When travel advisor Echo Brocato boarded Princess Cruises' Voyage of the Glaciers for the first time, she expected stunning scenery — what she didn't expect was to come home a fundamentally different kind of advisor.
At a Glance
Alaska's Glacier Bay delivers transformative scenery through Princess Cruises' Voyage of the Glaciers, a round-trip from Vancouver visiting Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan. Glacier calving—massive ice walls breaking into the sea—creates the defining moment, while port towns reward independent exploration as richly as organized excursions.
The ship slows to a stop. Then, almost imperceptibly, it begins to turn. For one full hour, passengers aboard the Princess Cruises vessel stand at the rail and face the glacier — its ancient blue-white mass rising from the water with the quiet authority of something that has existed long before anyone thought to photograph it. And then, without warning, a thunderous crack splits the silence. A wall of ice breaks free and crashes into the sea below, sending white water blooming outward in every direction. The sound follows a half-second later, rolling across Glacier Bay like a rumble of applause from the earth itself.
For Echo Brocato, a travel advisor who had never set foot on a cruise ship before this trip, that moment became the defining image of her career. "The boat stops in front of the glacier and it turns in a circle," she recalls, still visibly energised by the memory. "And we were lucky enough to catch the glacier calving. To see the water and the sounds — it was amazing."
Brocato booked the experience herself, a deliberate and personal investment in understanding a product she now recommends to clients with full conviction. She chose Princess Cruises' Voyage of the Glaciers, a round-trip sailing from Vancouver that winds through some of Alaska's most iconic ports, including Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan, before arriving at the crown jewel of the itinerary: the scenic cruising of Glacier Bay. What followed was not just a holiday. It was, by her own account, a transformation.
A Landscape That Earns Its Reputation
Alaska has a way of humbling even the most well-travelled of visitors. For Brocato, a first-time cruiser, the sheer physical scale of the destination arrived as a genuine surprise. The lush, layered greenery pressing up against the water's edge. The snow-capped peaks rising sharply above the treeline. The almost impossible visual contrast of white snow against dark water and dense forest, all of it unfolding from the deck of a ship as if the landscape were being slowly revealed, frame by frame.
"You really have to see it to believe it," Brocato says simply. "It was my first cruise and I can't wait to have another." That directness — unscripted, unembellished — is precisely what makes her enthusiasm so persuasive. She is not reciting a brochure. She is recalling a feeling.
The surprises did not stop at the scenery. Brocato had not anticipated the warmth she would encounter in the local communities along the route. The people of Alaska's port towns greeted visitors with a genuine openness that lingered long after the ship had sailed. In Skagway, a distinctive structure built entirely from driftwood caught her eye, an example of the kind of local character and craftsmanship that no shore excursion itinerary can fully prepare a traveller for. These were the details that lived in the gaps between the headline attractions, and Brocato noticed all of them.
The Insider Tip That Changes the Calculation
One of the most practical insights Brocato brought home from Alaska challenges a widely held assumption about cruise travel: that the value of a port day lies in the organised excursion. Her experience told a different story entirely. "You don't have to do excursions to enjoy a cruise to Alaska," she says. "Just getting off in port days and checking out the cities and walking around — you can spend all of your time in port checking out that local community."
It is the kind of advice that only comes from someone who has actually walked those streets, browsed those shops, and let a port town reveal itself at its own pace. For clients who may be weighing the cost of shore excursions or feeling overwhelmed by the options, this reframe is genuinely liberating. Alaska, Brocato discovered, is generous enough to reward the curious wanderer just as richly as it rewards the structured itinerary-follower.
On board, the experience was equally satisfying. The food aboard the Princess ship earned consistent praise, and the atmosphere of The Piazza, the ship's social and entertainment hub, gave the voyage a warmth and energy that balanced the wild grandeur waiting beyond the railings. Brocato arrived home with a comprehensive understanding of the full journey, not just the port highlights, but the rhythm of embarkation, the flow of sea days, and the particular pleasure of watching Alaska's coastline drift past from the comfort of a well-appointed ship.
An Advisor Transformed
There is a version of travel advising that operates entirely from secondhand knowledge, from brochures and supplier presentations and the accounts of others. And then there is the version that Brocato now embodies, one built on the memory of standing in Glacier Bay as the ice fell and the water roared and the world felt, for a moment, entirely alive.
She is clear-eyed about what that difference means for her clients. "I have a better understanding of the trip, of the journey, of how it works when you get on and off the cruise," she explains. "I can recommend it better to people because I've been there." But it goes beyond the logistical. The experience, she says, reached her somewhere deeper. "It's touched my life and my heart in a way that I didn't know about before. So I can talk about it with passion and excitement."
As for who should book an Alaska cruise, Brocato's answer is characteristically inclusive. Solo travellers, couples, multi-generational families, friend groups — she sees the itinerary as one of the rare travel experiences that genuinely delivers for every kind of passenger. The combination of whale watching, glacier viewing, fishing, mountain scenery, and welcoming local communities means there is no single type of traveller who would walk away disappointed. "If you ever wanted to sail to Alaska," she says, "don't wait. Definitely do it."
With Alaska now firmly in her repertoire, Brocato is already looking ahead. A cruise through Japan sits at the top of her wish list, and the Caribbean's promise of sun and warmth beckons alongside it. For an advisor who arrived home from her first cruise more energised than when she left, the horizon has never looked broader.
