15-Night Transpacific from Seattle

Seattle cruise port is the primary departure point for Alaska cruises out of the United States, with ships running the Inside Passage route from late April through early October. The city has two cruise terminals about three miles apart on the downtown waterfront.

Ketchikan cruise port is the first major stop on most Alaska Inside Passage itineraries coming up from Seattle or Vancouver. The town sits on Revillagigedo Island in Alaska's southernmost panhandle, wedged between the ocean and steep forested mountains.

Sitka sits on the outer coast of Baranof Island, facing the open Pacific rather than the protected Inside Passage. This gives it a different character from other Alaska cruise ports: more exposed, more wild, with ocean swells and offshore islands visible from town.

Hubbard Glacier is not a port where passengers go ashore. It is a scenic cruising destination in Yakutat Bay at the northern end of the Gulf of Alaska, where ships slow to a crawl and spend several hours in front of North America's largest tidewater glacier.

Whittier is a tiny town of about 220 residents on the western shore of Prince William Sound, serving as the Gulf of Alaska embarkation and disembarkation point for one-way Alaska cruises marketed as departing from or arriving in Anchorage. Anchorage itself is 60 miles north by road, connected to Whittier through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, the longest highway tunnel in North America (2.