Cruise Town

Last summer Dan Blanchard, the CEO of Uncruise, said that one of two things needed to happen for cruising to resume safely — rapid testing or a vaccine. It seemed certain at the time that rapid testing would come first. But by December, people were getting COVID-19 shots here in Alaska.

The cruise companies have been raring to go since then. But there were two giant hurdles preventing cruise ships from coming back to Alaska in April when they usually start showing up.

For one, the Canadian border is still closed. And all cruise ships have to stop in Canada on their way from a U.S. port like Seattle or San Francisco to another U.S. port like Ketchikan or Juneau. That’s an ancient U.S. law.

Also, the CDC banned cruises last year. And even though it lifted its ban on cruises late last year, it was replaced with a long list of hoops that cruise companies and ports have to jump through before ships can operate in the U.S. again.

For more than six months, Alaska’s cruise towns have been staying hopeful but also realistic about the fact that getting around Canada and the CDC seemed pretty much impossible.

We’re back with a new season of Cruise Town because — spoiler alert — large cruise ships are coming back to Alaska in July.

In some ways, 2020 was taken to a whole new level in Juneau. Our isolated location here meant that we were somewhat protected from the coronavirus, but as of mid-December, we have had just over 1,000 cases of COVID-19 in the city. Five residents have died. We spent a few weeks in April hunkered down in our houses. Schools have been closed since spring break. We’ve already worn through our original masks.

But that’s stuff almost everyone has been through. We also saw approximately 600 fewer cruise ships and more than a million fewer tourists. That is to say, we had practically none.

And that means that a whole lotta money that normally flows through our economy, just dried up. Those giant ships bring jobs, sales tax revenue and cold hard cash to our town for six months every year. There are parts of Juneau’s downtown that have been boarded up for over a year now.

It’s been impossible all year to predict what would happen next. In May, we couldn’t imagine what an entire year of off-season would be like. It ended up feeling like summer never came.

But, how bad was it? Will the industry bounce back? Will Juneau bounce back? Will there be a season 3 of Cruise Town?

Adelyn Baxter and Jennifer Pemberton discuss the cruise season that wasn’t and what Cruise Towns might expect for next year.

Since this spring, we’ve been following along as the biggest cruise season in Juneau’s history got canceled. In August, Juneau did see some cruise visitors after all. But it was a far cry from the 1.4 million visitors we were expecting — it was 36 to be exact. 

The first and only cruise ship to sail in Southeast Alaska during the pandemic left Juneau on Aug. 1st and returned to Juneau just four days later, after a passenger on the ship received a call that he had tested positive for COVID-19.

For the past several months, it’s been a lot of “will they or won’t they” with regard to the cruise industry coming to Alaska this year. And now that it’s clear that they won’t, cruise towns in southeast Alaska are thinking about next year.

Juneau has a long, dark winter to look forward to after finishing out this shipless summer, but the hope is that by the time April rolls around, the pandemic will be on its way out or cruise ship companies will at least have figured out how to operate safely despite it.

In this season of the Cruise Town, we’re taking a look at what happens in a cruise town with no cruise ships. In the last episode, we talked about the events that brought us to this point — how a record breaking season evaporated before it ever got started. Now, we’re looking ahead at what’s next.

All along the coast of Alaska’s panhandle, communities — most of them much smaller than Juneau — welcome cruise ships every summer and rely on the revenue they bring.

Adelyn Baxter has an update from two other cruise towns along Alaska’s Inside Passage: Ketchikan at the southern end and Skagway at the top.

This is season two of Cruise Town: The story of Juneau, Alaska, a town of 32,000 people, that — until the pandemic — was host to over a million cruise ship passengers every summer.

A lot about Juneau’s future is up in the air still, but one thing is certain now: more than a million cruise ship passengers will not be coming to town this summer. Local businesses are already struggling to get by without tourists. By next year, Juneau could look like a very different place. It all depends on how the industry, and the world, recovers from COVID-19 and its economic fallout.

On this episode Adelyn Baxter catches us up on the last 3 months. How did we get here — to the point where Alaska’s biggest tourism season ever just vanished?

The Mendenhall Glacier is 9 miles from downtown Juneau as the raven flies. About 12 by bus. And Juneau’s suburb is the Mendenhall Valley, created by the 300-year retreat of the glacier. Recolonized first by moss, then alder and willow, and finally hemlock, sitka spruce, cul de sacs and ranch houses.

The glacier visitor center is a very 1960s building, designed by a guy with a New Deal background, so it feels like the Civilian Conservation Corp. meets Disney’s Tomorrowland. It’s rounded. With windows tilted out over where the glacier used to be. It’s a few miles away now, but the views are still spectacular.

You can see the real glacier right outside the window, but there’s a diorama of the glacier inside with lit up blue crevasses and a soundtrack playing overhead with the close up sound of the drips in the ice caves and the crashing sounds of a moving glacier.

Most of the people who visit Juneau by cruise ship are going to do one of two things when they get off their ship: take a bus out to the Mendenhall Glacier or go whale watching.

An Alaska cruise is all about the scenery. Sure, there’s plenty of fun to have on the ship, but the reason people come to Alaska is for the wild beauty of it. They come for nature.

And Juneau doesn’t disappoint.

But, this episode is about how Alaska can make some people squirm. Because climate change is so in-your-face here.

And the act of visiting Alaska and the Mendenhall Glacier is contributing to its demise. The whales might be starting to change their behavior after years of being chased by tour boats.

There’s an inherent irony in the fact that these attractions are being impacted more and more as they get more popular. And people tell their friends about getting up close and personal with a glacier or seeing humpback whales bubble feeding — which is something they only do in this part of the world– and then more people want to come!

And at some point, it’s just going to be too much, but no one knows when exactly that’s going to happen. And some people worry that we’re not going to know that it’s happened until it’s way too late to stop it.

Our theme music is “Juice Man” composed and performed by Whiskey Class. We also used “Taxi” from the band Revilla, “6 Faces, 1 Visage” by 11th Floor,  Shady Grove by Shake that Little Foot , “It’s alright” – Jenny Jahlee  “52 Hertz Whale” by The Mugris.