Small ship cruising

We did Silver Seas many years ago, and were very happy with the all- inclusive rates. I believe the ships are around 300 people.
Cruise Critic may be a better board than this for evaluating cruise lines.
Have a great trip!

mmary, you might want to see if you or the webmaster can move this to, say, Beyond Europe. It's in Trip Reports.

Unusual answer, and the company (a charity ... ) has warned that it my only be able to operate two more years, we did Southeast Alaska with The Boat Company. Their tiny ships carry about 20 cabins or less, and are more like a (large) private yacht. They are much more expensive than the big cruise companies, but dinner is all the guests at one table in the cockpit, very personalized day hikes, and anchoring alone in silent coves where even 250-passenger ships cannot fit. Our Naturalist spent part of the year living in a tree canopy studying bears, and the rest of the year with The Boat Company.

That said, we have been on about 10 Windstar trips, 150-300 passengers. They are starting Alaska in 2025, with a new 112 (?) CABIN ship, Star Seeker. Have mostly been to Europe with Windstar, plus Tahiti. The company falls right at the balance point between affordability and luxury, much discounting if you can accept uncertainty.

We have gone on several small cruises. I highly recommend Lindblad/ National Geographic, Windstar and Ponant.
We have sailed with Lindblad/ National Geographic several times, excellent itineraries, meals, cabins, lectures. Their trips are excellent in every way. There will be naturalists on board as well and they accompany you on the day trips too. We benefitted from hikes on the mainland too.

LOVE Windstar, UNcruise, SilverSeas, Ponant - you can't go wrong with any of them.

Azamara is entering the Alaska market. I would look at them.

My only experience with UnCruise was when the cruise ship I was on (Princess) had to rescue all the passengers from an UnCruise ship that had a fire in Glacier Bay. They did have a bunch of rafts attached to the ship that people could have jumped on if necessary, but our ship sent over a tender and evacuated everyone to our ship which I think was far more comfortable them. They were immediately given a meal in the dining room and warmed up. (They had been standing, waiting for rescue, on the top deck of their ship which was the muster station). Princess was about to start assigning to them to temporary staterooms until they could be brought to a port when UnCruise sent a whale excursion boat to pick them up and take them somewhere. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they lost a chance to be on a comfortable cruise ship for a whale excursion boat......

We gave up our chance to explore Glacier Bay to take care of the UnCruise passengers which was clearly the right thing to do. However, I would be hard pressed to ever go on an UnCruise ship after seeing this.

A massive transition and eons ago from traveling quite modestly within Europe on $5/day.

For Alaska, I would definitely go with NationalGeographic/Lindblad, just because we have experienced incredible
naturalists, and on board is usually a more relaxed experience vs. other brands. We have traveled with NationalGeo three times (Antarctica, Iceland/Greenland, and Sea of Cortez, and would absolutely highly recommend them.

Otherwise, we have had nice experiences (in other locations out of the country) with Silversea and Seabourn, both that also typically have smaller ships.

We cruised in Alaska with Carnival many decades ago, back before we knew how wonderful the smaller ships are. The stand-out experience we had was taking a helicopter to the top of a glacier, meeting the dogs and then taking a dog/sled for a trip around the top of the glacier. It was really a truly wonderful experience, we will never forget. Maybe NationalGeo or other small ships would offer something similar. In another port we took a float plane out into the wilderness and fished. There were something like 7 of us on that excursion. The guide took a special gun to scare off bear, if needed. We saw many salmon on shore that had just one bite taken out of the middles -- fish were plentiful that year at that time, so bear could be picky and only eat the "best parts."

We cruised in the middle of July that year, and it was "humpback whale city" --- saw an incredible number of them. While on that ship, we noticed the smaller ships were able to go closer to the shore/glaciers, etc.

Carol, holy wow!!!! That would be a nightmare, for sure. Wonderful how other ships take care of each other and their passengers.

When I researched for Antarctica, one of the things that made me "circle around" NationalGeographic/Lindblad was all the safety aspects I had read about...ice cutting abilities and assisting with other ships when needed, and a solid safety record. We had come close to booking with Silversea for that journey, but NationalGeographic won out for a few key reasons.

Well, fast-forward to when we were departing Ushuia, and I looked over to see the Silversea ship we would have sailed on, but with boarded up windows, sitting in port. Later I inquired of our captain, and apparently that ship had been hit by a monster wave (seems I recall with a bunch of French students on board), and it even broke out windows on the bridge of the ship. Our captain quickly explained that the NationalGeogrpahic (Explorer's) bridge sat up much higher. Silversea had balcony cabins down lower (several I saw boarded up), whereas NationalGeo (I think I recall correctly) had a few only balcony cabins on the very upper deck.

So, it is always wise to select not only the vibe one wants for a ship, but also a ship that is absolutely made for the area in which it will be sailing. No guarantees on anything, but good to consider several factors when making choices.