We have been to Ketchican twice, once on Disney and once on Holland America, and have done and enjoyed:
- Misty Fjords floatplane
- Lumberjack show
- Alaska Coastal Expedition
All three were worth doing, and all three can be booked independently. In fact, we independently booked the first lumberjack show of the day, which was supposed to be a "Disney Exclusive", but in fact anyone could book it on the show's web site (or via Viator or any other booking site). The only reason it was "exclusive" was that the Wonder was the first to arrive that day and the other ships didn't get in in time for the first show. And the special Disney features of the show were minimal. They had a classic Mickey head on a couple of washtubs they were using for targets, and I think they made a couple of Disney-related jokes. Otherwise it's the same show. Pretty standard lumberjack show - corny jokes and tree-oriented "competition" that always seems to end in a tie, requiring a big-finish tie breaker. Those teams are just so evenly matched, they always tie! Go figure!
The Coastal Expedition is named something else on the other sites like Viator and other excursion booking sites, but it's pretty obvious which one it is - it's the one with individual 4-person rigid inflatable boats. If you have a family of 4, you get your own boat. Basically you form a convoy - the guide is in the lead boat and everyone follows along in their own boat. Every once in a while he signals for everyone to "raft up" where we all threw him our mooring lines and he pulled us into a raft formation so he could talk and point out features. That was a fun trip. I said, "hey, I've never driven a boat before, is that a problem?" They said, "no, not really; just don't hit anything." The instructions were about 1 minute long - "Steer with this - push this forward to go forward, pull it back to go backward. OK, let's go!" But they were right - the boats are super easy to handle, and it's all protected water so there really weren't any big waves to worry about. We saw orca (which apparently is not common), lots of eagles, some sea lions, otters, and a lot of beautiful country.
And Misty Fjords is just breathtakingly beautiful. Amazing pinnacles and fjords, completely unspoiled. Totally worth every penny.
We would also highly recommend the Alaska Fish House, which is right next door to the lumberjack show. We wandered in randomly on our first trip, and it's just really great, fresh fish & chips and chowder. Expensive, I suppose, but when we came back to Ketchikan on another cruise, that was the first thing the whole family agreed we needed to do again. We built our visit around eating lunch there.
