Back in the 1950’s and early ‘60’s, Billy Butlin introduced postwar Britain to the concept of the package holiday deal. Not your two weeks on the “Costa del Something-or-Other” which came a bit later. Butlin’s idea which took off and for a brief period was very popular was the “holiday camp”. Appealing (at least for the times) locations around the English coast, simple accommodation, all food and entertainment included and vigorous encouragement to have a great time and not waste a minute of your short holiday time at the “camp”! Sir Billy (as he became) was just the pioneer; others were to follow. But for a few years (and perhaps even still today), “Butlin’s” became synonymous with and the generic word for holiday camps.
Denali National Park, or rather the Princess/Holland America cruise line owned lodges that are grouped close to the Park’s entrance, give the impression of being a modern-day version of Butlin’s! Princess/Holland America offers low-priced cruising to Alaska’s Inside Passage combined for many of the thousands of passengers with a land package, by bus and company operated trains to interior Alaska including Denali National Park and Denali State Park.
In this updated version of the “holiday camp”, a lot has changed. The locations are not comparable (nobody could argue anything other than Denali beats Frinton-on-Sea hands down!!), just about everything from food to entertainment is extra and the accommodation is more 2018 than 1958, but it’s still holidays aimed at the mass market along with the vigorous encouragement to have a great time.
A couple of years earlier, we’d bid for and won in a charity auction a four night stay at two Princess/Holland America lodges in Denali, including round trip journeys on the company’s domed observation trains. The “package” we’d won didn’t include the cruise which we would have passed on anyway as there are much better ways of discovering Alaska! So after a couple of days in Anchorage where we’d spent a delightful afternoon and evening with our Kodiak friends, Ron & Mary, we boarded the train and headed north to Denali National Park with a stop on the return journey at Denali State Park
The train trundles along at a gentle pace so that everyone can enjoy the spectacular and ever-changing scenery, accompanied by well-rehearsed explanations and patter from the train car host and barman. “Encouragement to enjoy” is lubricated by endless encouragement to purchase cocktails so that by the end of the eight hour journey, quite a few passengers are very well lubricated! Wild life sightings are rare “we often see moose, bears, caribou along our route although of course, we can’t guarantee sightings” intones the train car host at the start of every journey. On our return journey to Anchorage a few days later though, one suitably lubricated passenger did spot a large male moose. His announcement caused a brief outbreak of hysteria - the resultant screaming was so loud that it likely spooked the moose even more than the noise of the train itself and he rapidly headed for the nearest cover! (We did catch a brief glimpse.....).
Almost as impressive as the scenery is the efficiency of Princess/Holland America’s organization. On boarding the train and later at each of of the two lodges we stayed in, we received a “welcome package” which included our itinerary, including the excursions we’d booked, our assigned seats on the trains and our assigned rooms in the lodges, room keys and luggage labels. Luggage was waiting for us in each room on arrival and at the train depot on arrival back in Anchorage (the luggage is transported between locations by truck). Everything went without a hitch and considering the sheer volume of people and luggage that the company handles on a daily basis, the efficiency and smoothness of the operation is truly very impressive!
So even without the need for “encouragement” we had a most enjoyable time. The weather this late in the season (which runs from mid-May to mid-September) wasn’t the best (similarities again with the English holiday camp experience.....!!). In this part of the world, even in late August there are signs of approaching winter. The area had already seen its first snow and our days were mostly overcast with frequent rain showers. Even more than bear sightings, what the guides really want you to see are Mt Denali (formerly Mt McKinley), North America’s highest peak which towers over Denali National Park, and moose particularly mature male moose which sport massive velvet-covered antlers during the summer. We are fortunate enough that during a break in the weather, we did catch a glimpse of Mt Denali’s peak and even spotted a few moose while Jeep driving along “the world’s second most scenic highway”, the unpaved Denali Highway
So while we’re not fans of mass-market tourism and usually go out of our way to avoid that type of vacation, we thoroughly enjoyed our “modern day Butlin’s” experience.....
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And finally, a few anecdotes on people we encountered:
- car host on the train from Anchorage to Denali was a graduate of Vanderbilt, a former NY corporate attorney who lived in an apartment adjacent to the World Trade Center on 9/11. The event apparently devastated his life and has not been able to get it back together since.
- lunch companions on the southbound train from Denali to Talkeetna are a farmer and his wife from SE Minnesota close to the South Dakota state line. Among other crops they grow soy. Income dropped 25% overnight because of Trump’s trade war. They didn’t vote for him but many of their farm neighbors did
- one of our coach drivers between Mt McKinley Wilderness Lodge and Talkeetna was a woman from Coco Beach, FL who said her husband works at the Kennedy Space Center. She has come up to Alaska for the season with her 19 and 21 year old sons and works for minimum wage, $9 and change an hour. She shares a room in the staff accommodation with her two sons (and one bathroom between four rooms) and each pays Holland America $15 a day for board and lodging!
- a young woman, also a coach driver for the lodge said she spends her summers in Alaska and winters driving a resort bus in Vail, CO with just six weeks back at home in NE Arkansas in between. She said that her soon-to-retire and downsizing parents after visiting her in Alaska said that they would also like to come and work at the lodge (for minimum wage) but after learning about the staff accommodation thought they would buy an RV, drive up and live in that...!!