Transportation from Anchorage to Seward

[pajazz28]

DW and I are taking a 12-day crusietour  through NCL (5 days on land & 7-day cruise). on our sailing day which is the last day of the land portion we want to skip most of the land tour and make it to the ship early than scheduled. Our arrival time on the to the ship on our land tour schedule is 5pm but when I checked in a got a chekc in time of  12:30pm. Has anyone ever done this and what is the best way to travel form Anchorage to Seward Port? Please provide any information that may be useful, thank you. 

 

Also the last stop on our land tour is the Alaskan Wildlief Conservation. I hear it is not very exciting. Please share your experience?

 

[mapleleaves]

Some transportation options include:  rental car, cruiseline transfer, Alaska Railroad, bus transfer such as ACT shown below, or Park Connection Bus also show below.  

 

Alaska Cruise Transportation, Bus Transfer Tour to Seward, Whittier Cruise (alaskacruisetransfer.com)

 

Alaska Bus Schedules | Park Connection Motorcoach (alaskacoach.com)

 

As for the Wildlife Center, I thoroughly enjoyed it !  A great opportunity to see wildlife close up, moose, bison, bear, wolves, musk ox.     Animals - Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

 

[cruiseny4life]

27 minutes ago, pajazz28 said:

Also the last stop on our land tour is the Alaskan Wildlief Conservation. I hear it is not very exciting. Please share your experience?

I visited the Alaskan Wildfire Conservation Center in March of I don't remember the year. 

 

It was a wonderful visit! A Muskox charged me, grabbed my phone, and threw it in a puddle. We were able to see a curious wild ermine who was all white and hadn't started the change over to its' brown coat. 

 

Absolutely one of my favorite stops on our two week journey of Alaska from Seward to Fairbanks. 

[julig22]

Based on my land-tour experience, I suppose it would have been possible to stay behind at any time - but it would depend on your final-day itinerary - tours are contracted by NCL, not run by them.  Our final night was in Valdez and we took a boat to Whittier while all of our luggage went by land on the bus.  It's been many years since I took that trip but I vote with the others on seeing the Conservation Center. But then I go to Alaska to see as much wildlife as I can...

The regular Anchorage-Seward train leaves at 6:45am, arrives in Seward about 11:30.  The NCL chartered train leaves at 1, so those would be options for getting to Seward.

Fair warning, the trains do sell out, don't know about the busses. I'm doing Seward to Vancouver in late August and there are no seats showing for the day of departure, only a handful for the day prior.  On another discussion, the NCL pre-cruise train excursion is apparently sold out for the cruise after mine.