LYNN CANAL, Alaska – Somewhere in the distance, on the giant cruise ships that hold thousands of people, the splashy evening entertainment is just beginning: elaborate production shows in glitzy theaters, comedy acts, karaoke backed by live bands.
Yet on Alaskan Dream Cruises' small Admiralty Dream, passengers are watching a spectacle of a different sort, one more distinctly Alaskan: a pod of orca whales frolicking in the waves just off the bow.
"They look like they're auditioning for Sea World!" shouts a giddy Michelle Spillman, 55, of Orange County, Calif., as the distinctive black-and-white mammals roll and breach as if performing.
The latest "after-dinner show," as some have come to call it — last night brought humpback whales, the night before Dall's porpoises — has lured all the Admiralty Dream's passengers out on deck.
All 31 of them.
Two years after the collapse of Seattle-based Cruise West eliminated the largest operator of small-ship cruises in Alaska, three companies have jumped into the resulting void, offering a new crop of off-the-beaten-path, wildlife-filled adventures on vessels that hold fewer than 100 people.
In addition to year-old Alaskan Dream Cruises, which operates the Admiralty Dream and a second vessel, Alaskan Dream, another new brand called InnerSea Discoveries is operating three small vessels in the state this year.
The third company, Guilford, Conn.-based American Cruise Lines, launched its first voyages in Alaska this week on the 100-passenger American Spirit.
Smaller slices of real life
Like the Alaska cruises offered by big-ship lines such as Princess and Royal Caribbean, the new small-ship sailings focus on Southeast Alaska's glacier-carved "Inside Passage," a beautiful region of snow-capped mountains and icy fjords. But the similarities, for the most part, end there.
Starting in remote Sitka, the Admiralty Dream's seven-night itinerary mostly avoids traditional stops such as Ketchikan and Skagway, where the big ships disgorge thousands a day. Instead, it heads into remote bays and fjords in search of wildlife and to such little-visited Southeast Alaska outposts as Petersburg, a scenic fishing town of just 3,000 people.
"We want to show off what it really is like here," says Alaskan Dream vice president Michael Wien.
In Petersburg, a lively local named Hoopie Davidson tours passengers around in a yellow school bus (she's also the town's school bus driver), eventually depositing them at a nearby trailhead to hike through the spongy muskeg. The next day the Admiralty Dream heads to the native Tlingit community of Kake, which has a population of just 600 people and where tourism is even rarer. Passengers visit with a totem pole carver and tour a locally run fish hatchery begun in the 1970s as a school project. Afterward, they head to the town's gymnasium for a demonstration of Tlingit dances.
As with other small-ship cruises in Southeast Alaska, a big draw of the Admiralty Dream is its ability to get passengers up close to wildlife in a way the big ships can't. In Tracy Arm, an icy fjord backed by a glacier, the captain steers the vessel toward shore for a better view of a giant brown bear lumbering along the waterline. Later in the day, he shifts course again to approach a black bear.
An entire day is spent in normally off-limits, Native American-owned Hobart Bay, where passengers kayak for hours along rocky shores and take turns in two-person motorized watercraft in search of wildlife. Some spot bears; others moose and black-tailed deer. The shallow shoreline is full of unusual starfish and urchins and other critters.
The amount and variation of wildlife amazes passengers such as Richard Walker, 58, of Perth, Australia, who is traveling with his wife, Monica. In addition to bears and whales, the voyage brings almost daily sightings of sea lions, sea otters, seals and eagles, he notes.
"It's almost as if they have cages full of all these things, and they're releasing them," Walker quips.
Like Walker, a small-business owner, many aboard the Admiralty Dream are in their 50s and 60s, although some are as young as 21 and as old as 80. They come from diverse backgrounds and professions — from doctor and lawyer to show lighting designer and dancer — but they all share an inquisitive mindset and a penchant for avoiding crowds. Big-ship cruisers, they aren't.
The people, the 'adventure'
"My husband and I had taken a Royal Caribbean cruise and said 'never again,' " says Betsy Smith, 63, of Forest, Va., who is here with her husband and three grown children. "What we wanted was something that would show us the parts of Alaska that the larger cruise lines can't get to. We were interested in the small villages and the true nature of the people. … Also the adventure."
By Nicole Edmund
Kayakers passing by a small island in Hobart Bay.
The only port call on the Admiralty Dream sailing that is on the standard Alaska cruise circuit is Juneau, the glacier-backed state capital, and even there the trip leaders mostly avoid the crowds. Arriving early in the morning at a dock several miles from downtown, they lead passengers to nearby Mendenhall Glacier before the big-ship tours arrive, when its lakeside trails and waterfall overlooks are empty save for a few locals walking their dogs.
Still, even a few hours in Juneau is too much for some. "I could feel myself tensing up," Spillman notes after passengers are given a couple of hours to wander around the town's tourist-mobbed, souvenir shop-lined center — pretty much the only time they come in contact with other travelers.
Though Alaskan Dream Cruises is new, its ships aren't. Originally launched in 1979, the Admiralty Dream shows signs of age. Cabins are small and simple — some might say Spartan — with modest twin beds in most rooms and basic showers packed into the same compartments as toilets. Cabins lack TVs, alarm clocks and other modern amenities.
The tiny Admiralty Dream also lacks the flashy public areas of big ships: no showrooms, spas or deck-top pool areas. The public spaces consist of several deck-top viewing areas and just two interior spaces: a lounge with a (newly added) bar and a small dining room with about a dozen tables.
But on this voyage, no one is complaining.
"The ship is simple, but it has everything you need," Spillman says. "When you are coming to a place like Alaska, you are coming to see the outdoors and wildlife and the towns."
Walker, the Australian, agrees. "This has been absolutely beyond our expectations," he says near the end of the sailing. "Coming to Alaska was a 30-year dream for both of us, and the trip has been a dream fulfilled."
