I'm training at UAA, on Merrill Field - if you want to rent planes, two places I can think of at MRI are Takeflight and Aerotech. Don't know, but you might be able to find something on floats down at Lake Hood.
I trained last summer in California - Palo Alto (PAO) in the San Francisco Bay.
I much prefer training up here, so a lightly biased breakdown:
Cost: more expensive in AK, no contest. Though living expenses outside of the airport, for rent and stuff, are much lower.
Availability of A/C: yeah, there are fewer places to train in Alaska - we don't have the population base to support the number of flight schools CA has, and can't promise a cloudless summer to train every day and get the rating quick. On the other hand, it's not hard to get time in a taildragger, or floats or skis, up here.
Weather: Oh, I by far prefer Alaska here. Yes, I spend a lot more time weathered out, but when I came up from CA, I couldn't tell if it was VFR or not - there were clouds in the sky! Now, I am learning to judge weather, know what it's going to be like. I have first-hand experience on mountain flying, flying in snowshowers, operating on snow and ice, wake turbulence, and so on - and that's before the PPL.
Airspace - Airspace at PAO was pretty uncomplicated - stay below the floor of SFO airspace, out to the practice area. In Anchorage, it's pretty complicated with Merrill, Anchorage International, Elmendorf AFB and Lake Hood so close together. It takes more time on the hobbes meter to get out of the airspace to the practice area, but I'm pretty good at handling the mic for Approach, CTAF, Tower - I had to be, to learn to fly here.
The scenery is heartbreakingly beautiful, and the flying challenging - it always pushes me to do my best, and to learn as much as I can, because I'll need it.
Ever seen the aurora on a night cross-country?