Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), Alaska Port Reviews

This was our first visit here. It is owned and operated by native peoples. We really liked it.

Icy Strait Point is a nice little town, with things such as a gondola and zip-line to do. However, it is largely just a cruise ship stop, rather than a particularly notable town/city as our other ports of call were. Nevertheless, we took a good whale watching boat trip, where we saw humpback whales, despite very poor weather.

We did the zip liner. It was a rainy, foggy morning. We booked the earliest time at 7:15. Highly recommend booking the earliest time so you won’t have to wait long. The rain was uncomfortable but they gave us goggles. My rain jacket was perfect for this excursion. The employees working the zipline were all about safety and seemed to enjoy being there. We also walked along the beach and skipped rocks. Peaceful but not much to do there.

Do the Zipline. For the less adventurous it’s a great spot to stretch the legs and go hiking for the short stoppage time.

Very overly touristized "adventure park" for Alaska.

We prepaid a combo of whale watching and zip rider from NCL directly. We only got to do the whale watching part. After waiting at the Zip Rider area for a long time and when it was our term to do the zip rider (the world’s largest one as we were told all along), we were told by the Bliss excursion staff to hurry back to the ship as we would biotic have time to go through it. Even though, there was enough time as the zip line operator told us. The worse part was after returning to the dock, which was just a walking distance, we had to argue with the very unhelpful and super rude Bliss excursion staff.. the time we wasted on the dock we would have completed the zip rider activity. After getting back to the ship, we wasted more time to try to get the resolution of this Huge mistake made by Bliss. No one wanted to take the responsibility or decision in making a full refund for our excursion that we did not get to do. Eventually after wasting more time speaking to the assistant director who finally agreed to refund the money to us. We wasted so much time that we should have enjoyed ourselves and we were extremely upset and aggravated by the situation… the point was we missed the one single activity that we wanted to do the most for the entire cruise. Our time, fun and excitement were rubbed because of these people and then we needed to waste so much time to get our money back…. Totally not acceptable. Wrote a complaint email to the President of NCL and the Guest Relations on August 28, 2022. Only received a generic response from the Guest Relations that it will take up to 30 days to respond. What a joke! BTW, our Icy Strait Port was cut short from 3 pm to 12:30 pm. Then we found the reason was because Encore could not get to one of their original port so they also came to this port. They stayed there much longer than Bliss. So are the guests of Bliss not as important than these of Encore? Shame on NCL whoever made this decisions. All of us spent a lot of money and time to visit Alaska and it is not to rush us from port to port.

Was able to go into port. Visited the gift shop/museum. No restuarants were open because of scheduled time in port. Liked that both the transporter and the gondola were scooter friendly

Enjoyed free short gondola ride to village. Very small.

Excursion was great to see the land. Jeep tour was good

The only place I really wanted to visit was Ketchikan and that was canceled and Icy Strait was what you traded it for, BIG DISAPPOINTMENT! We got a total of 2 hours there and with 3 other cruise ships all there at the same time gave us nothing but long lines and nothing else! I’m asking for a refund for the fees we paid for Ketchikan but didn’t go to! Not Happy about this one!