Alaskan Excursions Questions

[GsR80]

I'm staring to plan which excursions I want to book for my upcoming Alaskan cruise, I've been watching videos, but am hoping to get some information from people who have done the following excursions we're considering.

Glacier Viewing

Curious about the difference between the Hubbard Glacier and regular explorer.


Skagway:

We're interested in the Yukon Expedition, but are a little concerned about it taking up the whole day. We'd like to have some time to explore the "village" a little, particularly with a visit to the Red Onion Saloon for...a quickie. I'm wondering even if we had time after if we'd be too worn out. Also, the video I watched of the tour seemed a little underwhelming. It seemed like it was a really a long time on a bus, with a few stops (I understand a directly booked tours might have a few more stops, but still a long time on the bus) to a staged tourist area in the Yukon for food and a small museum. The video I watch had a second stop that actually looked neat, but wasn't mentioned in the description on DCL. I'm wondering if the expedition is worth taking up all the entire day for people traveling to Alaska/Skagway for the first time?


Juneau:

Was interested in the Mendenhall Glacier, but it seemed underwhelming in the video and we don't really want to do the 2 mile hike down to get closer. We're also interested in the Tram ride, but it doesn't look that scenic in videos and I can't find any information about what the hikes are like at the top.

We were considering skipping Juneau because Icy Strait Point has a drum making excursion. We're leaning toward a Juneau itinerary instead because of sailing dates, but I'm interested if anyone has done the drum making? My husband and I are drummers and we're kind of bummed to be missing that.


Ketchikan

We're definitely planning on the Saxman Native Village, but I'm not sure what else we might do. The Rainforest Adventure seems cool, but maybe a bit rugged?

Also wondering if anyone has done any of the photography excursions. I'm a photographer and would love to get some great shots, but not sure it's worth it as I'm not really interested in the instruction.

We were really interested in doing Dog Sledding at some point but don't want to get on a helicopter. I watched videos of the camp, but I ended up just feeling bad for the dogs, so I'm not sure if I'd enjoy it.

We are trying to stay away from boating excursions since we want to enjoy the time we can being on land, but might be open to them. We are just two adults. And we're not interested in anything really athletic like kayaking or long hikes. Am wondering which experiences felt the most "Alaskan" to folks?

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[Mathmagicland]

Skagway:

We're interested in the Yukon Expedition, but are a little concerned about it taking up the whole day. We'd like to have some time to explore the "village" a little, particularly with a visit to the Red Onion Saloon for...a quickie. I'm wondering even if we had time after if we'd be too worn out. Also, the video I watched of the tour seemed a little underwhelming. It seemed like it was a really a long time on a bus, with a few stops (I understand a directly booked tours might have a few more stops, but still a long time on the bus) to a staged tourist area in the Yukon for food and a small museum. The video I watch had a second stop that actually looked neat, but wasn't mentioned in the description on DCL. I'm wondering if the expedition is worth taking up all the entire day for people traveling to Alaska/Skagway for the first time?

I can help with some Skagway comments. We did the Yukon Bus and Rail excursion with Chilkoot Charters on our first visit to Skagway and I’d highly recommend it!

https://chilkootcharters.com/

We did the 07:30 departure with the train first, which I feel is the best option to choose. Chilkoot gets the last car on the train, where there is a small outdoor platform out the back, so you can get some great pictures of both looking back to the harbor with the ship as well looking forward as the engine and train going around some curves, and everything in between. The lunch stop also had some sled dog puppies to pet snd play with. I think it was possible to add on a cart ride with sled dogs pulling, part of their summer training, but we didn’t do that so I may not be remembering correctly.

By taking the train first, we were about 15 minutes ahead of the bus-only tours or bus first tours to the lunch stop, which was nice. We also did two or three photo stops on the way to lunch that the bigger busses don’t make. We skipped the Welcome to the Yukon sign because there was a huge tour bus with about 100 guests already there, and hit it on the way back when there was no one there…a Chilkoot advantage with their smaller busses that hold maybe 16-18 people and aren’t full.

After the lunch stop we continued north to another little Yukon town, where we were the only group there, and we had about an hour to walk around,

On the way back to Skagway we had a couple more stops, including the welcome to Alaska sign, and a stop at a pull out on the other side of the road timed to catch the train on one of its afternoon return journeys in the canyon below which made for more great pics,

When we got back to Skagway, around 3pm, we had the option of being dropped in the center of town or at the port. Most of us got off at the center of town, which was the north end of the business district. Since the Skagway stop is usually 12 hours, we had over three hours to walk the mile back to the ship and to explore the town visiting shops, restaurants, the NPS Office, museums, etc. Skagway is small so this was plenty of time to see what we wanted in town and the walk was nice.

We felt this tour was great as it included so many things with a small group, and we still had sufficient time to explore Skagway so we felt we didn’t miss out on seeing the town. If you did the later 0930 start option with bus first and train second, you’d get back to town too late for casual wandering and nothing much is open in town before 09:30 so you’d miss seeing the town.