven-day cruise.

On the other hand, if you really want to get that comprehensive Great Land experience, fly to Anchorage, go up to Denali, spend a couple of days there, travel to Fairbanks, and then from Fairbanks, go into the Yukon. Then travel down the Yukon 100 miles on our Yukon Queen II to Dawson, which is a great little town.

From Dawson, we’ve just developed excursions to Tombstone Park, which is just beautiful subarctic tundra. This is a chance for a very personal wilderness experience. You could be standing in Tombstone National Park with a dozen people in a backwoods wilderness trail where you’re going to have that ‘I’m surrounded by spectacular scenery and beautiful wilderness experience.’ You don’t always find a way to get that on other itineraries. We’ve provided that at Tombstone, near Dawson, and also at Kluane National Park, near Whitehorse.

You then continue to Skagway, where you board the ship and get a beautiful cruise into Glacier Bay, cruise back down the Inside Passage and get off the ship in Vancouver. You’ve hit Denali, Tombstone, the Yukon River, Kluane, Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage: that’s the whole kit and caboodle of Alaska.

Q. What is your favorite cruisetour?

A. The one I just described. It is a great value, and at the same time, it has all those icons in it. It gives you the opportunity to really see the whole Great Land. If you’re the seven-day cruise type, then I recommend the tour all the way to the Arctic Ocean. I had a chance to get up to there last summer and come down the road between Prudhoe Bay and Fairbanks, and it was just spectacular.

Or alternatively, you might take Tour 17 or 18, and that’s when you get off the ship after seven days and spend the night in Seward, then get Kenai Fjords National Park, do a six day marine tour with an incredible amount of wildlife experience. You move from there to Anchorage, spend two days in Denali, and then to Fairbanks.

Q. Why does Holland America Line offer a Double Day in Denali?

A. You need two days. These are natural wonders you are coming to see. You can see the Mona Lisa or the Eiffel Tower just by showing up at the appointed time. To see grizzly bears and spectacular mountain scenery, however, you need to give yourself more time in the right places to maximize your chances of a great view. Time in the right places becomes the most important aspect of your tour. That’s why we offer more time in Denali. That’s also why we take you to other great wilderness locations where we spend a lot of time. You have the chance to see more wildlife and more great scenery.

Q. The McKinley Explorer luxury domed railcars seem so much more appealing than the motorcoach. How many of the tours use motorcoach versus the railcar?

A. All of our tours that go to Denali, which is 28 of 29 of them, have two days of travel on the railcars. The ones that go into the Yukon also include motorcoach travel, and while the motorcoach doesn’t sound nearly as sexy, these are beautiful motorcoaches. And they’re also the only way that you’re going to get to that kind of remote wilderness and to get to a place like Dawson or Whitehorse. So if you’d like to go to Kluane National Park, home to five of the seven tallest mountains in North America, glaciers and spectacular wildlife, the only way you’re going to get there is in a luxury motorcoach.

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Watch out Sarah Palin, Captain Mickey Mouse and the gang are bringing the magic of the 83,000-ton, Disney Wonder to Alaska for the 2011 season.

The Disney Wonder will offer roundtrip Alaska cruises from Vancouver to Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway, and Tracey Arm Fjord before returning to Vancouver.

This is, unquestionably, one of the more anticipated deployments in the cruise industry.  Not necessarily among all cruise aficionados, but certainly among Disneyphiles in general and loyal Disney Cruise Line guests in particular.   With the exception of a handful of West Coast and Europe/Mediterranean departures, Disney Cruise Lines has consistently sailed in the Caribbean and Bahamas since its inaugural cruise in 1998.  There is a tremendous amount of pent up demand for new itineraries, and according to Disney Cruise Line President, Karl Holz, Alaska was Disney’s most requested future cruise destination.  The decision to go to Alaska was based on guest feedback.

The Disney Wonder’s visit to the Land of the Midnight Sun will be a huge boost the State’s tourism industry which has recently been hard hit not only by the economy, but also by recent decisions by some cruise lines to redeploy three ships from Alaska to other destinations.  In 2006, the Alaska Travel Industry Association reported that over 1.6 Million people visited Alaska – 950,000 of them by cruise ship.   According to the Alaska State Department of Commerce, over 1.7 million people visited Alaska in 2008, but only 835,000 by cruise ship.  We don’t have 2009 stats yet, but it is expected that 2010 will show 140,000 fewer cruise passengers as a result of reduction in ships.   Royal Caribbean, Norwegian & Carnival all cite the costs of operating in Alaska and a $50 per person Alaska Cruise Passenger Head Tax implemented by a 2007 referendum as the primary reasons for redeployment.   While one ship doesn’t replace three ships, Disney’s presence will bring some much needed positive attention.

Behind the Caribbean and Europe, Alaska is the third largest cruise market.   People go to Alaska to see thundering glaciers, whales, wilderness, mountains, and wildlife.  They want experience a culture influenced by Native American and Russian history and the turn-of-the-century gold rush.  They want to embark on high adventure excursions like dog sledding, zip-lining, white water rafting, and kayaking.  They want to see bears in the wild, fly over glaciers in a helicopter, ride on a train, hike, go salmon fishing or live the “World’s Deadliest Catch.”  Alaska is one of those “life-long” dream destinations and is listed in the book, “1,000 Place to See before You Die.”   It’s “America’s Last Frontier” and “the Land of Wonder.”   It’s no wonder why Disney would want to cruise there.  Pixar Studios couldn’t create more colorful backdrop of dramatic scenery.

Peter Yesawich of Ypartners.com in Orlando, Florida is an expert in travel marketing.  His company’s studies show an increasing trend in Family Reunion Travel and report that “a special occasion” is one of the top motivators for people to take a vacation.  If this is the case, I predict that Disney Alaska cruises will one of the most popular if not THE MOST POPULAR 50th Anniversary Cruise options in 2011.   Alaska has something for everyone and Disney is the quintessential “multi-generational” cruise line.  This combination will give grandparents, parents, kids, grandkids, young adults, teenagers, and toddlers the opportunity to share in a unique family event where they will all see and do some amazing things and experience a magical vacation they will never forget.

Details regarding Alaska shore excursions, activities, special events and entertainment on the ship have not been announced. It is unknown if Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean will change their name to the Pirates of the Inside Passage.  Stay tuned for more info as we get it.

Disney ships have 10 decks and pay homage to the grand era of the ocean liner, with Art Deco and Art Nouveau themes featuring touches of Disney magic.  They have 877 staterooms and accommodate 1,750 passengers.  Staterooms are configured especially for families – many of which are able to accommodate 4 or 5 guests in one stateroom.  They all have plenty of extra storage and most have scenic ocean views, balconies and split bathrooms to make getting ready for the day or dinner much easier.

Several youth activities and clubs promise age-appropriate fun for kids from 3 months to 17 years old.  There is a multitude of dining options, and Disney’s unique Rotational Dining system offers a fun way to enjoy most of them.  Entertainment includes original Disney Broadway-style musicals and the latest Disney Digital 3-D movies.  Adults get a taste of nightlife with nightclubs and lounges that offer dancing and entertainment.

And, if that was not enough to whet your appetite, Disney currently has two ships under construction at the Meyer Werft Shipyards in Germany.  The two, 122,000-ton ships, Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy, will each have 1,250 staterooms carry 4,000 passengers.  They will be two-decks taller than the Disney Wonder and are scheduled to arrive in 2011 and 2012.

At D23, Disney Cruise Line Presidet Karl Holz kept us in anticipation while speaking about DCL’s amazing Mediterranean and Northern Europe itineraries. Then called on Donald (Fauntleroy) Duck to help unveil Disney Cruise Line’s new destination – a life-size ice sculpture of the word “ALASKA”.  The Disney Wonder will depart Vancouver and visit Ketchikan, Skagway, Juneau, and Tracy Arm Fjord. These are ports of call you’d find on most cruises to Alaska… but the key difference here, is the Disney Magic that sets it apart from the rest.

All this week there have been quite a few unofficial announcements of Disney Cruise Line headed to Alaska – of course none of them from the mouths of Disney Execs and the like. The biggest development prior to the official announcement was last night (09/10/09) from the Vancouver Sun stating “Disney Cruise Lines will introduce departures from Vancouver to Alaska…”.