BECAUSE they are asking a question that can not be answered. YOU are on the water, expect motion.
AND no way would I ever take a 4 year old on any of these boat tours, just too long with no way out. Are you on a cruise??? A Glacier Bay tour isn't going to be available to you unless you are either on a cruise or staying near the area- Bartlett Cove?? and then taking a boat trip in?? With a 4 year old, I would walk to Exit Glacier and take the Portage Glacier boat tour which is an hour. Nothing longer.

dramamine and 1 mg. ativan. no alcohol.

Okay more Fodor-fingershaking, this time about parental decisions.

What is so difficult about giving Gondor some comparative information about tours -- no guarantees that any given trip will be smooth, but surely seasoned travelers know which passings are more likely to be choppy. Note Gardyloo's and meregayle's posts -- the ONLY ones that answer the question asked.

Believe me, people who are prone to seasickness already know all the remedies and whether they work for them or not. Information about ginger, patches, scopolomine, cola syrup, bracelets, dramamine, bonine, marazine, citrus, self-hypnosis, etc. is just not new.

HKP could be more diplomatic, probably, but he has a point. I used to post queries here, on Europe and on Cruise boards about routes to ask, as gondor did, how to minimize risk of bad seas, and inevitably, most of the posts are about how to treat seasickness, or occasionally the "it's the sea, it rolls, cope" type of response. Not helpful.

And I too keep hoping I'll find an Alaskan route that will probably be smooth because I'm dying to take a cruise and see Alaskan beauty, but I'm here to tell you that for some of us, you could wrap us in a full-body ginger bracelet and pump us full of drugs and -- aside from the probability of missing the very sight we came to see because we're gorked and have dry-mouth -- we'll still get woozy.

OK, the boat tours with the most motion is likely to be Kenai Fjords, less PWS out of Whittier and Valdez and least likely the short boat tours out of Homer. You would be best to skip any cruises, since all now have the potential to sail plenty of outside passage which is more and more common. Least outside would be the small cruise lines- like Cruise West on their Ketchikan/Juneau routings.

Gotta disagree.....as I see it, when you boil it all down, Gondor was saying: "Our family is going to Alaska and we want to take a boat tour, but want to avoid seasickness- any suggestions?" Therefore all responses were appropriate. And by the way, HKP, last year my DOCTOR who treats patients in the FLORIDA KEYS did not know that that scopolomine was available in a pill form, so guess what? Some information might well be new even to long-standing sufferers of seasickness. And that info might turn a potential nightmare of an excursion into a tolerable or even pleasant experience. Sorry if that is one your "pet peeves".

Exact quote from OP: "Are there other tours that present a lesser risk?" Can't boil it down more than that.

(And that doctor must be young. The patch is only the newest form of scopolomine; tabs have been around for a while.)