KETCHIKAN (WARD COVE), ALASKA Port Reviews

Funky little community with shops. We walked around the town and watched the salmon trying to get up the ladder, and the sea gulls and seals feasting. Also saw a number of bald eagle free m the ship

no excursions and did not go to the town as it was a 20 minute bus ride each way.

Trolley bus tour of the city. Learned a lot about natives building totem poles.

Very disappointed we were only in port for 5 hrs, NCL should have reversed this port with Ice Straight. Someone dropped the ball on this one.

Did no see Ketchikan at all . We signed up for the all you can eat crab lunch and we went straight back to the ship afterwards. This was only a 4 hr stop. Lunch was great but not enough time in port

I wish we had a few more hours in this port. We had just enough time for one quick excursion and a quick shopping stop in the Ward Cove Port shopping building. We did the Lumberjack Show which was an absolute riot - entertaining and funny. My kids loved it. If NCL is going to dock so far away from town, they should make sure there is ample time in port - next time I'll know better. Definitely make sure you take a cruise with MORE time in port!

Barely could get off ship and had to get back on. There was a huge line to be taken back to the ship

Long walk from the ship to the shuttle area. long line waiting for the shuttle. There is a twenty-minute shuttle ride into town. Ketchikan is the most interesting port. This is the only place we saw eagles. Lots of jewelry stores.

The reason I gave this Port 3-stars is because NCL needs to do a better job of coordinating the disembarkation process and explaining to travelers how to budget their time. The ship reaches the port early and travelers are allowed to leave the ship by 7am and must be back by 1pm. The issue with this port is that the NCL Dock is in Ward Cove, which is 20-30 minutes outside of Ketchikan. In order to get to Ketchikan, if you do not have an excursion which picks you up at the dock, you have to wait in line to get on one of the shuttles that takes you to town. There are a limited number of busses available to take people to town and I believe the busses only run every 30 minutes. It took us close to 45 minutes to get on a shuttle for the 25 minute ride to town. To make matters worse, while we were getting ready to disembark, the NCL Sun docked next to us and their passengers also joined the line for the bus. The NCL Sun is there until 8pm so it would be good to let travelers on NCL Encore to get off the ship in time to avoid the additional rush or have the Sun not dock so early. This also causes problems getting back from town as there are limited number of busses taking Encore and Sun travelers back to the dock. Other cruise ships dock in Ketchikan and can walk right off the ship and into the heart of the city. We purchased a tour once we reached town simply because the tour would drive us back to the port and we would not have to wait for a bus. I head that some people did not make it back in time and missed the boat leaving Ketchikan.

Not really in Ketchikan, we missed the convenience of docking downtown.