Would these 2 excursions be too much for one day in Juneau?

[Maimour]

Spouse and I are planning our first Alaskan cruise next summer and we’re overflowing with excitement! We are really intrigued by both the Tracy Arm catamaran excursion and whale watching in Juneau. Looking for thoughts on whether it would be too much to pack both into one day. If so and you only went with one excursion which would you choose?
 

The Tracy Arm excursion leaves from the ship at 9am and meets back with the ship in Juneau at 3:30p. Whale watching would then be 4:30-8:30p. The ship is docked in Juneau from 1p-10p. The double excursion option would give us no time to explore Juneau and barely time to eat lunch & dinner. 
 

This is a bucket list cruise for us and while we hope to return to Alaska again one day I can’t be sure. We live in the desert so both of these excursions would be first time awe inspiring experiences for us. Happy to hear your thoughts and advice!

[wolfie11]

It would be a very long day.  Odds are good that you’ll see whales on the Tracy Arm excursion as well.

[curry767]

I guess it really comes down to how much you and spouse feel you can handle. Personally I like to do as many things as possible, but I have to temper my capabilities to that of my family. You can always eat food on the ship anytime, but to me it’s the nature and scenery of Alaska that makes this my favourite place in the world. If it was me, I’d go for it.

I couldn’t quite tell, but by the sounds of it these excursions are ship organised tours. If so, you don’t have to worry about be back onboard by the correct time.

[Maimour]

30 minutes ago, curry767 said:

I guess it really comes down to how much you and spouse feel you can handle. Personally I like to do as many things as possible, but I have to temper my capabilities to that of my family. You can always eat food on the ship anytime, but to me it’s the nature and scenery of Alaska that makes this my favourite place in the world. If it was me, I’d go for it.

I couldn’t quite tell, but by the sounds of it these excursions are ship organised tours. If so, you don’t have to worry about be back onboard by the correct time.

The Tracy Arm would be through the ship but we were looking at whale watching with Jayleen’s. 

[Maimour]

40 minutes ago, wolfie11 said:

It would be a very long day.  Odds are good that you’ll see whales on the Tracy Arm excursion as well.

I was wondering about if we’d see whales at Tracy Arm. I really want to see orcas but I know that’s rare and not guaranteed anywhere. 

[peety3]

Is the Tracy Arm excursion one that starts from in Tracy Arm Fjord, or round-trip from Juneau? If it starts from TAF, this is doable, as long as you follow some tips I'll mention below. If it's round-trip from Juneau (meaning that you board the tour in Juneau and it goes to TAF, enjoys TAF, and returns to Juneau), you'll be too tired to do anything else.

We've done the TAF small boat excursion twice via Princess where the tour starts in TAF. First time there was just one tour boat, and we did our favorite whale watch afterward no problem (Gastineau Guiding's Photo Safari). Fair warning: the end of the TAF tour involves reboarding the cruise ship and everyone has to go through security. I recommend being at the front of the line if you're going to be anywhere time-critical for a second excursion (and the tour crew will likely assist with that process). Getting everyone off the boat took 20-25 minutes. My wife chose to be at the front of the line; I stayed back and took more photos. My wife was able to make it up to our stateroom and take a photo of the tour boat from above while I was still on the tour boat.

Second time we did the small-boat TAF tour we were on a slightly larger ship, and the tour vendor sent two of their 150-pax catamarans for this tour. In the morning when we were doing the "hurry up and wait" process to join the tour, they were asking us if anyone had 1:30 excursions (our small boat tour was scheduled to finish at 1:00pm) to make themselves known, and they were sorted onto the first tour boat. Our whale watch was 2:00pm, so we figured we were fine to be on the second boat. We didn't tie up to the side of the ship until 1:35pm (remember, our tour was supposed to end at 1:00) and finally made it onto the ship, across the ship, out through security "again", and down the gangway around 1:55...but our tour bus had already left. We said the magic words ("we were on a ship-sponsored excursion and this is a ship-sponsored excursion, therefore you should have been able to confirm that we weren't back from our other tour; regardless, these tickets say 2:00 and we aren't late.") and they quickly realized they needed to make things right.

[curry767]

3 hours ago, Maimour said:

The Tracy Arm would be through the ship but we were looking at whale watching with Jayleen’s. 

That does add a layer of complexity as shown in the example above, things may not run to schedule - especially cruise organised excursions. 
 

You would want to make sure you have some fat between tours and be 100% sure what the time will be for ‘last onboard’. Once you have that time you can work backwards. Also consider where the starting point for the tour is and allow transit time from the ship to that point. 

[Maimour]

9 hours ago, peety3 said:

Is the Tracy Arm excursion one that starts from in Tracy Arm Fjord, or round-trip from Juneau? If it starts from TAF, this is doable, as long as you follow some tips I'll mention below. If it's round-trip from Juneau (meaning that you board the tour in Juneau and it goes to TAF, enjoys TAF, and returns to Juneau), you'll be too tired to do anything else.

We've done the TAF small boat excursion twice via Princess where the tour starts in TAF. First time there was just one tour boat, and we did our favorite whale watch afterward no problem (Gastineau Guiding's Photo Safari). Fair warning: the end of the TAF tour involves reboarding the cruise ship and everyone has to go through security. I recommend being at the front of the line if you're going to be anywhere time-critical for a second excursion (and the tour crew will likely assist with that process). Getting everyone off the boat took 20-25 minutes. My wife chose to be at the front of the line; I stayed back and took more photos. My wife was able to make it up to our stateroom and take a photo of the tour boat from above while I was still on the tour boat.

Second time we did the small-boat TAF tour we were on a slightly larger ship, and the tour vendor sent two of their 150-pax catamarans for this tour. In the morning when we were doing the "hurry up and wait" process to join the tour, they were asking us if anyone had 1:30 excursions (our small boat tour was scheduled to finish at 1:00pm) to make themselves known, and they were sorted onto the first tour boat. Our whale watch was 2:00pm, so we figured we were fine to be on the second boat. We didn't tie up to the side of the ship until 1:35pm (remember, our tour was supposed to end at 1:00) and finally made it onto the ship, across the ship, out through security "again", and down the gangway around 1:55...but our tour bus had already left. We said the magic words ("we were on a ship-sponsored excursion and this is a ship-sponsored excursion, therefore you should have been able to confirm that we weren't back from our other tour; regardless, these tickets say 2:00 and we aren't late.") and they quickly realized they needed to make things right.

 

The Tracy Arm excursion would leave from the cruise ship starting right outside the fjord, not round trip from Juneau (we're going on HAL Koningsdam if that helps). Thank you for your detailed reply it's super helpful! 

[SightCRR]

When we were on Westerdam in July we did TAF from the ship that left and picked us up in TAF. It was ok but the ship was in most of the same area with the same views. I think it is a multi hour trip back to Juneau on the smaller boat in the same area and I would skip it. The Jayleen's trip was fantastic and ours was booked more than a year in advance so book now if you haven't. I would skip TAF on the small boat and look for more to do in Juneau. One thing to do would be to walk to see the whale project.  

[Maimour]

9 minutes ago, SightCRR said:

When we were on Westerdam in July we did TAF from the ship that left and picked us up in TAF. It was ok but the ship was in most of the same area with the same views. I think it is a multi hour trip back to Juneau on the smaller boat in the same area and I would skip it. The Jayleen's trip was fantastic and ours was booked more than a year in advance so book now if you haven't. I would skip TAF on the small boat and look for more to do in Juneau. One thing to do would be to walk to see the whale project.  

Thank you this is helpful. I have read that people say there's a lot of downtime in the transit from the fjord back to Juneau. I would like to maximize our port time and the Tracy Arm excursion would be a huge chunk of that.

[zqvol]

3 hours ago, Maimour said:

Thank you this is helpful. I have read that people say there's a lot of downtime in the transit from the fjord back to Juneau. I would like to maximize our port time and the Tracy Arm excursion would be a huge chunk of that.

The transit back to Juneau is another whale watching excursion. There is no down time. TAF will not eat up a huge chunk of your port time. You might be an hour behind the ship, but the views up fjord and on the glacier face are well worth the time. I will say that depending on the time of year and the ice conditions the big ship may be able to see the glacier but often that is not the case, where on the small boat tour you will see it.

 

 

[Maimour]

7 hours ago, zqvol said:

The transit back to Juneau is another whale watching excursion. There is no down time. TAF will not eat up a huge chunk of your port time. You might be an hour behind the ship, but the views up fjord and on the glacier face are well worth the time. I will say that depending on the time of year and the ice conditions the big ship may be able to see the glacier but often that is not the case, where on the small boat tour you will see it.

 

 

Oh boy this is super convincing for us to just do the TAF excursion. We will be going in July, I’m assuming this will fare ok for ice conditions? I didn’t think of TAF as also being an opportunity to whale watch. 

[CCJack]

Does the TAF seek out whales, or just see whales as they traverse back?   Note that whale watching excursions (from Juneau and ISP) spend effort to seek out whales.  They are not allowed to chase, but they communicate with other whale watching boats, head to an area, then wait at the surface with engines off to see whales surfacing, etc.  It is a lot of fun.   On our ISP whale watching we did see transient orcas, a little too up close.  They rammed our boat several times.   This was a couple years ago before there were news stories about Orcas sinking boats.   I probably would be more scared today!

 

Our whale watching excursion from ISP was a great excursion.  I would expect Juneau whale excursions to be equally fun..

 

Have a great cruise.

 

[Maimour]

4 hours ago, CCJack said:

Does the TAF seek out whales, or just see whales as they traverse back?   Note that whale watching excursions (from Juneau and ISP) spend effort to seek out whales.  They are not allowed to chase, but they communicate with other whale watching boats, head to an area, then wait at the surface with engines off to see whales surfacing, etc.  It is a lot of fun.   On our ISP whale watching we did see transient orcas, a little too up close.  They rammed our boat several times.   This was a couple years ago before there were news stories about Orcas sinking boats.   I probably would be more scared today!

 

Our whale watching excursion from ISP was a great excursion.  I would expect Juneau whale excursions to be equally fun..

 

Have a great cruise.

 

The TAF does not seek out whales as far as I know. I would LOVE to see whales up close and hopefully see the bubble net feeding which is why I really wanted to do the separate whale watching excursion.

 

I feel like this cruise is going to make us want to return to Alaska for sure, so maybe instead of cramming both I should just pick one for this cruise and hold out hope we will return again and save the other for that second future cruise.

[peety3]

YMMV. We've seen whales on the TAF tour each time, but it was luck far more than strategy and never as good as a proper whale watching excursion.

 

Maimour, it looks like you have messages disabled. Can you message me instead? I will send you links to our photos from our 2014 and 2015 cruises where we did the small-boat TAF tour as well as a whale watch in Juneau. You can then compare the views and the whales, and decide for yourself what makes the most sense.

 

And yes, this cruise will make you want to return. The future cruise desk is always busy on these cruises, as people frequently make a decision to come back time and time again.

[Maimour]

20 hours ago, peety3 said:

YMMV. We've seen whales on the TAF tour each time, but it was luck far more than strategy and never as good as a proper whale watching excursion.

 

Maimour, it looks like you have messages disabled. Can you message me instead? I will send you links to our photos from our 2014 and 2015 cruises where we did the small-boat TAF tour as well as a whale watch in Juneau. You can then compare the views and the whales, and decide for yourself what makes the most sense.

 

And yes, this cruise will make you want to return. The future cruise desk is always busy on these cruises, as people frequently make a decision to come back time and time again.

Looks like my messaging is disabled entirely. Thank you for the offer though - or if you want to upload a few of your favorite photos here?

[zqvol]

2 hours ago, Maimour said:

Looks like my messaging is disabled entirely. Thank you for the offer though - or if you want to upload a few of your favorite photos here?

Messaging is not allowed through CC, it is turned off for everyone. 

[peety3]

First photo is perhaps the best of the whale(s) we got to see returning from TAF. The other five are what we saw on our whale watch out of Auke Bay (Juneau) later that same day.

[Maimour]

Absolutely beautiful photos peety! So you have done both tours in one day - would you say you were knocked out at the end of the day but happy you did them both? Or wish you’d had more time/less rushed on that day?

[peety3]

13 minutes ago, Maimour said:

Absolutely beautiful photos peety! So you have done both tours in one day - would you say you were knocked out at the end of the day but happy you did them both? Or wish you’d had more time/less rushed on that day?

We've done both tours in one day on two separate cruises. Absolutely happy we did them both on each occasion. They make for a long day, no doubt, but we know what we're in for so we're early to bed the night before and we're willing to miss a few things on the boat ride back to Juneau for a tiny powernap.

There's also a distinct "hurry up and wait" factor at multiple levels. There's a frustrating HUAW early that day while we wait in the (Princess) theater until we can board the tour boat. I also feel that the Princess itinerary (yours may be different) ends up with HUAW at a higher level: a slow 36 hours to get to Ketchikan, then an afternoon in Ketchikan, morning in TAF, afternoon in Juneau, early start in Skagway, (so it's go-go-go), then a slow 48 hours to get to Victoria, then go-go-go in Victoria, brief pause, and it's off the ship. You can change the feel of all of that by not doing two tours on a TAF/Juneau day like that.