20260909 Wednesday, September 9, 2026- Princess Denali to Whittier Train Ride, Embarkation Island Princess
We were up at 5 a.m. today to put away our toothbrush bag and chargers into our suitcases and had them outside the door for pick-up at 6 a.m. Then it was off to Fannie Q’s for breakfast.
Breakfast at Fannie Q’s was a pleasant experience. The quality of the food was typical of a diner like the Black Bear Diner or Totem Diner. We split a Carnivore Scramble which was scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and chunks of reindeer sausage, served with country potatoes and a biscuit with a side of a split reindeer sausage. We also split a fruit bowl.
The reindeer sausage tasted like venison sausage with a hint of spiciness. In retrospect, having the split reindeer sausage along side the cut up chunks inside the scramble was perhaps a bit more reindeer than necessary, but that’s why they called it the Carnivore. Although Janet felt that the food wasn’t hot enough when it came out, it was tasty and well prepared. The fruit was at peak freshness and ripeness. And the coffee was bottomless. With a tip, the bill was $37.
There were 500 Princess Denali Lodge guests scheduled to board the Princess Denali Wilderness Train for the ride from the Princess Denali Lodge to the Island Princess, which was docked at Whittier. The train ride is about 10 hours long, but we have been assured that the Island Princess will not leave without us.
Princess was pretty efficient about transferring guests from the lodge to the Denali Rail Depot, just inside the National Park, by nice tour coaches. We all had assigned cars and seats within the train, and each car had a designated holding area for its passengers clearly marked with huge flags.
The Princess Denali Wilderness Train is equipped with dome observation cars just like those used by the Rocky Mountaineer Gold Leaf service. The decor was a little more upscale, but the seats were a little simpler, without power leg rests or reclining. There was a small airplane-style drop-down seatback tray table and a small net pocket below that. There were two 120V AC outlets and 2 USB-A charger outlets between the seats in front of us.
Service was similar to the Rocky Mountaineer with an in-car bar tender and tour guide/hostess for the car. Drinks, snacks, and meals were all available for a charge, and they did multiple seatings for breakfast and lunch service. They did seat people 4 to a table whether they were traveling together or not to make the most efficient use of the dining space. Table service was fast casual rather than fine dining, but cloth napkins were provided. We ended up having a late lunch with a Cuban sandwich on sourdough with fries and Salmon Chowder. Both were fast casual quality. That lunch was $40 without drinks other than tap water.
The views from the car were nice, but the day started off with rain and dense low-level clouds. The route the train takes does afford decent views of the countryside for the most part, but there are plenty of areas where trees growing up alongside the tracks do obscure the views. These trees flying by in front of distant objects or potential animal sightings made focusing camera lenses difficult, and glare from the inside of the dome car glass also hampered photography. The UV-blocking film at the top of the car also degraded image quality severely, like shooting through ground glass. This trip is best appreciated through live human eyes, and can't be captured with photos or video. It's best simply to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
There is an observation platform just like on the Rocky Mountaineer, but it is not an ideal photographic platform because of the severe motion of the train and also because brush and trees along the track very often obscure the scenery more than from the dome car windows which are situated about 10’ higher in elevation. But it does offer a way to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of being on the rails.
We did actually get a glimpse of the base and summit of Denali in the far distance (about 100 miles from the track) when the clouds opened very briefly in the track section where a view is possible. The middle portion of the mountain between the summit and lower slopes was covered by a band of clouds, but our guide said only about 30% of guests who come to Denali National Park actually get to see the mountain itself, especially this late in the season due to weather conditions and a distinct propensity of the mountain to generate its own weather systems.
For much of the trip, there were high hopes for spotting moose with the vast stretches of forest and tundra dotted with innumerable lakes in the canyon, but alas, no moose were spotted. All of the wildlife spotting occurred in the last hour of the ride as the train ran alongside the Chugach mountains. There was a spotting of a black bear walking up a hillside away from the train as it sped past, and then very shortly after that, we could see several Dall’s sheep way up high on a rocky cliff face at least a half mile away.
With the train speeding along, and with the limitations imposed by the glass viewing dome, it was nearly impossible to get photos. Then as the train went alongside Turnagain Arm, we saw several Beluga whales feeding at the delta of a creek draining into the sound. These are seen as flashes of grey and white on the water’s surface with minimal splashing or spouts because Beluga whales don’t have dorsal fins, and don’t often breach or do other behaviors that make their presence conspicuous like with humpback or orca whales. We did see a couple of separate pairs of trumpeter swans on a couple of the lakes we passed, and some sandhill cranes on the mudflats a quite a distance, again at Turnagain Arm.
The train made a couple of very brief limited stops to allow trains to pass and to change some of the train staff. There doesn’t seem to be much commercial freight traffic on this rail line and our particular train seemed to get preferential right of way because it had a tight schedule to maintain to get us boarded on the ship before too late.
The train did go through two long tunnels. The tunnel heading into Whittier also doubles as a tunnel for vehicular traffic, which is only a single lane. A signal system separates vehicle and train traffic and there are designated openings about every half hour for traffic going either into or out of Whittier.
It is interesting that the train goes literally right up to the dock where the Island Princess was docked. There is also a second dock on the opposite side of the bay. This new dock was built by Norwegian Cruise lines in conjunction with Hoonah Totem Corporation. Six days after we departed from Whittier, this dock was destroyed by a fire.
Disembarkation from the train and embarkation onto the boat was pretty smooth, but did involve a long, snaking, but moving line through TSA-styled security. Dock agents had boarded the train in Anchorage and worked through all the passengers on the train to collect scans of their passports and distribute medallions, which are the boarding passes and stateroom keys on the ship.
Our luggage was already in our room. We booked an obstructed-view stateroom but were pleasantly surprised to find we had a nice, non-obstructed window. This was the first time we have booked a stateroom on the Fiesta deck, which on the Island Princess is on the same deck as the Explorer’s Lounge, casino, and some of the shops. The fitness center is aft, and our stateroom is situated in a hallway immediately adjacent to the entrance to the fitness center, public restrooms, Explorer's lounge secret back entry and aft elevator lobby.
The Island Princess was remodeled at some point, replacing the aft Vista Lounge with additional staterooms, so the Explorer’s Lounge is the only entertainment venue in the aft part of the ship. The Lotus Spa is also located on the Lido deck between the enclosed pool and the aft elevator banks.
Our stateroom location should be very convenient for activities in the Explorer’s Lounge, but at least some of the trivia events are at the Wheelhouse bar one deck up and all the way forward on the ship. One downside is the back door to the Explorer’s Lounge opens into the aft elevator lobby, so sounds of music from the Explorer’s Lounge do make it into our hallway and room, although faintly. The buffet is also situated in the bow of this ship.
After doing our mandatory muster station check-in, we looked in at the Princess theater where an illusionist was doing one of those mentalist shows where he seems to be able to read people’s minds. It is baffling to see one of these shows for the first time, and you can never figure out how it is they do what they do, but we’ve seen these acts enough to move onto the buffet to get dinner. Fortunately, he was just starting a bit where a volunteer was taping poker chips over his eyes so he could not see what she was about to write on a piece of paper. Once his eyes were covered, we bolted out of the theater.
The Island Princess has a much smaller buffet than the Royal Class ships, but there was plenty of variety of dishes and cuisines to choose from. We weren’t particularly hungry because we had a late lunch on the train, but grabbed dinner and finished unpacking and getting laundry ready to go out first thing in the morning before calling it an early night.
Tomorrow, we will be arriving at Hubbard Glacier. We hope to see some glacier calving again, like we did 2 years ago when we visited it on the Viking Orion.
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