Best helicopter tours in Alaska during a cruise 🏔 Best cruise ports for helicopter glacier tours with walk + blue ice 🏔 Alaska cruise travel blog

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If you want to see epic Alaska landscape that includes glaciers and snow-capped mountains, then helicopter tours are absolutely worth it!

If you do a helicopter ride in Alaska, it will likely be one of the major highlights of your time in Alaska!

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The best cruise ports for helicopter tours in Alaska are Skagway and Juneau.

You can get epic views of the Alaska wilderness by doing a helicopter tour in Alaska.

And you will find some amazing helicopter tours in Skagway and Juneau.

There are 2 types of helicopter tours to consider in Alaska during your cruise:

• Helicopter tour with wilderness landing on a glacier
• Helicopter tour with dog sledding on a glacier!

You can do both types of helicopter tours in Skagway and Juneau.

If you will be spending time on land, then you can also do epic helicopter tours when you are in Anchorage.

If you will be doing a helicopter tour during your Alaska cruise, I highly recommend that you do one with a landing!

It will make the experience that much more epic!

👆 One of the best excursions in Alaska is a helicopter tour with glacier landing!

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👆 An epic so-very-Alaska excursion to do is a helicopter tour with dog sledding tour on a glacier! You can go dog sledding on snow in Alaska even in the summer!

👆 Spot the cruise ship! (Left!) There is a helipad near the Skagway cruise port. A helicopter tour can be a perfect Alaska excursion from a cruise ship!

👆 A helicopter flightseeing tour is one of the most epic things you can do in Alaska!

Best helicopter tours in Skagway and Juneau

In Skagway, you can look for helicopter tours through Temsco:

• Helicopter tour with glacier landing
• Helicopter tour with dog sledding on a glacier

I did both of these Temsco tours in Skagway through Princess excursions.

Here are the Princess helicopter excursions:

• Glacier Discovery by helicopter
• Dog sledding and glacier helicopter flightseeing

In Juneau, you can look for helicopter tours through Coastal Helicopters:

• Helicopter tour with Juneau icefield walk (glacier landing)
• From Juneau cruise port: Helicopter tour with Juneau icefield walk (glacier landing)
• Helicopter tour with dog sledding on a glacier
• Helicopter tour with glacier dog sledding plus additional glacier landing

In Anchorage, the one of the most epic helicopter tours to do is the Grand Knick helicopter tour with glacier landing.

Alaska Helicopter Tours offers helicopter tours from around Anchorage.

Aside from helicopter tours, another type of epic Alaska flightseeing tour to consider are seaplane tours in Alaska.

Helicopter tour or seaplane tour?

Whether you choose a helicopter tour or seaplane tour, it will almost definitely be a highlight of your time in Alaska!

Instead of choosing between a helicopter or seaplane based on the type of aircraft it is, I would say to choose based on what you want to see or the type of landing you want to do!

A helicopter tour is best if you want your flight to include a glacier landing.

Because, well, a glacier landing means you need to go by helicopter!

So if you want to walk across a glacier in Alaska with a chance to get up close and personal, then you want to look for a helicopter tour!

If you want to do dog sledding on a glacier in Alaska, then you want to look for a helicopter tour!

What do the negative reviews about helicopter tours in Alaska say?

Based on my observation, the negative reviews were almost always related to cancellations.

The negative reviews about dog sledding were about the lack of communication about the tour cancellation, and no offer to replace it with an alternative tour.

Yes, there is a chance your helicopter tour can get canceled.

In Alaska, weather conditions (aka flight conditions!) can change quickly.

Because of this, tours may not get canceled until an hour (or less!) before your scheduled tour time.

Of course, that is disappointing enough, but then what seems to happen sometimes is that tour companies do not communicate effectively with people about the cancellation. 

So the negative reviews are about what happens if you DON’T do the helicopter tour.

But for people who DO do the helicopter tours, there are rarely any negative reviews.

The vast majority are 5 star glowing reviews, no matter the tour company or how you book the tour.

That said, it is important to manage your expectations about potential cancellations.

Your helicopter tour might get canceled due to weather.

This is Alaska.

Helicopter tours do get cancelled at the last minute.

Weather can change quickly in Alaska.

This means that so can helicopter flying conditions.

And a weather-related cancellation may not be made until very close to your tour time.

According to Temsco, a helicopter tour company in Alaska:

Unfortunately, the weather in Alaska does not always cooperate and there are times when we are unable to fly.

If we are unable to fly a tour due to weather, our guests will receive a full refund.

In most cases, we will not make the decision to cancel a tour until within an hour of departure, as the weather can quickly change and we do not want to preemptively cancel a tour if it is at all possible it will run.

If we need to cancel due to weather or any unforeseen circumstance, you’ll receive a 100% refund.

It is standard among helicopter tour companies in Alaska to offer a full refund on your tour if they cancel due to weather.

Plan for an alternate to helicopter tours

Because it’s possible that your helicopter tour can be canceled, it’s best to know what you want to do in case that does happen.

Of course you want to hope for the best and that it doesn’t get canceled.

But unfortunately, it is a real possibility that it does get canceled.

And knowing this is step 1 in not being AS upset when it does get canceled.

It’s about managing your expectations!

So in the case that your helicopter tour gets canceled, which is an already upsetting situation, you don’t want to get further upset because you don’t know what to do.

You might end up just doing nothing because you don’t know what to do, and then you’ll end your day even more upset feeling like you’ve wasted a day in Alaska.

If your helicopter tour gets canceled, you might be offered alternate excursions.

But in case you are not, also research more things to do in Skagway and things to do in Juneau, just in case!

More below about my helicopter tours during my Alaska cruises!

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Types of helicopter tours during an Alaska cruise

Both of my helicopter tours were in Skagway in May.

1. Helicopter tour with glacier walk

You can do a helicopter tour in Skagway to see the Juneau icefield, glaciers, and snow-capped mountains.

Your helicopter tour is made even more epic by doing a wilderness landing on a glacier!

You won’t choose a helicopter tour based on a specific glacier, as that will be up to the pilot and the conditions of the day.

My helicopter tour made a wilderness landing at Meade Glacier.

We walked around on the glacier, saw blue ice, and saw glacier waterfalls!

👆 You might see glacier waterfalls as part of a helicopter excursion in Alaska!

2. Helicopter tour with dog sledding on a glacier

Another helicopter tour with a wilderness landing on a glacier that you can do is dog sledding!

The flight to the glacier that the dog sled camp was located on included amazing mountain views!

Yes, the dog sled camp is ON a glacier! My excursion was on Denver Glacier.

See more about this helicopter excursion

• Dog sledding excursion in Alaska

And if you like dogs and/or dog sledding, then you might like the onboard Princess cruise activity that might happen when your Princess cruise ship is in Alaska called puppies in the piazza!

And those are helicopter tours that you must consider for your Alaska cruise!

I did helicopter tours in Alaska in May of 2023. Your experience may vary!

What I did to give you more ideas for your Alaska cruise:

• Seaplane tours in Alaska
• Things to do in Skagway
• Things to do in Juneau
• Things to do in Ketchikan
• My Alaska cruise from Vancouver to Anchorage
• My Alaska cruise from Vancouver round trip

HAPPY HELICOPTER RIDE IN ALASKA!