Seward Cruise Terminal Opening Delayed After Inspection Uncovers Issues
If you're booked on Ovation of the Seas' May 15 or May 22 Seward sailings, Silversea's Silver Moon (May 14), Celebrity Summit (May 15), or Viking Venus (May 20), expect embarkation/debarkation in Whittier instead, about an hour and 45 minutes from Seward by land. Ovation isn't expected to dock in Seward until the end of its May 29 sailing, arriving June 5. Check with your cruise line for updated transfer arrangements before departure.
A $137 million rebuild getting tripped up by leftover piles in the seabed is the kind of detail you only catch in a hands-on inspection, and it's telling that the delay is measured in one week, not months. Royal Caribbean's guarantee of 140,000 passengers a year through this port shows why nobody's scrapping the plan over an eight-day slip. The losers here are the smaller-capacity lines like Silversea and Viking, whose passengers now face an extra land transfer from Whittier; the winners are the UnCruise Adventures ships, small enough to dock as scheduled without disruption. If I had a Seward embarkation booked before May 22, I'd be calling my cruise line now to confirm the Whittier transfer logistics rather than waiting for a last-minute notice.