Alaska on Your Own

[cantwaitt]

Which excursions/tours/sites in Alaska best lend themselves to doing on your own as opposed to buying NCL's expensive tour?

 

I understand you can easily get a bus to Mendenhall Glacier and to totem Bight State Park.

 

Is this true? Any other suggestions?

 

I have found that most things in the Caribbean and Bahamas are easy and much cheaper to do on your own. I know Alaska is not the Caribbean.

[Toyz711]

all of this information is discussed on the alaska boards. in fact, is about the only thing discussed over there ;)

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=55

yes, there is a shuttle to mendenhall..you can find the ticket booths around the parking area, in front of the tram office. the shuttle go right to the visitor's center. the city bus goes there, also, but you have to walk about 1 1/2 miles from the bus stop to the visitor's center.

speaking of juneau, mt roberts tram is right at the docks...if the weather is nice, you can buy tickets and go up.

don't know about cheaper, but the local vendors are known for smaller tour groups and more personalized tours.

have you checked the websites for the ports:

http://www.traveljuneau.com/

http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/districts/mendenhall/

http://www.skagway.com/

http://www.visit-ketchikan.com/

flightseeing and glacier landing tours sell out early....limited seating on the planes/helos. renting a car in skagway and driving the hiway to the yukon is popular for folks that don't want to but the big $$ for the train/bus combo tours. but cars are limited and need to be reserved early.

[electricron]

speaking of juneau, mt roberts tram is right at the docks...if the weather is nice, you can buy tickets and go up.

 

The tickets for the Mount Roberts tram has been reported this year at $25 per person.

On a rainy, cloudy day it's an interesting experience, as there's plenty to do once you're up there, shopping, hiking, dining, etc., but on a clear day the views are outstanding. The top shops are run by the Native American tribe. You might as well leave some vacation cash with the local natives.

 

Some say don't spend your cash to ride up on a cloudy day, I'll disagree. It's awesome up there, rain or shine.

[Travel Lover]

Ketchikan is very doable on your own. It is so beautiful to just walk around the town and shop etc.

Victoria you can take the shuttle to the harbour area and walk around and shop. You may be able to go inside the nice beautiful hotel and walk around too, not sure.

Skagway you will want to do a tour. You can probably make your own reservation for the train. We rented our own car and that was great.

[ute_fan]

One thing that's very easy to do by yourself is to rent a car in Skagway and drive to Emerald Lake. If you do, make sure to print off Murray's guide that is mentioned on the Alaskan boards. He posts as Yukon, and you should be able to easily find the link to it.

 

As far as the train in Skagway goes, we found that there wasn't a significant difference in cost between booking through the cruise line or booking directly. If you're interested in doing one of the combined bus/rail tours in Skagway, check our Chilkoot tours. They use much smaller buses than the big ones used by the cruise lines. Even though we booked our bus/rail tour through NCL and thoroughly enjoyed it, next time I'd definitely try using Chilkoot.