Cruises

This is a special year in Alaska -- the 50th anniversary of statehood. Every town and hamlet, the state legislature, and every local authority are planning 2009 celebrations in honor of the event. There will be parades, song and dance presentations, fireworks displays, sound and light shows -- you name it, Alaska is going to put its best foot forward to mark its half-century as a state. How much of this will be available to cruise passengers is not yet clear: Not all of the plans have been made, by a long chalk. But you can bet that somewhere, in some port, depending on the cruise you choose, you will be reminded of the fact that Alaska is celebrating a birthday.

Alaska's popularity as a top summer cruise destination is mostly the result of its own natural splendor, but partly because of its unavailability for most of the year. Inclement weather dictates that the 49th state is of interest to cruise lines and their passengers only from about mid-May to mid-September.

In 2007, the number of passengers on Alaska cruise ships moved over the 1 million mark for the first time, and the 2008 figure was also expected to top 1 million, especially given the weak state of the U.S. dollar against the euro and British pound -- when travel to Europe gets soft, Alaska tends to get stronger. Some people may have postponed their trips given the not-so-healthy state of the U.S. economy in 2008, and that may mean even higher demand for Alaska cruises in 2009.

Cruise passengers visit the towns and wilderness areas of the Southeast (the Inside Passage, also known as the Panhandle) or the Gulf of Alaska by day and burrow into their ships for effortless travel by night. The lack of roads between towns makes the waters of the Inside Passage the region's de facto highway. Your options -- apart from a somewhat limited airline schedule -- are, basically, taking cruise ships or the Alaska Marine Highway System (the state ferries). You have to be willing to invest more time -- both for the actual traveling and for the planning -- to utilize the ferries. And you have to be willing to give up the comforts and diversions of the average cruise ship. Then again, the ferry does give you unlimited stops along the way and a chance to meet Alaskan residents not only in major cruise ports, but also in smaller, less-visited communities.. For most people, the luxury of cruise travel is preferable to the rough-and-ready nature of ferry transportation.

No matter how much revenue cruise passengers (and ships' crews) generate for merchants in the ports visited, some locals aren't as welcoming as they might be. Alaskans are known for their hospitality, but they have their limits (don't we all?). The presence of too many cruise passengers has unquestionably spoiled some of Alaska's quaint places. Once-charming streets are transformed into virtual carnival midways jammed wall to wall with vacationers from simultaneous ship landings. As a result, no matter what residents may say, service standards suffer somewhat -- especially toward the end of the season when Alaskans have been subjected to a steady stream of strange faces for several months and can get, ahem, a little grumpy.

Some communities feel that the cultural bulldozing brought by cruise ships is not worth the economic benefit and have placed limits on the number of ships that can come in to port or have levied new taxes based on the number of people the ships bring. After years of fast growth, the industry has begun talk of a "carrying capacity."

The cruise lines have taken the prevailing mood very seriously. Individual lines have appointed community affairs officers with orders to smarten up the public's perception of cruising and cruise operators. And the industry, as a whole, appointed John Binkley, a prominent lifelong political figure (he's a former state senator, gubernatorial candidate, and chairman of the state-run Alaska Railroad) to liaise with both the elected officials in Juneau and the voters who put them in power.

As a visitor, you can avoid much of the human congestion caused by ships by choosing a small-ship cruise that spends more time enjoying the wilderness and the small towns that big ships can't reach. On the small ships you can enjoy Haines, for instance, or Cordova or Metlakatla and a dozen other places where the big guys don't (or, at least, seldom) go.

On the other hand, riding a megaship is a different kind of fun -- the ship itself is an attraction, with far more amenities than any of the towns along the way. If you need to relax and leave all stresses of life at home behind -- and if seeing Alaska wilderness isn't the most important part of your trip -- a big ship is the way to go.

Another way to avoid some of the disadvantages of overcrowding and service problems is to choose an early season cruise -- say, the last couple of weeks in May. One other option: You can always travel independently after the cruise to the real Alaska, inland from the cruise ports.

We'll go through the cruise options available in the state, focusing primarily on those that provide a true in-depth experience. For even more information, pick up a copy of Frommer's Alaska Cruises & Ports of Call (Wiley Publishing, Inc.).