Hubard Glacier Viewing

[zelker]

Just got an email from Holland America that the Up-Close Exploring: Hubbard Glacier & Enchanting Disenchantment Bay shore excursion in Hubbard Glacier, Alaska has been removed from your sailing due to operational considerations.  They’ve apparently already credited it back to our credit card.  We’re on the July 29th Amsterdam sailing and wondering why they’ve canceled this far out.  Anyone else on other cruises coming up have theirs cancelled?  

[Italy52]

5 minutes ago, zelker said:

Just got an email from Holland America that the Up-Close Exploring: Hubbard Glacier & Enchanting Disenchantment Bay shore excursion in Hubbard Glacier, Alaska has been removed from your sailing due to operational considerations.  They’ve apparently already credited it back to our credit card.  We’re on the July 29th Amsterdam sailing and wondering why they’ve canceled this far out.  Anyone else on other cruises coming up have theirs cancelled?  

Hmmm.  Sorry to hear this.  The title of the HAL excursion is different from the one that we all have been talking about.  I wonder if your tour was associated with another company rather than Allen Marine???

 

 

[Italy52]

Zelker -- Just took a look at your itinerary on HAL and did see where the excursion was initially mentioned and the description seems to be the same as the excursion that we all have been talking about --- just given a different name by HAL.  Again, so sorry to hear about your cancellation. 

[zelker]

3 minutes ago, Italy52 said:

Zelker -- Just took a look at your itinerary on HAL and did see where the excursion was initially mentioned and the description seems to be the same as the excursion that we all have been talking about --- just given a different name by HAL.  Again, so sorry to hear about your cancellation. 

 

It was exactly the same excursion - Allen Marine's only doing one up there this year.  We booked it months ago so am really surprised they cancelled less than 4 weeks out.  Probably never know the reason but I did post a question to Allen Marine on their Facebook page about it so will see if they reply.  Also curious to see if it's cancelled on other cruises.

[cruises42]

It's cancelled on HAL for the end of August sailing too.

[zelker]

Hmmm.  Wonder what's going on.  Were you on Amsterdam or another HAL ship?

 

[cruises42]

Just now, zelker said:

Hmmm.  Wonder what's going on.  Were you on Amsterdam or another HAL ship?

 

Amsterdam. Is that what you are going on?

[zelker]

1 minute ago, cruises42 said:

Amsterdam. Is that what you are going on?

 

Yes.  Wonder if it's because she's a smaller ship and there wasn't enough interest.  Doesn't matter - nothing we can do but hope we're not fogged/smoked out like some have been already this season.  Enjoy your cruise!  🙂  

 

[cruises42]

1 minute ago, zelker said:

 

Yes.  Wonder if it's because she's a smaller ship and there wasn't enough interest.  Doesn't matter - nothing we can do but hope we're not fogged/smoked out like some have been already this season.  Enjoy your cruise!  🙂  

 

It seems way to early to cancel because of lack of interest. Some people don't even look at excursion until they are on the ship.
Hope they can put out the fires soon. Enjoy your cruise! I'd like to hear how you liked it. We have never sailed on HAL

 

[tysmomm]

Hello All.  

I was fortunate enough to take this excursion with Allen Marines on the Coral Princess in June.   It was worth every penny! I did learn, however, that sometimes they have to cancel the excursion due to icy conditions near the glacier. I don’t think it’s been canceled for any other reason than that. They made it very clear, and it was very obvious, that it could be dangerous depending on the icebergs in the water. 

[zelker]

36 minutes ago, tysmomm said:

Hello All.  

I was fortunate enough to take this excursion with Allen Marines on the Coral Princess in June.   It was worth every penny! I did learn, however, that sometimes they have to cancel the excursion due to icy conditions near the glacier. I don’t think it’s been canceled for any other reason than that. They made it very clear, and it was very obvious, that it could be dangerous depending on the icebergs in the water. 

Thanks for the input and glad you got to do it.  We've been to Hubbard multiple times so were excited to do it from a different perspective.  We're so far out though that there's no way they'd be cancelling due to ice since there's no way to know what the conditions four or more weeks from now will be.

[zelker]

58 minutes ago, cruises42 said:

It seems way to early to cancel because of lack of interest. Some people don't even look at excursion until they are on the ship.
Hope they can put out the fires soon. Enjoy your cruise! I'd like to hear how you liked it. We have never sailed on HAL

 

This will be our 4th Alaska cruise (out of 6 total) on HAL and the third time we're doing the 14 day itinerary.  We like HAL's itineraries, crew, and smaller (under 2,000 people) ships so tend to book them quite a bit.

 

As for the fires, the one on the Kenai Peninsula alone is close to 100K acres and I suspect the fires will not be out until Mother Nature steps in with either a lot of rain (they've had extremely high temperatures for the past few weeks and drought conditions since early spring) or the snow starts falling in the fall.  

[Bill Onboard]

Just did this same tour off the Celebrity Eclipse two days ago, we’re now just leaving Ketchikan.

Fires were not an issue. 

Ice was not an issue.

We had a nearly two hour view of the Hubbard as our boat navigated through the Growlers and Bergy Bits, seeing calving several times. Nice day, good view, fairly lucky. Our ship (Eclipse) was about a mile away, our smaller vessel was (guessing) a quarter mile, or perhaps a third of a mile away.

Also nice to be near water level to better appreciate the immensity of the Glacier. 

I would guess your cancellation has nothing to do with conditions.

Note: when we reserved our excursion it was presented as a 3.5 hour adventure. Not so. We had less then 2 hours and we were back at the boat.

The “Naturualist” was a young “graduate” who knew nothing about the Glacier or Alaskan wildlife - she seemed nice but that’s it. She was nice. You will not learn anything new and some of her basic information was inexcusably wrong (eg height of the Glacier, depth below water, etc). 

Other shortcomings on the trip too.

We did not completely regret going, but felt we overpayed for what was delivered ($250) relative to what was promised. Even the hot chocolate was hard to come by:-/  

We learned from others on the boat that booked later, that they had paid $150! Asked for and received half our money back. All said though, it is definitely a better view of the Glacier. 

[DebInAntigua]

7 hours ago, Bill Onboard said:

Just did this same tour off the Celebrity Eclipse two days ago, we’re now just leaving Ketchikan.

Fires were not an issue. 

Ice was not an issue.

We had a nearly two hour view of the Hubbard as our boat navigated through the Growlers and Bergy Bits, seeing calving several times. Nice day, good view, fairly lucky. Our ship (Eclipse) was about a mile away, our smaller vessel was (guessing) a quarter mile, or perhaps a third of a mile away.

Also nice to be near water level to better appreciate the immensity of the Glacier. 

I would guess your cancellation has nothing to do with conditions.

Note: when we reserved our excursion it was presented as a 3.5 hour adventure. Not so. We had less then 2 hours and we were back at the boat.

The “Naturualist” was a young “graduate” who knew nothing about the Glacier or Alaskan wildlife - she seemed nice but that’s it. She was nice. You will not learn anything new and some of her basic information was inexcusably wrong (eg height of the Glacier, depth below water, etc). 

Other shortcomings on the trip too.

We did not completely regret going, but felt we overpayed for what was delivered ($250) relative to what was promised. Even the hot chocolate was hard to come by:-/  

We learned from others on the boat that booked later, that they had paid $150! Asked for and received half our money back. All said though, it is definitely a better view of the Glacier. 

Wow, that's a big price difference! Do you happen to know if they booked really early, or really late?

[Italy52]

7 hours ago, Bill Onboard said:

Just did this same tour off the Celebrity Eclipse two days ago, we’re now just leaving Ketchikan.

Fires were not an issue. 

Ice was not an issue.

We had a nearly two hour view of the Hubbard as our boat navigated through the Growlers and Bergy Bits, seeing calving several times. Nice day, good view, fairly lucky. Our ship (Eclipse) was about a mile away, our smaller vessel was (guessing) a quarter mile, or perhaps a third of a mile away.

Also nice to be near water level to better appreciate the immensity of the Glacier. 

I would guess your cancellation has nothing to do with conditions.

Note: when we reserved our excursion it was presented as a 3.5 hour adventure. Not so. We had less then 2 hours and we were back at the boat.

The “Naturualist” was a young “graduate” who knew nothing about the Glacier or Alaskan wildlife - she seemed nice but that’s it. She was nice. You will not learn anything new and some of her basic information was inexcusably wrong (eg height of the Glacier, depth below water, etc). 

Other shortcomings on the trip too.

We did not completely regret going, but felt we overpayed for what was delivered ($250) relative to what was promised. Even the hot chocolate was hard to come by:-/  

We learned from others on the boat that booked later, that they had paid $150! Asked for and received half our money back. All said though, it is definitely a better view of the Glacier. 

I do hope that you filled out the Allen Marine excursion survey that usually comes with their trips and let them know how you felt about the experience/naturalist.

[geoherb]

I was on back-to-back cruises on the Island Princess in June. There's another small boat excursion offered to those of us doing b2b cruises in Whittier. It's the 26 glacier tour offered by Phillips. It's a 5-hour tour through Prince William Sound. We saw a lot of glaciers up close, including Harriman, Surprise, and Coxe. We saw coastal brown bears, eagles, kittiwakes, harbor seals, sea otters, humpback and fin whales, and Dall porpoises.

I considered doing the Hubbard Glacier excursion too, but decided not to due to the price. If we were doing a southbound cruise, though, where I did not have the Whittier excursion beforehand, I would.

 

The people I spoke to who did the excursion all loved it.

 

 

[Bill Onboard]

We booked the excursion early, my hunch is that Allen Marine made changes afterwards. Initial description was a boat for 20 passengers, we were on a boat with 150 people with room for many more. . 

I did fill out the card, but it was given to us just before we reboarded the Eclipse, so little time (and little room) to describe problems. So I suppose that was another problem:-)

The marine biologist’s “presentation” must be known to Allen Marine because it’s patently obvious, so they just didn’t care enough to hire someone willing to prepare.  If she had just read excerpts from a Wikipedia page it would have been okay... or even a handout of interesting facts and insights would have been better and less annoying. 

 

[Italy52]

2 hours ago, Bill Onboard said:

 

I did fill out the card, but it was given to us just before we reboarded the Eclipse, so little time (and little room) to describe problems. So I suppose that was another problem:-)

The marine biologist’s “presentation” must be known to Allen Marine because it’s patently obvious, so they just didn’t care enough to hire someone willing to prepare.  If she had just read excerpts from a Wikipedia page it would have been okay... or even a handout of interesting facts and insights would have been better and less annoying. 

 

I would still forward comments to Allen Marine or post on TripAdvisor.

[kkmiausa]

Hi Bill Onboard - we are scheduled for inside passage Vancouver to Vancouver on the 8th of August. What is the weather like now?  I know there was a terrible heart wave, but I noted temps in Seattle have gone down quite a bit.  How did you dress for day tours? Did you need a coat, or just a windbreaker or was it even too warm for that?  All info helpful.   We are from Miami and really hope it cools down when we are there.

[Bill Onboard]

The weather almost anywhere should be cooler than Miami in August:-)

It’s been pretty great on our trip, usually in the 60’s and low 70’s. Some cool breezes though. Rain can happen any time so bring that rainproof jacket and/or folding umbrella. They say Ketchikan is one of the rainiest towns in the world. The heat you heard about up in Anchorage didn’t increase temps as much in the Panhandle area of our cruise. Even a jacket wasn’t always needed and was too much at times, but we usually carried one with us anyway. We had a hat, gloves and good jacket and a light jacket Onboard with us if needed -and if you fly inland a ways on an excursion you probably will.

As a side note: Bears are really common all over, so if you plan on hiking much on your own, gauge your comfort level with those critters. 

[kawan999]

On 6/3/2018 at 10:52 PM, hubofhockey said:

I'll see if I can get some pictures up overnight on the 15th and post my first impressions on the 14th, the day of the excursion.

 

The weird thing is that we're doing the Hubbard Glacier excursion on the 14th and Major Marine Kenai Fjords 7.5 hour cruise on the 15th. I'm hoping that they are totally different. On the 16th, we're doing kayaking from Seward around Bear Glacier.

Hello,

Today is 5 years after your trip.  We are taking a Southbound cruise from Seward next week and reseaching excursions.  I am debating whether to take the 6 hr Kenai Fjords cruise ($170) in Seward or the Cruise excursion called Hubbard Glacier and wilderness explorer ($337-3hr). Since you have been on both, are they the same? Please advise. Really appreciate your input.

[wreckem2013]

Difference a few days makes. From my back to back on Radiance. Crystal clear day July 6 and poor visibility on July 8.

Edited July 19, 2023 by wreckem2013

[quack2]

Disclaimer:  I have been to Hubbard several times, and gotten pretty close to the face a few times, but have never taken the small boat excursion.

 

Having said that, I would be very surprised if the Hubbard excursion offers the same variety of wildlife and stunning scenic views as Kenai Fjords.  On my trip last month to the Kenai out of Seward, I saw humpbacks, orcas, harbor seals, sea otters, puffins, bald eagles, murres and probably some I've forgotten -- all on a single trip.  Not to mentioned several calving glaciers. 

 

Hubbard is spectacular, but I don't recall seeing the variety of wildlife that I've seen in Kenai.  In addition, the Kenai trips are much more likely to run during less than ideal weather;  your cruise ship and excursion boat might not even make it into the Yakutat Bay due to fog, as was the case on my trip last month.

[Rothko1]

On 7/13/2019 at 10:42 AM, geoherb said:

I was on back-to-back cruises on the Island Princess in June. There's another small boat excursion offered to those of us doing b2b cruises in Whittier. It's the 26 glacier tour offered by Phillips. It's a 5-hour tour through Prince William Sound. We saw a lot of glaciers up close, including Harriman, Surprise, and Coxe. We saw coastal brown bears, eagles, kittiwakes, harbor seals, sea otters, humpback and fin whales, and Dall porpoises.

I considered doing the Hubbard Glacier excursion too, but decided not to due to the price. If we were doing a southbound cruise, though, where I did not have the Whittier excursion beforehand, I would.

 

The people I spoke to who did the excursion all loved it.

 

 

 

Great photos!