Some of those cruises seem like nothing more than a floating hotel with an all you can eat buffet. When I travel, I generally leave the hotel first thing and return in the evening.

Other cruises drop you in cool places along with thousands of other people, and then hustle you off to the next place. I saw that recently in Malta, where I was able to travel around for a full week after a conference, where the cruisers just crushed the man drag of Valetta and then returned to sail off again. That also doesn't appeal to me at all.

But I figured with Alaska, the scenery itself would be a draw, and with stuff that would be really hard, if not impossible to see with another kind of trip.