Advice or Experience with the Small Ships

We are planning an 07 cruise and want to do a small ship. This fits our personality better than the huge resort like boats. Does anyone have advice or experience? Three that I have looked at so far are American West, Glacier Bay and Cruise West. Thanks in advacne for any help.

Advice or Experience with the Small Ships

Cruise West docks here in Haines.....would highly recommend them, as this is an excellent destination for people who enjoy the outdoors......lots of hiking, rafting and kayaking opportunities......

Take a good look at the iteneraries, maybe the Cruise West ships also go to Glacier Bay........

Advice or Experience with the Small Ships

Oh, hikergirl - are you planning a land trip as well?? I am sure you would love it! I had fun following your posts on the Kauai forum - nice to see you over here, too! Good luck planning your trip! :)

Hi coalminer....I wanted to plan another Kauai trip but hubby has always wanted to see Alaska, so if all goes as planned, late next year (or we may have to wait till the next year depending on cost, budget and all the not fun stuff) we will see Alaska. We are not really ';cruise'; people, but I have been researching the smaller ships and it looks like this could be a good way to go for us.

almost forgot, we hope to do a land tour as well.....it will depend on time and of course money.

oh, good - the SE of Alaska is beautiful - lush rain forest, but the rest of the state is very different . . . sort of like driving around Kauai, but on a much, much larger scale. :) There are ways to save $$ and we can help you with that as well. Actually, costs are quite similiar to Hawaii, though we don%26#39;t have the steep taxes. So that might help in your planning as well. Good luck! :)

We did an inside passage cruise on the Sikumi in August.It takes 8 passengers.I did a description of the cruise-just search Sikumi.

We did a lot of research before and looked seriously at cruisewest.We stayed with quite a few that were on a cruisewest cruise and they were enjoying their time.They were however nearly all older than me and I am about to turn 60.

I would strongly reccomend a small ship cruise.Although the list price is high basically everything is included.You also get much closer to wildlife especially the whales.One day as we were moored for the night a brown bear came out of the forest no more than 50 yards from us.You wont get that experience on a large ship.

I would also strongly reccomend cruising the Inside passage only as most of the major sights in the gulf you can do by taking day trips when doing your land trip.

As for the land trip my must not miss list was of course denali but also Kennicott-this is not cheap but the flight in and out is spectacular and the history is amazing.The only problem there was a black bear that some idiot campers had been feeding.

When we were in juneau and Seward we saw the large ships come in for the day.Boy were we glad we decided on a small ship.

Thanks drron. Great insight. In my research it seems that lots of those smaller ships list 60-70 as the average age of the passengers. When we were on Kauai we ran into lots of people from the big ships that dock there and they all seemed ';old';, certainly were not adventurous and seemed to have some mobility issues. Hubby said we are way too ';young'; for that kind of cruise. Ha! We are not young (48 and 53) but are super young at heart and attitude. We are both phyically fit, very active with no health problems, we love hiking, anything outdoors, wildlife, history and also just kicking back with a cocktail or glass of wine once in a while. At this point I am leaning to Cruise West, but have lots of time to plan so may change my mind. Thanks again for your input.

Hi Hikergirl,

In addition to the three you mention, I%26#39;ve also been looking at Discovery Voyages.

http://www.discoveryvoyages.com/

In 1995 we did a 1 week inside passage cruise on Executive Explorer (Glacier Bay Cruiseline) It was GREAT!

We took an Inside Passage cruise with Cruise West this spring. I highly recomkmend it.. We were on the first sailing of the Spirit of %26#39;98 in May, from Juneau to Ketchikan. We were able to go to places the huge ships cannot, and had enoough flexibility so that the captain could stop and circle if, for example, there was a whale sighting. We spent one afternoon in front of a glacier, watchhing it calve and seing harbor seals floating on ice floes, and bears on shore with their cubs, etc. then we were put out in 10-passenger DIB%26#39;s to get closer to the action. On one occasion two rangers kayaked out to the ship and spent the day with us, helping with the spotting and giving information.

I gather from previous answers that persons see these cruises as consisting of doddering old folk. We didn%26#39;t have that impression at all. While there weren%26#39;t too many 30-year olds on board (because of the cost, I%26#39;ll guess) it didn%26#39;t seem like a geratric show. Anyway, we enjoyed the passengers as being slightloy more intelligent than those on a European river cruise we took the summer before %26lt;grin%26gt;, and, anyway you don%26#39;t do one of these small ship trips for the social life.

Go for it.