Well hey everyone! And welcome to Day 4 of our Alaskan Cruise trip!
Yup.
And yeah, still not in Alaska.
I know. But I can promise you this is the LAST non-Alaskan post of this trip. Well, almost I guess. I think we will have one last “traveling home” post at the end. Still though, next post you will get all the 49th state you’ve been Al-asking for.
I know. Shameful, Michelle. Shameful.
But yeah so Day 4 is a sea day, meaning we are just sort of on the ship, out at sea, heading to Alaska. Which makes today a pretty chill kind of day. It also means this post might be a little shorter than normal.
Silver lining though – less reading to get through before we get to Alaska!
So we got that going for us.
Which is nice.
Our “It’s my birthday” 2026 Alaskan Trip – Day 4
Oh man, so we’ve gotten into bizarro territory with the timestamps on my photos. It seems like iOS was having a hard time figuring out where we were. Like this first photo of the day? It says it was taken at 2:47 AM Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time.
Weird, right? It’s like something out of that twilighty show about that zone.
But regardless, I was up early because a bunch of us were heading to the gym to get a workout in before starting the day. But before that…Nickie and I had also put in a room service breakfast order the night before for some croissants and coffee.
And I mean, yeah. Don’t get worried. This is just like pre-breakfast. There’s def more breakfast coming.
You were worried, weren’t you?
Also? Look at all those pills. Sometimes, I think we are actually not that old. But then? Then I see those pills. We have pills now.
We’re pill people.
Annnnyway.
The gym on Discovery Princess is located up there on Deck 17.
Being it was a sea day, the place was pretty busy but I did manage to snag a treadmill. And I mean, its not everyday you get a treadmill with this kind of view.
Sea what I mean?
Being that I am old and my knee is like, “yes, you certainly are” I haven’t really been able to run lately but I did get a 12-3-30 in (12 incline x 3 speed x 30 minutes) though I did have to consult with Google Gemini to figure out a kilometers-to-miles conversion.
AI is the best, innit? Don’t you guys love AI?
…
…
…
Annnnnnyway.
After I was done with that whole bit of torture exhilaration, I met up with the rest of the crew over at the weights and machines. Lookit these specimens.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realize there was a bodybuilder contest on board today.
While us 100% Alpha Men were in the gym, Nickie and Larissa were checking out some of the hot tubs and pools. Which, honestly? They obvs won the morning.
After the gym, I stopped off at the International Café, which is a 24-hour spot that offers pastries, sandwiches, and specialty coffees.
And place is completely complimentary. 24 hours AND complimentary. It was like some sort of Xanadu.
Today, I went in for a Salted Caramel Swirl.
Which was delightful AF. In fact, get yourself prepared for me to say “Salted Caramel Swirl” like a lot more on this blog. It’s not the only thing I get at the International Café, but it’s the thing I get the most I think.
I brought my Salted Caramel Swirl (see? I’ve already said it twice) up to our cabin so I could shower and get ready for the day. But before I jumped in the shower, I checked what was On Demand for some background noise. And I mean.
Jackpot.
Always keep your promises if you want to keep your friends.
IYKYK.
Once showered and ready, I poured the remainder of my Salted Caramel Swirl…
…into my “Juneau Who’s 50” mug I got in my swag bag.
And donned my cozy blanket (also a swag bag exclusive).
And sat out on the balcony, taking in the view for a bit and just like…I don’t know…being grateful? I mean, how lucky are we to be able to do something like this?
Real lucky.
I know Britney. I know.
So yeah now that I have had multiple cups of coffee and pastries, it was finally time for breakfast.
All of us met up at the Ketchikan Dining Room.
See? It says so right on the sign.
The breakfast here started with a member of the waitstaff walking around with a plate of pastries for us to choose from.
I think I went with some sort of cream Danish here?
And I think it was good.
I know. Blogger of the century.
Being that I had already done like 4 whole pages worth of stuff already and had NOT had any alcohol, I ordered a Bloody Mary.
You know what’s fun? Saying “Bloody Mary” with an English accent. It sounds like you’re like fed up with some bird named Mary. Like, “Oh, did she go and spill her bangers and mash all over the telly, innit? Pfft. Bloody Mary.”
Also. I got juice.
What? You wanna know what kind of juice it is? What do I look like? The juice…
…
…
brigade?
Yeah, brigade. That works.
For my main entrée, I went with the Avocado and Smoked Salmon Toast (with poached egg on top).
Which was real good. And not super heavy, which was nice. I also got some pictures of other people’s food too, guys.
Like look. Look at Nickie’s pancakes and sausage with a side of hash brown.
And someone who maybe was Larissa’s omelet I wanna say?
Wait was it Larissa’s? All that bacon is giving Tony. But, I dunno.
Eh I dunno. Could have been either of them. And look, they couldn’t even wait for me to take a picture of it before digging.
Pfft.
Bloody Larissa or Tony.
These timestamps are really messing me up. Because this picture? This picture right here says it was taken at 6:45 AM.
But I know for a fact that is not true. Because I took that picture from the hot tub up on the top deck.
And I know I took it after the gym, after I had breakfast, after I had gone back to the cabin and gotten my bathing suit on, and after I had ordered a drink of the day, which may have been an Ultimate Cooler that day (Vodka, Watermelon, Passion Fruit, and Cranberry).
And all of that? It took place long after 6:45 AM you guys.
Unless. Wait was this one of those Hot Tub Time Machine deals?
But yeah, I was like chilling in the hot tub. By myself for a bit. Until an older gentleman joined me and asked me to turn on the bubbles. Which, in the Discovery Princess hot tub is a lot like this:
Them bubbles be ferocious y’all.
But yeah super nice day out there today and it was kind of an awesome experience watching the Brazil-Norway match, drinking my drink, hot-tubbing my hot tub.
The boys also found another semi-open hot tub from which to watch soccer in which.
I know we JUST talked about breakfast but by the time THAT specific picture was taken, it was actually kind of time for lunch. And my original plan was to grab a piece of pizza at Slice or a hot dog at Salty Dog on the pool deck but Nickie, Larissa, Tony, and Mia were grabbing a table at the Irish Pub on board – O’Malley’s so I decided to join them, thinking I could continue watching the match while enjoying lunch.
Now, me thinking I could watch the match there was no mere “oh it’s an Irish Pub, they must be showing the match there” generalization or stereotyping situation. O’Malley’s shows up in Google as an Irish Pub and sports bar.
But I am here to tell you. This is folly.
There wasn’t a TV to be found.
Ah well, it’s an Irish bar. There must be beer right?
Now that is a generalization or stereotyping situation.
And yeah, they had beer.
Also – I should mention. O’Malley’s is what is categorized as a casual eatery on the Discovery Princess. It’s an extra charge for those with no package / standard fare ($14.99 cover charge for the meal) though it can be used as one of your 2 casual dining meals on the Princess Plus Package or be used on an unlimited basis if one has Princess Premier.
It’s a nice little spot tho.
We were seated at a high-top but I did love these little booths they had in there. Where we were NOT seated even though no one else was there either.
Bloody O’Malley’s.
To start, we got a bunch of apps for the table to share, like the Hot Crab and Artichoke Dip, served with Breadsticks for dipping.
And the Onion Stack. Which I think did actually start as a stack? Maybe not. I dunno. What am I? Part of the Onion Ring Brigade?
These were served with a Horseradish-Ranch Dipping Sauce.
And the Kilarney Stout Stew (I think?) – with braised beef, carrots, and onions in a Guinness gravy served inside a piped ring of mashed potatoes. Also served with a slice of Irish Soda Bread.
We also all got a taste of the Irish Onion Soup (Guinness-infused caramelized onion soup, crouton, melted cheddar cheese).
Oh guys AND we got a couple orders of these Blasta! Wings (fried chicken wings, buffalo hot sauce, celery and carrots, and blue cheese dipping sauce).
Hear me out here. These weren’t just the best things at this lunch. These may have been some of the best things I ate on board. Like, seriously GOOD wings. They pack a kick though, so be warned. But like so good. So full of flavor, and a nice crisp on the outside. Thinking about these wings makes me want wings right now. That’s how good they were.
Real good.
Oh and I mean. Yah, of course I got a Guinness you guys.
I know. It’s not draft? But hey, alcoholics can’t be choosers.
Did we get dessert?
Did you seriously just ask that?
Of course we did. We all split some Bailey’s Irish Cream Cheesecake.
Which was quite good.
And I paired my taste with an Irish Coffee.
Yes. And a Stella.
What? It’s included in my package.
A very good lunch at O’Malley’s though. I guess my one note would be (and you are gonna hear this A LOT) is the servers seemed incredibly overworked. Like, that lunch – and remember, we just got basically some stuff to share and a dessert – took two hours. It just seemed like all the servers had too many tables. Not their fault at all. But come on Princess. Service is important. I’d fix this.
Anyway though – still a really good lunch.
The plan now was to head up to the cabin to chill for a bit so we all stopped at Crooner’s to grab some Grey Goose & Sodas for the long journey.
Up in the room, I threw on the current match – Mexico-England.
And Nickie spent some time looking for wildlife out on the balcony.
Don’t worry, little Nickie. We’ll see some wildlife soon.
At around 4PM-ish, we had to start getting ready for the evening’s festivities. But lunch was literally like a little over an hour ago? So we of course ordered up some chicken tenders, fries, and cheese plates (and some waters and sodas) from room service to enjoy while we got ready.
Honestly, as I am writing this…I kind of am making myself sick. So I get if that’s where you, the reader, is right now as well.
But right – tonight. Night 2. Night 2 was formal night. Look how pretty Nickie looked. And I was there also.
And look at us all looking like some sort of family of models.
Myles and Hannah also stopped by to get in on all the good-looking-ness.
Seriously. We are an ATTRACTIVE bunch.
Dinner wasn’t for a little bit, so Hannah and Myles went back to check on the rest of the crew and the rest of us made our way to the Piazza area to watch the Champagne Waterfall, a formal night tradition where crew members stack hundreds of champagne glasses in a pyramid and guests can join the cruise director and captain to help fill them.
Cool thing to watch for a bit but the line to help contribute to the pour was kind of long so we just sort of enjoyed it from afar. They did come around with complimentary glasses of champagne though, which was a nice touch.
We also did take advantage of the one of the backdrops to get at least one included photo from the nice folks at Princess.
I like this one.
On account of this one totally calls out the fact that I chose to wear my Stitch Vans for formal night.
Ha. Busted. But whatever you guys. I’m the bad boy of cruising. I play by my own rules.
With dinner STILL being a little ways off, we also stopped in at Crooner’s (https://www.princess.com/cruise-dining/crooners) to listen to some piano and OF COURSE order some Grey Goose Sodas.
But eventually the clock DID hit 7:30 so we went over to the Juneau Dining Room for our traditional dining slot. As evidenced by this picture I asked Liam to pose for and for which both he and Owen were like, “why are you having Liam pose for this picture idiot?”
But jokes on them since this picture perfectly fits here.
Who’s the idiot now?
..
…
Oh, still me? Cool.
I should mention that, yeah, tonight we were doing Main Dining. And Princess offers a few ways you can do this – you can either do what we were doing in the Juneau Dining room, traditional dining, or you could do a reservation-based system or walk-in sort of situation in one of the other dining rooms. We just kind of preferred to stick to one of the traditional dining times so that we could be better suited to see the nightly entertainment. We chose the 7:30 slot, which we expected would have us out by the 9:30 showing.
We expected.
Foreshadowing.
Our meal started with some bread service, which was good. Not Crown Grill cheese bread good but still. Bread.
I started off with the Escargot for my appetizer, which was actually very good. I haven’t had escargot in a minute, but this one kind of hit, man.
While I don’t have individual pictures of everyone’s starters, I do have this table pic of people enjoying their apps.
Look at them. Enjoying their apps.
And for my main entrée, I went with the Duck a l’Orange, which was glazed with a Grand Marnier Orange Sauce and served with a Potato Croquette, Sugar Snap Peas, and Braised Red Cabbage.
Which was also real good actually. Though hey, looks like I dug in here before I snapped my food pic. Sorry about that.
Bloody Me!
And well…yeah, that’s kind of ALL the pictures I have from dinner. Yah, four pictures. But don’t take that to mean dinner was quick. Quite the contrary, actually. Like I mentioned, dinner started at 7:30 and we finished with our entrees after 9PM. I love a long dinner for sure but I mean this was more just long periods where we didn’t see our waitstaff. I am pretty sure I was served one drink this entire meal.
Like I said, I don’t fully blame the waitstaff. I feel like they were just stretched between too many tables. But these traditional dining times are designed to explicitly leave you time to enjoy your meal AND catch the nighttime entertainment. And at this point, we had a decision we had to make – we could either stay for dessert OR leave so we could catch the show.
And I mean, I like both dessert AND shows. So this was a tough one.
Some of us chose to leave, some chose to stay. I was in the “leaving” group since I really did want to catch the show tonight. But don’t worry, I’ll have desserts on this trip.
The show tonight was “Rock Opera” over on the other side of the ship in the Princess Theater. And it was a good thing we rushed over there because it was a packed house?
Rock Opera? More like Rock Oper-uh, where is everyone? Amirite?
But no worries, it filled up by the time the show began.
Rock Opera is less like a traditional show and more like a cabaret of performers singing their way through rock, opera, and musical theater songs. Which wasn’t exactly what I expected when I heard about the show. Like, I remember thinking…wow, is The Greatest Showman rock? Because they’ve sung multiple songs from The Greatest Showman.
But you know what? I kind of LOVED this show. Everyone in it was super talented and I def found myself kind of dancing in my seat throughout the production.
Yeah, great first show of the cruise I thought. Lots of talent, lots of energy, lots of Greatest Showman.
Pretty great Day 4 though, right? I mean, aside from the service on the ship (which beeteedubz doesn’t really improve…spoiler alert), we had a really nice sea day.
And I promise you guys – we WILL BE seeing Alaska in the next post. I can bear-ly wait.
That pun is what they call a “teaser”.
The more you know.
Annnyway – see y’all then!
Last post – Day 3!
WeHeartDisney 