^^^
Forgot to add: we rented a car rather than taking the train ride to the White pass and Yukon. There were 4 of us and the car was cheaper and gave us more freedom.
Loved Alaska
Thank you @WhereIsMyKindle ! Keep em comin!
In Skagway have lunch at Skagway Brewing Co. Locally owned, great food (try the halibut fish and chips), and if you drink beer they brew a signature Spruce Tip Ale, flavored with the buds of local spruce trees. It’s very good and they claimed that it had lots of vitamin C.
We did a multi-gen Inside Passage cruise from Vancouver. It was wonderful. There was scenery to look at the entire trip. I’m not really a “cruise” person but this is truly something different. We booked a balcony room so we had some privacy when we wanted it but could still see the sights.
As for excursions, be aware that many are quite costly, so if they matter the most to you and you are on a budget don’t spend too much on the room itself. 
Here’s what some of us did:
Juneau:
You beat me to it! Above and Beyond Alaska is a great way to see Mendenhall. Instead of the hike we kayaked across the lake and then walked up the glacier. It was amazing and a truly memorable day.
Ketchikan: We walked around town and then part of our family went on a snorkeling excursion. Yes, in Alaska! It was lots of fun, everyone says they would do it again, and it’s kind of a fun conversation starter years later. This one was booked through the cruise line, but you can look them up online @ Snorkel Alaska.
Skagway: We did a little toursity shopping in the town and then took the railway excursion to the Yukon. Booked through the ship.
I would love to go back. If you have the chance to go, I’d really recommend it.
@jym626 We enjoyed the Skagway train ride into Canada. Beautiful views and great info on the history of the area. We arranged this ad-hoc once on shore. We were theist boat of the season and many stores and activists had shut down for the season. Therefore the train was uncrowded and really enjoyable.
I fell head over heels in love with Victoria. It’s like Seattle 40 years ago, before it got discovered. When we went in '15, we had tea at the Empress, on my bucket list for decades. When we go this summer, we’ll probably hit Butchart Gardens.
I second dietz’s suggestion of going either at the beginning of the season or, as we did, at the end. Some of those ports can accommodate 3 or 4 ships, so in Jun/Jul/Aug you’ll be rubbing shoulders with 10 or 12 thousand people in those little Alaskan towns. We were the only ship in port at each stop when we went in mid-Sept, which was really nice.
Enjoyed places that have been mentioned - White Pass Railroad, Mendenhall Glacier. In Victoria, we took an excursion to Butchart Gardens and a city tour-very nice. Enjoyed Seattle as well.
We did an NCL cruise last May (my kids get out of school early) and loved it. We flew into Vancouver two days before the cruise and then stayed 2 more nights after we arrived in Seward. (Tip: the flight to Vancouver and then return from Anchorage was just a 25,000 frequent flyer mile ticket.) We were pleasantly surprised by the demographics of our fellow cruise passengers - much younger and family-oriented than we had expected. We’ve cruised before, and my husband and I didn’t do nearly as many activities on the ship as we had on previous cruises. We were quite content to just sit and watch the scenery go by. My kids (12-16 at the time we sailed) all made friends and hung out with their friends a lot, which gave us some nice adult time.
While this was an expensive vacation, we did it for far less than an Alaskan cruise usually costs for a family of five. We flew on frequent flyer tickets, booked an inside room during a kids-sail-free promo, and rented cars in ports to explore on our own. Driving the Klondike Highway in Skagway was one of our highlights and we still talk about all the bears we were able to see from the car. So I highly recommend an Alaskan cruise!
We did the snorkeling in Ketchikan too. Sounds crazy, but it was fun and we had never seen anything like the big sea stars.
The small museum in Skagway is worth a visit. My kids were under 10 at the time and they still remember the piles of gear required for going to the Yukon. If you’re going on the train, go to the museum first.
We got tickets for the train that day in Skagway. It was significantly less expensive than the cruise tour version. The miners’ trail is visible in many places. After visiting the museum we could imagine so many people each making multiple trips to lug all their gear over the mountains. We loved (and were a little freaked out by) the high wooden bridges.
We enjoyed the Mount Roberts Tramway in Juneau. The views are spectacular and there are nice hiking trails at the top. We did this directly too, the only added feature for the extra cruise tour price was a bus ride the very short distance to and from the ship.
Loved Glacier Bay and it was one of the reasons I chose Princess for Alaska.
DH and I went several years ago on Princess out of Vancouver. We were lucky enough to be in Vancouver for a conference for my husband and so the options from Vancouver were Holland America and Princess. Princess to me had the better itinerary as it went both to Glacier By and the College Fjords. Princess did a very good job with the naturalist on board, bringing the Park Service Rangers on board for presentation. The ship was the right size, never felt overcrowded and the food was very good. We did not have a room with a balcony and it was fine to see all thei incredible scenery from the outside decks as well as when we were comfy sitting by the indoor pool. Our trip was in June so not that many kids but for the most part in the beginning pretty rainy so you need to be prepared with that. It was incredible that when we went to sleep after 11 PM the last night, the sun was still out. We flew back from Anchorage as we unfortunately did not have the time to add a land based trip in/around Alaska so we’ll need to go back!
We did the White Pass Railway and that was great. We did not book excursion from the ship but from a provider in which we did the train one way and a passenger van heading back down which was good because it was able to stop at look-out spots and the Welcome to Alaska sign.
In Juneau when you get off the ship there are booths that sell tickets for school buses to go to the Mendenhall Glacier only about 10 minutes away. The Visitor Center there very interesting and the glacier itself is quite a sight to see.
Look at the ferry routes of the inside passage. If you lived in Seattle you might know more than most about that kind of option. I am in the group that would rather eat my own liver than be on a cruise but the ferrys have berths and you can do your own thing.
Love that line, @Sybylla – “rather eat my own liver than be on a cruise”, LOL
I too have always avoided the organized tour kinds of vacations… but this time it might be different. Thanks for the advice about the ferry routes… I hadn’t thought of that.
About 12 years ago, now, we did an Inside Passage cruise with my parents and siblings from Vancouver to Seward on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner. It is a good deal smaller that most cruise ships – I think it had under 700 passengers. Very high end. We are totally not cruise people, but it completely worked for us, and it was a great way to travel with my mother, whose Parkinsons had really begun to limit her mobility. (It was on that trip that my parents finally accepted that she was essentially wheelchair bound, but there were still lots of interesting things she could do, and the “kids” (in our 40s and 50s) could be with her much of the time and do fabulous things for a few hours without her. Lots of intellectual content on the ship – geologists, oceanographers, Tlingit anthropologist.
Our favorite outings: kayaking on the bay in Ketchikan, helicopter ride and hike on the Mendenhall Glaciar near Juneau, walking around Sitka and going to the sensational local museum there, full of amazing turn-of-the-last-century photographs of Russian settlers and Tlingit tribespeople. Sitka was the place we would most like to return to.
I have never had any interest in a cruise, but the in laws took everyone on an Alaskan cruise when the two oldest grandkids graduated from high school. We did a 7-day Princess cruise in 2007, from Vancouver to Anchorage. It was amazing! I did a lot of research on Cruise Critic, and I ended up booking our shore excursions through companies highly recommended on that website. We also did kayaking in Ketchikan and a helicopter ride/hike on the Medenhall Glacier. In Skagway, we rented an SUV & crossed into the Yukon Territory - the scenery was outstanding!! My in laws went on the train, but our car trip was so much better in terms of what we got to see and do.
We did! My H said he’d never go on a cruise unless it was to Alaska.
We left out of Vancouver, we’ve seen the passage from Seattle to Vancouver many a time so it was best for us.
Disney Cruise line. Tracy Arm, Skagway (ziplined), Juneau (floatplane to Taku Glacier and Ketchikan (no excursion).
It was wonderful! Just stunning. We are balcony people on vacation in general and spent our time watching the scenery when not busy on the ship or in port. Which wasn’t actually as much free time as we’d expected!
We all liked it so much we’ve done 2 other Disney cruises, one with the kids and one without. I’d love to be planning another. We would go again in a heartbeat.
@cameo43 To answer one of your original questions, about feeling crowded – we went on Alaska on Princess, and they do an amazing job of spreading people out and managing traffic flow so that it rarely felt like you were in a crowd. The photo gallery in the evening after the shows could sometimes get congested but other than that, it wasn’t a problem. Oh, except for the strange lineup at the dining room for the 5:30 seating. People start getting in line at like 5:15, which I don’t understand at all because they all have reserved seats. But this is easily avoided by arriving at 5:35.
The only annoying crowds I’ve been stuck in were getting off the ship at the end of the cruise. Every &*()& time. Other than that, I’ve enjoyed cruising, especially with a quiet balcony.
Yeah, that’s kind of unavoidable unless you’re either not checking any luggage or one of those special people who also get pre-boarding.
I shouldn’t say that there are never crowds, @cameo43 . There are various performances throughout the day in the Piazza, and they will draw a lot of people, but that’s fun. If your itinerary includes scenic cruising, eg, spending several hours in Glacier Bay National Park, you’ll find a lot of people up on the top decks (the solution to that is Deck 7 
). But in terms of those irritating, pointless, standing-around, shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, almost none of that.
We went in July, and we did not experience any crowds (other than the folks who set up in the hot tub in the a.m. & stayed all day & night - but considering how much they were drinking, I would not have gotten into that hot tub, anyway). We could sit on deck chairs (it wasn’t like they needed to be in the non-existent sun), and we could easily get into shows. We got a balcony room, so we didn’t have to battle crowds to see stuff - but we did go up on deck for things like Glacier Bay National Park. Even that was fine; everyone we were with could see.