Well, it is the last frontier

Cruise Travel, July-August, 2005 by James A. Lessly

The Alaska Port Guide by M.T. Schwartzman (Cruise Travel, June 2005) brought to mind another reason to use the cruise-line-sanctioned land tours. During early September 1991, we cruised on Princess Cruises' Fair Princess from Whittier to Vancouver. While calling in Juneau, several passengers chose to visit a glacier area, via floatplanes. This was a Princess-sponsored tour.

Later that day, quite a fog came in at the glacier, preventing the floatplanes from returning those passengers to the Fair Princess by departure time. Whereupon, Princess Cruises arranged for those passengers to be picked up by helicopter! (The fog was dense horizontally, but not vertically.) Those passengers were retrieved successfully, and we departed Juneau only about an hour late. It was no problem for the Fair Princess to travel the relatively short distance to the next port-of-call, Ketchikan, on schedule for the next morning's arrival.

If they were on an independent tour, those passengers could have well been stranded.

James A. Lessly, O'Fallon, MO