How Many Excursions Should You Book?

The instinct is to book something in every port and sometimes two. Alaska port days are shorter than they look, and the traveller who books four substantial excursions across a seven night cruise consistently has a better week than the one who books seven.

The most common excursion planning error is not choosing the wrong tours. It is booking too many.

The arithmetic of a port day

A printed call of 7:00 am to 6:00 pm looks like eleven hours. It is not.

Real usable time is roughly the printed time minus two hours, and minus three if the ship tenders, as it often does at Sitka.

That leaves eight or nine hours, of which a substantial excursion takes four to six. There is not room for two.

The right number

One significant excursion per port. On a seven night itinerary with four port days, that is four excursions.

For a couple at an average of $200 per person, that is roughly $1,600 for the cruise. It is the number most travellers should plan around and the one most fail to budget. See excursion costs.

Where to spend it

The port to do free

Ketchikan. Four berths sit at the edge of downtown, and Creek Street, the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center and the Totem Heritage Center are all within a fifteen minute walk. The Married Man's Trail behind Creek Street takes you into rainforest in twenty minutes.

It is the only Alaska cruise port where a completely free day is genuinely as good as a paid one, and doing it saves $200 to $500 per person.

Why fewer is better

Fatigue. Four consecutive early starts with six hours outdoors in cold, often wet conditions is genuinely tiring. By day six most people want a slower day.

Margin. A single excursion with a wide buffer removes all timing anxiety. Two back to back removes all margin.

Attention. Six hours of whale watching, glacier viewing and a railway in one day blurs. One thing done properly is remembered.

Money. The saving on two or three unbooked slots funds one genuinely special experience instead, such as a helicopter glacier landing.

The one exception

If you have a long port call in Skagway, often ten to twelve hours, the White Pass railway in the morning plus a walk of the historic district and a ranger led tour in the afternoon works comfortably, because everything is within a few blocks of the berth.

What to book first

1. Anything with fixed capacity and a fixed departure time. Helicopter tours, whale watching and the railway sell out three to five months ahead on busy dates.
2. Anything weather dependent, booked in the earliest slot so a re flight is possible.
3. Everything else, which can usually wait.

Leave the last port lightly planned

By day six of a seven night cruise, most travellers are tired and have already seen a glacier, whales and a mountain railway. A free afternoon in Ketchikan or a short evening in Victoria is frequently more enjoyable than another coach.

More on structuring the day in how to plan an Alaska port day.