Alaskan Shore Excursions

Reply Subscribe

Thread Tools

Search this Thread

Dec 27th, 2002, 05:12 AM

Chris

Guest

Posts: n/a

Alaskan Shore Excursions

I have been reviewing and considering several shore excursions during our Alaskan tour/cruise. I looked at the HAL's brochure of these excursions and looked on-line for further info. I ran across an independent travel site (known agency) that listed most of them. I began to compare prices and HAL is typically $30 to $50 higher. Here are my questions: 1. What does HAL provide to account for this difference? (I presume transportation to the tour's starting point and back again - but?) 2. If these shore excursions are booked with an travel agency, is there difficulty in obtaining transportation independently? 3. What has been anyone else's experience with shore excursions?

Dec 27th, 2002, 08:03 AM

JimM

Guest

Posts: n/a

Lots of people book their own excursions out of Alaskan ports -- especially the whale watching out of Juneau. Why pay the cruise line to shepard you around when many tours do the same thing...it's included in the fee. If you need references to excursion web sites, let me know.

Dec 27th, 2002, 08:24 AM

Jane

Guest

Posts: n/a

Jim, If it is'nt any bother, I'd love to see them too. Tanx

Dec 27th, 2002, 02:45 PM

JimM

Guest

Posts: n/a

Here's a few places to check out. They're are many more. For an example...do a search on any port you'll be visiting. You'll find that a variety of official and other sites turn up. http://avp.travelalaska.com From the State of Alaska. Write for their Official State Vacation Planner. http://www.visit-ketchikan.com/ http://www.skagway.org http://www.juneau.com http://www.traveljuneau.com http://www.ptialaska.net/~whales/ Captain Larry runs one of the best whale watching tours anywhere. http://dir.webring.com/rw Do a search on Alaska for an extensive list of travel sites..

Dec 28th, 2002, 04:38 AM

Theresa

Guest

Posts: n/a

FYI - you can easily do Mendenhall glacier by yourself in Juneau. There are blue buses that run constantly back and fourth for $10 RT I believe. We also used Capt Larry from Awesome Orca (website listed above) and it was excellent. This was about the same price as going through the ship but we had a very small boat and very personal service. I think there were only 16 people on our boat to whale watch verses having 100's on your boat if you go through the cruiseline. Would definitely book this again.