Portage Glacier Cruises — Attraction in Alaska

Portage Glacier Cruises

To Whom It May Concern:

I recently had an incident where my parents were stranded on Portage Lake due to waves and wind making them unable to get back to shore. I placed a call with Portage Glacier Cruises because the boat had been passing by their location and it might have been possible for them to provide aid, which I was lucky enough to learn through text message due to the limited cell services at their location.

After working with your staff, Portage Glacier Cruise staff contacted the forest service for potential aid. It took 45 minutes for your staff, port service, and for forest service to collaborate and determine that aid couldn’t be rendered. Even after your staff was able to identify their location, and had the resources for a rescue, but were refused emergency aid because they hadn’t paid for tour services.

Refusing aid in an emergency situation because of inconvenience is unacceptable, unethical, and in direct violation of several laws. These laws include the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea under regulation 33 stipulates, “[t]he master of a ship at sea which is in a position to be able to provide assistance, on receiving information from any source that persons are in distress at sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance” and the Salvage Convention which states, “Every master is bound, so far as he can do so without serious danger to his vessel and persons thereon, to render assistance to any person in danger of being lost at sea” and the American Standby Act.

Because of your lack of response, my family members were put at unnecessary risk of drowning, even at the acknowledgement of your staff members. They braved dangerous waters and made it to shore by skirting cliff faces in a canoe and dragging the canoe forward by grasping branches and rocks. They eventually reached an area that required pushing out into even more open and dangerous waters.

They were able to reach the shore after being stranded for four hours near a glacier and freezing water with very high winds picking up unexpectedly. In a life or death situation, four hours is extremely strenuous, and in this case could have resulted in the deaths of my loved ones.

I eagerly await your response on how your company will revisit protocols and procedures to better handle these kinds of situations, or if these procedures are in place, how will they be re-evaluated to place a higher priority in these situations. I have phone recordings of my conversations with your staff if they would help with these...

Disappointed in our experience with Portage Glacier Cruises. We had high hopes after the reviews online. It was raining at the time of our cruise on 7/20 at 4:30 pm. We were told boarding was 10 minutes prior to the cruise. We got in line 13 minutes prior and although the boat was there and ready, we were told we needed to wait in the rain for 3 more minutes because of insurance purposes. This staff member then meandered around and made us wait in the rain until 4:30 on the dot. Another staff, Mike, tried to convince him to let us on but he refused. Seating was in hard, unsecured office chairs. We were briefed on safety protocols but the amplification system was so poor that one could barely hear. The worst part, the narration was done by Mike. His narration was choppy, disfluent, stopped in the middle of sentences, mispronounced the majority of names and said “ummmm” “sorry” or pulled the microphone away and talked to someone else or himself. When we went upstairs to see the waterfalls closer up I saw Mike was reading off of a script. My question is why wasn’t Mike practiced on pronunciation and how to present the information to paying customers? To be honest, because of how poor the audio and narration was we know nothing about the glacier or its history.

Another gentleman came around with a block of ice with no explanation about it at all (or maybe we were supposed to hear about it in the narration). Staff offered to take pictures but probably should not have because every picture cuts off the waterfall, glacier, or one of the people. We sat at the glacier for a while to wait for calving but another staff member told us it is almost never seen.

The glacier is beautiful. The captain did a fantastic job getting us so close to the waterfalls and glacier. The other employee who should’ve helped Mike sat with a group of 4 military members and gave them personalized narration about the glacier. My thought is why didn’t everyone who paid get that opportunity?

This was the worst experience of our Alaska vacation and a waste of $98. We feel like we definitely got tourist trapped. The management at portage glacier needs to rethink the customer experience. Maybe it was because it was raining and the last cruise of the day? Maybe they just don’t care about our experience? At the end of the tour Mike advised everyone that this was his first time. His first time should have been practiced without...

This is approximately an hour and 5 minutes SE of Anchorage. We had one day to explore Anchorage before taking a cruise out of Whittier. This was one of my best memories from our trip to Alaska. We bought tickets on site. It's well worth the $49 adult charge. It's a safe and enjoyable hour cruise. There's warm comfortable seating beneath and open top seating above. There's restrooms at the pier and also on board ship. We visited late May. It was cold and rainy the first part of the cruise. Even though I was the only one at first to brave the wind and rain on top, it was well worth viewing the beautiful scenery. The sun slowly came out as we got closer to the glacier. We saw eagles, mountain goats, and black bears. I enjoyed the the melting snow streaming down the steep mountain sides. The Portage Glacier was mesmerizing along with the floating icebergs breaking off the glacier. The whole staff was friendly, welcoming, and informative. The young lady did an excellent job narrating as we cruised, and she is native to the area. She made our trip more enjoyable and even took our pictures with the glacier. Depending on mother nature, I'm sure every day is a different experience. I would do...