The Best Alaska Cruise Excursions

Alaska has the most expensive excursions in mainstream cruising and the most rewarding. This is our ranking of what to book, based on what each one delivers relative to its cost and how reliably it delivers it.

Ranking Alaska excursions requires a criterion. Ours is experience delivered per dollar, adjusted for reliability, because an excursion that is extraordinary when it runs and cancels 40 percent of the time is a different proposition from one that always delivers.

1. White Pass and Yukon Route railway, Skagway

$130 to $185, about 3 hours

A three foot narrow gauge railway built between 1898 and 1900 to carry prospectors over the White Pass to the Klondike. The standard excursion climbs 2,865 feet in twenty miles through two tunnels, over a steel cantilever bridge and along ledges cut by hand into cliff faces.

It ranks first because it is spectacular, because the engineering story is genuinely remarkable, and above all because it is completely weather proof and does not depend on wildlife. Every other excursion on this list carries some risk of not delivering. This one does not.

Sit on the left going up for the gorge and Bridal Veil Falls, and use the open platforms between carriages rather than shooting through glass. More in our Skagway guide.

2. Whale watching, Icy Strait Point

$140 to $210, 2.5 to 3.5 hours

Icy Strait is among the most productive humpback feeding water in Alaska, because nutrient rich outflow from Glacier Bay meets strong tidal currents and concentrates the food supply. Boats leave from the site itself with no long road transfer, so more of your time is on the water.

It is also the best place on the circuit to see bubble net feeding, where a group of humpbacks blows a curtain of bubbles to concentrate herring and lunges up through the middle together.

3. Kenai Fjords day cruise, Seward

$200 to $290, 6 to 8 hours

Only available if your itinerary uses Seward or you add a day there, which is why it is not higher. Six to eight hours on a small boat into Resurrection Bay and out to a tidewater glacier, with humpbacks, orcas, sea otters, Steller sea lions and puffins routinely on the same trip.

On value alone it is the best excursion in Alaska.

4. Helicopter dog sledding, Juneau

$650 to $950, 3 to 4 hours

The most expensive mainstream excursion in Alaska and the most memorable when it flies. A helicopter onto the Juneau Icefield, a landing on snow, and time at a working dog camp with a team of sled dogs.

It ranks fourth rather than first because weather cancels it regularly. Book the earliest available slot so a later re flight is possible.

5. Misty Fjords floatplane, Ketchikan

$280 to $400, 2 to 2.5 hours

Granite walls rising 3,000 feet from the water, waterfalls, and a landing on a remote lake, in a 2.3 million acre wilderness reachable only by air or boat. Extraordinary when conditions allow.

The caveat is that Ketchikan is one of the wettest inhabited places in North America and floatplane cancellations are common.

6. Whale watching with a Mendenhall stop, Juneau

$180 to $260, 5 to 6 hours

The most efficient use of a full Juneau port day, combining the two headline attractions in one booking. Cheaper than the two components separately and better paced than trying to do both independently.

7. Small boat wildlife tour, Sitka

$140 to $220, 2.5 to 3.5 hours

Sitka faces the open Pacific, which produces a different species mix from the inside waters: dense sea otter populations, puffins on the outer rocks, and large Steller sea lion colonies. The small boat operators here are among the best in Alaska.

8. Helicopter glacier landing, Juneau

$400 to $600, 2 to 3 hours

The dog sledding trip without the dogs. Still remarkable, still weather dependent, and about $250 cheaper.

9. Totem Bight State Historical Park, Ketchikan

$60 to $95, 2.5 to 3 hours

The best value cultural excursion on the circuit. Totem poles and a clan house set among rainforest beside the water, rather than in an open park, which makes it both more photogenic and more atmospheric than the alternatives.

10. Bering Sea crab fishermen's tour, Ketchikan

$200 to $280, 3.5 hours

Better than it sounds. A working crab boat, hands on demonstrations, live crab, and importantly it is covered, which in Ketchikan matters.

What we would not book

• Town tours. Every Alaska cruise port centre is walkable in twenty minutes. A guided drive around Skagway is not worth $80.
• Salmon bakes as a standalone. Fine as part of something else, thin on their own.
• Bear viewing outside July and August. Outside the salmon run the odds are poor regardless of price.
• Anything scheduled in the last two hours before all aboard. The margin is not worth it.

How many to book

One significant excursion per port, which on a seven night itinerary means about four. Alaska port days give you roughly two hours less than the printed time once you account for gangway queues, transfers and the buffer before all aboard.

For a couple at an average of $200 each, four excursions is roughly $1,600. That is the number to plan for, and it is the number most people fail to budget. See excursion costs and how to plan a port day.