Alaska Luxury Tours — Local services in Juneau

This was our favorite excursion from our Alaskan cruise trip. We were only in Juneau for 7 hours and wanted to go on a whale-watching tour and see Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls. There was no other tour that would have allowed us to do both in that time frame. However, I called and explained our desires, and they made it work for us. Shari picked us up in a nice van with large windows, allowing us to see the city as we drove to Mendenhall and Nugget Falls. She explained everything we were seeing along the way in great detail and was wonderful in answering all our questions.

When we arrived, she offered us snacks, drinks, and walking sticks, then guided us on the walk to Nugget Falls and the glacier. She stopped along the way to explain the beautiful plants and flowers and shared the history of the natural formations we were seeing. She paused for us to take photos and took us along the shoreline, providing the best views and a less crowded route to enjoy the stunning landscape. She then brought us directly to the marina to drop us off for the whale-watching tour.

I can’t recommend her enough. She introduced us to Mallory and Pete. Mallory was our guide and naturalist, and Pete was our captain. I’ve never had an excursion with the level of service they provided. It was absolutely the best experience my family and I have ever had. They served us food and drinks, offered us blankets, and there was a bathroom on board for our convenience. We had the best salmon dip, which was so good that we all ordered it as souvenirs for when we returned. They described the whole area to us, and we saw tons of whales. We were able to get close enough to see details of the sea life. We were extremely lucky and saw Tucker the whale breach several times, and I lost count of how many other whales we saw. We also saw sea lions and eagles.

I genuinely got emotional about how amazing and beautiful it all was, or maybe it was the fourth mimosa I had. Haha! Mallory was so knowledgeable and genuinely as excited as we were about all we were able to see. We learned so much from her. I also bought a t-shirt to commemorate the experience and lost it at the Red Dog Saloon later. When I called to see if I could purchase another one, they offered to replace it for me. I genuinely can’t express in words what a truly special team this is. We are...

We just got back to the ship and we had such an amazing time that I HAD to write a review. First, we were met at the ship by Dan who has a CRAZY amount of knowledge about all things Alaska. He typically gives a little tour on the way out of town but when we were early and had already heard most of the stuff he was going to share at a tour we took that morning, he decided to do a 5 min stop at the hatchery and ladder. We were blown away by the amount of Salmon trying to get in to spawn along with how knowledgeable he was. He noticed that the salmon that hadn’t entered the ladder were going crazy and pointed to us to keep an eye out. We were blown away to then watch a sea Lion catch a salmon and eat it!! Then it was back in the van to meet the boat.

Sarah met us at the top of the gangway and was super sweet and informative from the first minute we met her. Both “Scientist Sarah” and “Captain Serge” were amazing people. We felt pampered by them both right from the beginning and they really got into the game of trying to find whales to delight us with. We had told them early in the ride that one of us had a bucket list hope to see an Orca in the wild. Without telling us, they decided to try to find a pod of Orcas that they had heard about by Portland Island. Suddenly Sarah squealed: she and Serge had found us the pod of Orcas.

We were all ecstatic. Our bestie had misty eyes to know that he had seen such a rare site that he had always dreamed of seeing. He turned to Sarah and said: when we get home and tell people about Alaska, THIS is the story I’m gonna tell.

This tour would not been the same if we did not have Dan and his excitement of sharing his love of Alaska with us, And Sarah and Serge who are the most hospitable, knowledgeable team who genuinely love what they do. I really feel like we walked away with true friends. Is this tour expensive? Sure. But this is a once in a lifetime, bucket list thing and I cannot recommend to you enough to take the tour. Treat the three well on behalf of our group who left a little better because of the time we spent with...

This was an amazing whale watching experience, and I'm so glad we spent extra to do the luxury tour!

Our driver (I'm so sorry I forgot his name!) picked us up at the cruise ship dock in a nice Mercedes passenger van, and drove us to Auke Bay. Along our way, he shared facts about the town, the local wildlife, and some fun personal stories about life in Juneau. We stopped briefly to take in the view of Mendenhall Glacier and get some pictures. Then we piled back in and drove to the dock.

Captain Ben and Naturalist Lilli provided an amazing experience! When we came on board they had a delicious charcuterie board waiting for us--I especially enjoyed the salmon dip. They also had a great selection of drinks, including beer, wine, soda, water, and some other stuff I forgot--I had a lot of drinks on my tour. 😂

The tour crews keep tabs on where the local whales are hanging out, and listen on the radio to hear where other tours are encountering them. So it didn't take long before we spotted our first whale! Ben spotted a whale blow, and moved us as close as we're allowed, then spun the boat around to keep the stern facing the whale.

She came back up and took a few more breaths (the blow), and then we saw her tail flip up out of the water just before she dove down.

Half a minute later, she came back up and breached straight up out of the water! And then it happened again. And again. And AGAIN.

Next on our tour we came across the buoy with some sea lions. These creatures are very inquisitive and one of them swam right up next to our boat to check us out.

I can't stress how amazing it is to experience this on a boat with only 8 guests--there's plenty of room so everybody gets a great view. You're getting these amazing encounters with local wildlife as the crew talks about how they live, how they migrate, what they eat, etc, all while they serve you food and drinks.

If you can spare the extra cost, this tour is 100% worth the upgrade.

Thank you again Ben, Lilli, and Alaska Luxury Tours for an...