Ketchikan

Ketchikan runs two separate cruise facilities. The downtown berths are operated by Ketchikan Dock Company — a consortium of Holland America, Princess, Royal Caribbean, and a local landowner — under a long lease with the City of Ketchikan, and they open directly onto downtown: Creek Street and the totem-pole displays are a few minutes' walk. The newer Mill at Ward Cove, on the former pulp-mill site about seven miles north, runs a complimentary shuttle into town.

Both are dock facilities — no tender involved either way, which makes Ketchikan one of the more reliable calls in this cluster from a weather-cancellation standpoint, even though it's genuinely one of the rainiest towns in the country.

Misty Fjords National Monument, the region's signature scenery, isn't a walk or even really a drive — it's typically a floatplane or boat tour, and that's the piece of a Ketchikan day most worth booking ahead rather than deciding on the pier.

Downtown Ketchikan needs no advance plan — walk off and you're there. Misty Fjords does: it's the one piece of a Ketchikan day worth booking before you arrive rather than deciding on the pier.

Which of Ketchikan’s two docks your ship uses changes the entire day, and the full guide is built around that split rather than treating the port as one place. This page stays at the port-identity level; that one goes deep on what to book from each berth. Booking a tour yourself? Our comparison of Shore Excursions Group and Viator covers which of the two suits which kind of port day — and when the ship’s own tour is still the better buy.