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Northern Lights
Anyone have information to share about this tour in March 2026?
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Anyone have information to share about this tour in March 2026?
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We tried to get on this trip about 6 weeks ago and they were sold out. Maybe it has opened up.....We decided to go and see the Northern Lights in Fairbanks.
We saw the Northern Lights with another company. It’s not a guarantee that The Northern Lights will show up, but they certainly did for us. That trip was fabulous.
You can book directly with the company that owns the ship Tauck is using. Parlez vous francais!
Yes you can Henry but it’s more expensive and their tour inclusions are inferior
We looked at that option and British is 100% correct. Decided on Fairbanks. Higher probability of northern lights. ( Gondwana ecotours.)
MotherOfPoodles - Curious where you got your information on ‘higher probability’. When I looked it up I found the following.
FYI, here is the current auroral oval. It is updated daily on spaceweather.com.
Wow! thanks fellow travelers for all the new information. Seeing the Northern Lights has been many years on our bucket list. Time to make this the priority in 2026. Realize here is no guarantee ever but want to maximize our chances. Much appreciated
Sam - I looked at all stats . Problem with areas near the water is that they tend to get clouds. Also did an analysis of temperatures. Warmest place to see the northern lights- Iceland. But- high probability of clouds. Arctic circle / Lapland in Europe- clouds and ridiculously low temperatures. Fairbanks hit the sweet spot, as well as stats for the time of the year and region that we are going to . Plus the tour has northern light spotters that will wake you up anytime they appear. We realize we may not see them ….. but it won’t be - 23 degrees like it was on our friends’s northern lights in Finland tour. That is a bit too much for me. You may find other stats. It is all a crap shoot and without guarantees.
BKMD - thanks for that map!!!!!!!
I have seen them in Tromsø as well as by the Lofoten Islands while on a Norwegian vessel that actually delivers mail and supplies to towns scattered across parts of the Norwegian Sea. Although a working ship, it also transports locals to and from the islands. The ship's amenities were far superior to the Ponant boat I once traveled on. Merely my opinion.
Statistically, the Northern Lights are more frequent now than they will be in 2 years. We are currently at the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle. Solar disturbances occur more often at the peak of the cycle, when there are more sunspots..
MotherOfPoodles - I saw the Northern Lights during the summer I spent in central Maine, when I met the classmate of yours that we talked about. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. It also helped that I was there for 6 weeks. That was also close to the peak of the sunspot cycle in the early 80s.
This is an excellent Aurora app
My husband and I are just back from a Northern Lights trip to the Yukon where we saw the Aurora Borealis 4 nights out of our one week stay. The March 2026 Tauck cruises are sure to be spectacular but there are indeed lots of other options. I am far from being an expert but wanted to share a few of our experiences and tips:
1) In case you didn’t already know, the bright aurora colors you see in photos are rarely seen with the “naked” eye. You need a very intense aurora to experience that, such as a KP index of 7 or higher, from what I have read. The vast majority of time, you will see white hazy shapes or possibly light green/pink.
2) The Aurora app as mentioned by OurTravels34 is not considered to be accurate by experts, however I thought it was accurate within 48 hours of the date of interest. It also gives information on expected cloud cover and a link to the NOAA prediction map mentioned by BKMD.
3) Another fun link, especially for archival information, is spaceweatherlive.com https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity/top-50-geomagnetic-storms/year/2024.html
I thought it was interesting that the top 4 strongest auroras in 2024 were in May and October.
4) Like MotherOfPoodles, we thought about all the places we could go to see the Aurora. We thought about distance from home, financial investment and effort involved in case we did not see the Aurora, and types of accommodations, including nightly “aurora chasing” vs a wilderness lodge or cruise. We thought about what other kinds of activities we would like to do there during the day. Most importantly, being from California, we thought about the cold!
5) I wish I had learned more about my iphone 16 Pro before I went on this trip. I did figure out the night mode for photos but could never get any decent night videos. I wanted to remember how the lights flowed and changed.
6) We were provided with a winter clothing package which included a very warm coat and boots, and also gloves, but it is not easy to take photos with an iphone wearing even the gloves that are tech -enabled. I should have searched for a better solution. Hand warmers helped and I kept extras in my pockets.
7) On our first night, the KP was 5 but the cloud cover was too thick to see anything. Around 3 am, I could see stars and knew the clouds had thinned. I spotted some faint green on the horizon which grew to a great show despite about a 50% cloud cover.
8) On another night we had perfectly clear skies and a KP of 4, which gave us spectacular photos. What we saw with our eyes was a sky filled with light green swirls and my husband says he saw pinks, but the photos showed vivid greens, pinks and purples.
Great photos and explanations Wan.
We were lucky to see the lights here in Pennsylvania last year when many parts of the country had good ones. They definitely were more vivid on camera, our skies were bright pink
For me, the most valuable info to think about was comparing what to do during the day…l.guess there might be disrupted sleep too..
Would fingerless gloves be warm enough? I have some thick ones I bought in Iceland.
Thank you, Wan! Was it the Canadian Yukon or the Alaskan Yukon? Fabulous photos and explanation. The company we are going with does have daytime activities ( visit to reindeer farm, dog sledding, curling lessons (!), etc). They also provide the cold weather gear ( jacket, snow pants, boots, gloves) . Friends have used them and recommended them. I am sure there are lots of good options. So happy to hear you had a great experience. I hate cold weather too. Hoped to see the Northern lights last year in MD, but it was cloudy. British- you were lucky!!!
We saw spectacular lights on a tour to Finland. We stayed in glass huts and ice hotels. It still goes down as one of our favorite trips of all times. We had been to Alaska & Iceland and never saw them. There are certainly no guarantees no matter what trip you choose - just choose a trip you will love whether you see the lights or not. Norway is def on our list whether we see the lights or not.
Wan, that was a fabulous review. Viewing these lights is a surreal out of body experience. We did many activities during the day with the company we travelled with such as learning how to ice fish, dog sledding, putting on a neoprene outfit (like Eugene Levy did in The Reluctant Traveler) and floating in the freezing water (I was the first to volunteer), going to a reindeer farm, and meeting an indigenous tribe. I would love to see the lights again somewhere else!
Yes, it was extremely cold.
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Crumbs!
You can also HEAR the Northern Lights, if you have a shortwave radio. If you live on the east coast, find a broadcast station in Japan. If you live on the west coast, find a broadcast in Europe. As radio waves follow the great circle paths (like planes fly) the auroral zone and will sound very watery or fluttery.
Wan great review and beautiful pictures.
I also hate severe cold weather and am anxious about right winter seas in Norway.. Trying to figure out best course of action for this trip. Mother of Poodles is there any way I can send you a private message? Or post on your wall..looking for more options. Thank you
Hi again, to answer a couple of questions, we were in the Canadian Yukon (I did not know there was an Alaskan Yukon, but we were definitely close to the border). Also, fingerless gloves would certainly not have worked for me.
Here is another fun website, the live webcam from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Strong aurora activity this coming week, so if you are a night owl you might see a show as long as the clouds comply.
https://explore.org/livecams/UAF/aurora-cam
Just cancelled this tour, that was scheduled for next March. We were really looking forward to it.
The reason we cancelled was because SAS, the airline our airline tickets were booked through, changed our flights for the second time in a month. After the first change, I was able to call the airlines (our ticket was a SAS/Delta combination - partners) to get acceptable changes to their proposed changes. Albeit, it wasn't easy. Both SAS and Delta wanted to point the finger at the other person and not take ownership to fix the problem. Eventually I got knowledgeable and accommodating agents that could make acceptable changes.
NOTE: You can't find a customer service phone number on the SAS website. They really want you to do everything yourself. I had to Google SAS to get a customer service phone number.
Just this weekend a second set of changes to our tickets came through. Our return ticket had been changed. The original ticket routed us from Tromso, Norway to Oslo to Copenhagen to Atlanta and then to Tucson. The change substituted LAX for Atlanta. That would be fine if the stopover times in each city were OK. That wasn't the case. The change reduced the layover in Copenhagen to under 1 hour and the layover in LAX to under 1.5 hours. Both of these seemed high risk of not making our connections. I researched alternative flights that would work and then called SAS, but they said they couldn't make the changes I suggested. Therefore I requested a full refund, which is in process.
FYI - There are very few airline options to get you to/from Tromso, Norway, the starting and ending point for this tour, especially from Tucson, AZ. If you live on the east coast or are willing to stop somewhere along the way to/from then you could likely make something work (with added cost of course). We considered that, but thought that stopping to sightsee somewhere in Northern Europe in early March didn't sound like a good option.
You have to book lots of tours, like this one, well in advance of when airline tickets are available, if you want to make selections for cabins, hotels, etc. Doing this means that you get past the 10 day grace period on cancelling without using your trip insurance before you can even book the actual airline tickets, little lone deal with airline ticket changes.
I was 221 days in advance of my tour when I cancelled. I was hoping that I might be able to move the insurance to another tour without forfeiting its cost. At least, per the agent I spoke with (get this the agent told me this was her first day on the job), this isn't possible. As such, I lost (used) the $1598 insurance, for two people, to cancel the tour. Our tour deposit will be refunded to our credit card.
I sent a comment to Tauck about starting/ending a tour in a location that is so remote that airline options are severely limited seems like a bad plan, especially when you have to book the tour well in advance of when you can book airline tickets if you want to be able to make selections for preferred hotels, ship cabin, etc. that you're past the 10 day grace period before you find out that reasonable airline connections could be a problem.
For lots of the river and small ship tours Tauck will have the start/stop city be a major hub before or after the ship/river portion of the tour. Doing this, in my opinion, makes sense for a couple of reasons. One it adds more luster to the tour that is typically available in these hub cities. Second, it makes getting to/from the tour much easier because the number of flight possibilities goes way up in the major hubs.
I'm just posting this to give people a heads up about possible airline issues for this tour. Let the buyer beware. 😀
Sorry to hear this, Sam. But look at the bright side - you, being the cold weather wimp you are, wouldn't have liked it anyway.
Sam - Sorry to hear that, airlines these days think nothing of constantly making changes, for my last tour I started with one stop over, ended with 3, same way coming home. For my Ireland tour in September Delta has changed my itinerary 3 times.
A big thank you for those on the waitlist for this otherwise sold out 10 month in advance trip to the frozen tundra in late winter. Hooray for the economy!!!
Did any one look at where Hidden Greece starts and ends? Two of the smallest airports in the whole country. I bet a lot of people are chartering their own flights considering how well received this trip is.
I find that many of Tauck’s tours begin and end in crazy places. Our latest is our New Zealand tour that end in Queenstown.
I’m surprised you haven’t encounter this before Sam. On the other hand, there are often problems with new tours, so it might be good to wait awhile until at least those are sorted before you maybe try again, and with Northern Lights being the next big ‘hot’ destination ( not meant to be a pun) maybe there may be better flight choices.
British - I am referring to river cruise tours and small ship tours in my description about adding hub cities at each end. I know there are some land tours with start/stop cities like you describe for the New Zealand tour. Of my tours, no where near as many as yours. The smallest start city I recall would be Arusha for the Kenya and Tanzania Safari.
And Arusha for us is one of the easiest cities to get to..I’ve only taken one river cruise with Tauck.