As a follow-up article to our recent overview of Alaskan river cruises, we thought it might be helpful to shed some light on how to book a river cruise in Alaska. If you are interested in booking one of these cruises, you might be wondering if there is anything special about booking an Alaskan river cruise, or if it is basically like booking any other cruise. The answer to this question, like so many others, is “yes and no,” and it is the aim of this article to explain why.
It is essential to state up front what we mentioned in our previous article on the subject, namely, Alaskan river cruises are in a lot of ways not really river cruises at all. In any case, they are not like some of the other major river cruises, like Nile River cruises or Yangtze River cruises, because these cruises take place entirely on a river. An Alaskan river cruise is more like an Alaskan ocean cruise that stays closely to the coastline with frequent deviations into coves and bays. It is often not clear when a river technically ends and a bay begins, however, so an Alaskan ocean cruise may in fact spend part of its time on a river, or at least it will take you close enough to river for a smaller boat (e.g., a raft) to easily reach it and navigate it, a side activity that is possible on some Alaskan cruises.
We mention all of this to make two simple points. First, you shouldn’t think of an Alaskan river cruise as a trip up or down a river. Rather, an Alaskan river cruise follows a far more jagged route, cutting in and out of bays, going through narrow passages, and so on. The second point is implied by the first: an Alaskan river cruise must involve a small vessel, one far smaller than the huge ships operated by the major cruise lines. All of these major cruise lines of course offer Alaskan cruises, but the routes they follow will be less nimble than those followed by Alaskan river cruises.
For this reason, when you are looking to book an Alaskan river cruise, you can’t just call up the big cruise lines (which you may be used to dealing with) to plan your vacation. They don’t offer river cruises in Alaska in the way that “river cruises in Alaska” (however misleading the phrase) is generally understood. This also means that it is quite a bit harder to find Alaskan river cruises on any of the major cruise deal sites, like Cruise.com or Expedia. This is something that we have noticed time and time again. Since river cruises rely on small ships operated by smaller companies (at least in general), they are not as easy to find on the cruise deal sites, which at this point are one of the most popular (if not the most popular) tools for booking a cruise.
As such, if you are really determined to take an Alaskan river cruise and won’t settle for a more standard cruise vacation to Alaska, you’ll likely have to deal with a smaller company. There are at least a few out there that operate small vessels that give passengers an intimate and up-close view of Alaska. USA River Cruises has several cruises listed on their site, as does Adventure Cruises. Booking through these companies is a lot like booking through a major cruise line. You simply contact them (probably after exploring their offerings on line) to set up your vacation.
As you can see, booking an Alaskan river cruise is not a great mystery, but it is definitely different from booking a regular cruise. You can’t deal with the usual suspects (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, etc.), nor are you likely to find what you are looking for on many of the major cruise deal sites. Instead, you have to work with smaller companies. However, these smaller companies operate much like larger cruise lines, and in that sense booking an Alaskan river cruise is actually not much different from booking a regular cruise.