Major Marine Tour Review: Kenai Fjords National Park – Seward, Alaska

This blog post about the Major Marine wildlife cruise in Kenai Fjords National Park is a real, no-nonsense review. I’ll answer the question ‘Is the Major Marine Tour through Kenai Fjords Alaska worth the money?” You may think by the time you’ve finished reading this that we didn’t have a good time, and that’s not the case at all. We had a fun time and it was well-worth the money, but I would not do it again. Major Marine Kenai Fjords cruise in Alaska is not perfect, it’s very touristy and it has its own set of issues. I’m not going to sugarcoat things. So with that said, let’s get on with the review and guide!

Major Marine Kenai Fjords Tour Quick Details

This blog post guide refers to only the Major Marine 7.5 hour wildlife cruise out of Seward, Alaska. Major Marine offers a bunch of other cruises, going to various spots in and out of the park, all departing from Seward.

Location:
You will board the boat at the Harbor 360 hotel in Seward, Alaska. The hotel is located within easy walking distance of the train depot. We arrived by car and plenty of parking is available.

Cost: We paid ~$190 for two people. We had a BOGO coupon from the Alaska Tour Saver book. I highly recommend purchasing this if you are doing an Alaska road trip this summer as it will save you hundreds of dollars! Otherwise, you’ll pay $120-240 per person, depending on which cruise you choose.

Time Commitment: A Major Marine Cruise will likely take up your whole day. If you want to see the glaciers and get out onto the water, it’s worth it.

Food: For our tour, they had a buffet (extra $), ala carte hot food, and glacier margaritas. You can also bring your own food aboard.

Medication: If you don’t take anything else away from this post, please please please take some Dramamine or motion sickness meds before you go on this cruise. The Gulf of Alaska is very rough and there is a 100% chance you will see puking people on your tour. Don’t let it be you!

Overall Organization: I felt that the organization, from boarding to disembarkation and everything in-between is excellent.

Boat staff: I loved that we had an all-female crew, including the captain. I liked that we each got to meet the Captain as we were boarding the ship. The staff is extremely enthusiastic, to a fault, but we’ll get to that point later.

Sailing on the Major Marine Kenai Fjords National Park Tour

Check-in for the cruise is at the Harbor 360 Hotel (you’ll be given more detailed instructions once you book the tour). The check-in process was slick and we were out on the dock waiting to board within minutes.

You are given assigned seating when you check in for your cruise. Your seats will depend on when you booked your cruise. Because I booked this cruise 6 months in advance, we were one of the first people booked on the boat, so we got prime seating. But don’t fret too much about seating – the assigned seating is really only for your meals – most people are moving about the boat once you leave the dock.

The boat is narrated by both the captain and an on-board National Park Service ranger. The captain stopped whenever she spotted some wildlife.

Wildlife on Major Marine Tour

Now, speaking of wildlife, this particular tour (the 7.5 hour boat ride) is noted to be a “Wildlife” tour, which was my reason for booking it. And while we did see wildlife, it just wasn’t as I expected, and perhaps I should’ve researched more (though, in my defense, I researched this tour as well as my entire Alaska trip in general very, very thoroughly). We saw sea lions, puffins, jellyfish, random birds, and otters but because of the size of the boat, you cannot get very close at all — and this boat isn’t all that big. When you read the Major Marine website or look at the brochure you’re handed upon boarding, you’ll see all these amazing close-up wildlife shots – you won’t get anywhere near that close to take an amazing picture of a puffin or otter, even if you have a large telephoto “wildlife” lens. I had my 400mm lens with a teleconverter and my pics aren’t anywhere near as close as the ones in the literature. If you want to get those pics, you need to kayak or book a cruise with another company that uses smaller boats to get those photos.

Related: If you want to see puffins up close, you’ll probably just need to suck it up and go to Iceland.

Lunch

For our cruise, you had the option to purchase the buffet meal when buying your tickets. We chose not to eat the lunch, as the food choices just weren’t what we wanted – they serve salmon and prime rib and it’s expensive. My sister and I both aren’t fans of either meat choice, so we saved some money by bringing our own lunch. We were happy with that decision after seeing the meals the other tourists were eating. Frankly, it looked very unappetizing – it made our PB&J look gourmet. Not to be a snob, but it was served on paper plates with plastic utensils – who eats prime rib and salmon on paper plates?

In addition to the buffet meal, they do serve a la carte food – hot dogs, chili, etc. I thought the prices were reasonable, though we didn’t try anything.

Scenery and Glaciers on the Major Marine Tour of Kenai Fjords

The scenery is beautiful. You’ll go through Resurrection Bay and then out in the open waters of the Gulf of Alaska (that’s when things get hairy, but we’ll get to that later). You’ll see a few different glaciers – Holgate Glacier and Aaliak Glacier (both are tidewater glaciers, which gives you the chance of seeing them calving!). The boat will stay by these glaciers long enough for everyone to get all the photos they could ever want.

Once you’ve left your final glacier of the trip, one of the staff members will fish out a giant chunk of glacier ice from the bay and serve up glacier margaritas! They’ll chop and carve away at the ice and for only $5 (!! how cheap is that?), you can enjoy a glacier margarita! Of course, we had to partake!

After that, you’ll make your long journey back to Seward.

Major Marine Kenai Fjord Tour – The Negatives!

Ok, so here’s where it gets real. I’ve told you the basics – and positives – about the Major Marine Kenai Fjords Tour. Let’s get into the ‘cons.’

Food

I already mentioned the lunch buffet but a couple more things – my sister and I heard lots of complaints about it. It’s expensive and not worth the cost. We can’t speak to this by way of first-hand experience since we brought our lunch, but there were far too many people we overheard who did not enjoy it.

Staff enthusiasm

What planet are these staff members from? The Major Marine staff is absolutely over-the-top with their enthusiasm about this tour, that it comes across as forced. I love happy people but this was too much.

For example, the weather we had for our boat cruise was gloomy and foggy, with driving rain through a good portion of our sailing.

Yet, from the time we stepped on the boat until the time we disembarked, we were beaten over the head with what a “BEAUTIFUL DAY” it is.

Beautiful day my ass. Look. I know it’s Alaska. It rains a lot. Chances are, when you do this cruise, you will have similar weather. If you get a sunny day, consider yourself lucky. I don’t care how you phrase it – I don’t care how ‘blue’ the overcast weather makes the glacier look – cold, driving rain and dense fog is not a “beautiful day.’ We are not dumb.

I’m not sure I could handle the staff if I went on this cruise on an actual beautiful day. They’d be pissing themselves silly over the weather.

Rough Seas

Obviously, the wrath of Mother Nature is not something Major Marine can fix, but you need to understand how rough the water really is. Even if you use another company, it doesn’t matter — if you want to visit Kenai Fjords, you must go into the open ocean, which is VERY ROUGH. People will get sick on your cruise. You will witness people tossing their cookies right in the dining area. Do yourself a huge favor and take some kind of medication before you get on the boat (once you’re on the boat, it’s too late for it to kick in). I am not one to get seasick and I was feeling a little dizzy at one point, though I did not get sick.

It gets boring

7.5 hours is a long time on this boat. You and all the other tourists will start out the day all excited, jumping out of your seat every time the captain says she sees wildlife, but after a while, you’ll shrug your shoulders and think about taking a nap. We saw so many people sleeping through at least half the cruise; it’s a very long day.

Inconsistent narrative about the environment

I wouldn’t be mentioning this but the crew made a big hullabaloo about not giving out plastic lids for the free coffee because of so many people are “supposedly” tossing them into the water. Yet, the buffet meal is served on paper plates with plastic utensils. If so many folks are supposedly tossing those coffee cup lids into the ocean, why would they stop there, and not toss a spoon and a paper plate overboard too? But I guess people just want to toss the lids. Riiiighhht.

Being that they serve a lunch buffet, you need to grab a new paper plate and new set of plastic utensils with every trip. Seems to me that they should be using actual dishware and silverware if they care so much about the environment – lots of waste being produced with all those people and all those buffet trips! But they can’t possibly let you have a goddamn lid for your hot coffee as you traverse up a few flights of steps on a very rocky boat because they “care so much” about the environment, as the hot coffee spills and burns a hole through your pants.

Major Marine Kenai Fjords Tour – Final Thoughts

Phew. That was a long post, and I hope you’re still here with me. Bottom line, despite the negatives, my sister and I did enjoy the cruise but do not feel the need to do this again. I hope to find myself in Seward Alaska again soon, and if I do, I’ll try out another company with a smaller boat to get more of the experience I was hoping for.

Another option if you want to do a tour like this but don’t like rough water is to take a boat cruise that leaves from Valdez. There, you sail through the Prince William Sound, which has calm water. I recommend the LuluBelle cruise. I wish we would’ve done that. Next time!

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