Absolutely amazing. Indescribable. Didn't actually do the hot springs part. I ate dinner and watched the sky!
The trip was good. Our guide's commentary was valuable and helped us understand the town better. He set the right expectations for us as far as what to expect from the northern lights. There are few things that the company could possible consider, given the of the trip.
Guide should have a camera that can capture the northern lights and possible get the group a picture against it. For the price, i think this would have been a nice memorabilia.
If you choose to do the Chena hot springs yourself and chase the lights on your own, you may save yourself some . we preferred to go with the tour, since we did not want to drive so late in the night and also wanted to catch a snooze inbetween rides. After the hot springs, you really will want to..lol
Tour was great! We were picked up promptly at our scheduled time from our hotel and taken the 60 miles by van to the Chena Hot Springs Resort by our tour guide, Clark. We were admitted to the 7:00pm tour of the Ice Museum which was fantastic!!! So excited we got to see this. The Appletini's were delicious and the ice sculptures were stunning. Our guide for this portion of the tour, Kathryn, was great! She was very energetic, super funny, and made sure we all had a good time. Next we ate dinner at the restaurant which was good and took a dip in the hot springs. It was a little crowded so we only spent about 45 mins here but it was still a cool experience. This is the only thing I would knock 1 star off for I appreciated that we didn't have to stay with our group and we could do our own thing but we didn't have a set meeting time to find our guide after the springs so we walked the grounds quite a bit in the dark to locate him and the rest of the group. But no big deal really, we still had a great time. After that we all met at the van and looked for the lights.. didn't take long, about 11:00pm we could see some faint green color forming behind the trees and then steadily get brighter. We were so fortunate to see them this early in the season! We saw the green lights dance and move for about 40 mins or so before it got cloudy but it was more than enough time to catch some really great photos! So excited we can check this off our bucket list!! The clouds rolled in and other members of our group were ready to make the drive back, which was fine, so we headed back a little early. Clark agreed to stop if we saw the clouds clear up and he made a couple stops on the way back which I really appreciated. He genuinely cared about us catching the lights. This tour was definitely worth the money! We have so amazing photos and memories to take back with us!