Tendering at Icy Strait Point Alaska

[europe10]

We will be on the CENTURY for an Alaskan cruise in August. We will tender at Icy Strait Point. Do we have to get an advanced ticket to reserve a tender time for that stop or is it just first-come-first-served? If you do have to get a ticket, where do you get it?

 

Thanks.

[phoenix_dream]

You will get information the night before on how the tender ticket process will work, including times and the location to pick up your ticket if you want to get off ASAP. They prioritize shore excursion people, certain Captains Club level people, and certain higher level cabin/suite people. Everyone else gets a first come/first served ticket. After a certain time (it will be announced), you can just proceed to the gangway without a ticket.

[Northern Aurora]

We've been at Icy Strait Point (Hoonah) several times, and just wanted to comment that the distance from the ship to the dock is very short, so the tendering process moves very quickly. We did a cruise through French Polynesia in which the distance from the ship to the dock was such that we were actually on the tenders for over thirty minutes at one port, so the tender process was very slow at that particular port.

[nw gardener]

We will be on the CENTURY for an Alaskan cruise in August. We will tender at Icy Strait Point. Do we have to get an advanced ticket to reserve a tender time for that stop or is it just first-come-first-served? If you do have to get a ticket, where do you get it?

 

Thanks.

Was on the Century in June, tender tickets were issued in the Rendez-Vous lounge on Deck 6 starting at 3:00, but the line to get them started to form a little after 2:00. You will see instructions in the daily the night before. Higher level suites and ship excursions will be prioritized and will get off first - in our case, seas where choppy and they could only run tenders off one side of the ship so it was painfully slow, even though we had a low tender ticket number and should have been off quickly - it did not work out that way at all as ship excursions got off first- we waited an hour and a half in a stairway with a slightly stressed out crew member who was in charge of keeping us happy in line while waiting. I believe quite a few people gave up. By 5:00 the seas had calmed so that they could run more tenders and there were no more lines and it is a short trip to the dock. We did arrive at ISP a little before 3:00, had to wait to anchor for 15 minutes or so for another ship to leave. Too bad the tender process didn't go smoother, but we got to see what we wanted to in ISP so all in all -ok.