Disney Magic Alaskan Cruise Review – Day 6: June 2, 2026

Wow, it’s day six already as this 7-day Alaskan sailing on the Disney Magic is winding down. This will be a bit of an unusual day: half sea day, half port day. We didn’t arrive at our last destination, Ketchikan, until 2 PM. With all aboard at 7 PM, there’s not much time to work with.

With the usual assortment of activities offered, I decided to spend most of the morning relaxing and sorting through photos and videos that had accumulated so far this week. One listing in the Navigator that caught my attention, though, was a Q&A session with Hiba and Ainsley as part of the Broadway Stars Series. Since I missed their follow-up show a few nights prior, I was thrilled to get another chance to learn about their journeys on stage.

With the assistant cruise director acting as interviewer, they discussed what inspirations led them to a career in the arts, various roles they’ve played, and those they missed out on. They began in more of a traditional interview manner with a list of pre-prepared questions, then opened it up to the audience. They had plenty of good stories to tell, ranging from on-stage follies to favorite roles and castmates. A great sneak peek at what life on stage is like.

Ketchikan, Alaska

Much like the musical chairs of docking at Icy Strait Point, we had to wait our turn for a slip in Ketchikan, leading to our mid-afternoon arrival. While waiting for our turn, I decided to turn off airplane mode and catch a local Verizon tower, one of the positives of traveling to US ports. I got a bit of a surprise as my weather app popped up with a local advisory. A heat advisory. Let me say that again: A HEAT ADVISORY. In Alaska. At a whopping 82 degrees! The horror! How will we ever survive? While I was enjoying the humor behind it, the locals we later encountered expressed the reality of it. We were told that it only reached these temps a few days per year and that very few homes or businesses even had air conditioners. I was unbothered and enjoyed wearing shorts and a t-shirt all day!

As always let’s start off with Disney Cruise Line’s description of this port:

Learn more about the 5th most populous city in Alaska, billed as the “Salmon Capital of the World.”

Approximately 7,800 residents call this place in southeast Alaska home. Located on Revillagigedo Island along Tongass Narrows at the foot of the towering Deer Mountain, the city is named after Ketchikan Creek, which flows through the town.

Local Culture and Flavor
Evidence of the city’s pride in its native roots is felt in the pervasive cultural influences that seem to color the entire region. Major attractions boast towering totem poles, celebrating the various tribes indigenous to the area, while shops of every size offer one-of-a-kind, hand-carved items for tourists.

Ketchikan has an economy that is—and always has been—centered on fishing. The waters surrounding the town teem with 5 types of salmon: king, red, silver, pink and chum—making it a destination of choice for professional and amateur fishermen the world over.

Past and Present
Ketchikan’s humble beginnings started when a salmon saltery was established in 1883. In 1885, 160 acres of land were purchased from local Native Americans and—a year later—the first salmon cannery was built at the mouth of the Ketchikan Creek.

By 1900, the fishing trade was flourishing and the town was officially founded. Ketchikan, already successful from industrial fishing, soon branched out and became a valuable mining supply center due to the discovery of gold and copper in the region, followed by a flourishing logging industry that continued throughout the 20th century.

Today, Ketchikan remains a treasured tourist destination where some of the world’s most awe-inspiring natural wonders share center stage with an intriguing and inspiring Native Alaskan culture.

As Alys had mentioned to me, Ketchikan is a “proper port” and offered a variety of excursions to choose from. From seaplane rides to lumberjack shows and an actual city to walk around and explore, you’re sure to find something here for everyone in your travel party. The only drawback was the shortened time frame in which to take it all in.

Here’s Disney Cruise Line’s description of the area and what there is to explore ashore:

With natural treasures and timeless sites, Ketchikan offers unique experiences steeped in Native Alaskan traditions.

Ketchikan boasts the largest collection of original 19th-century totem poles in the world. Be sure to spend some time at one of the 3 totem pole parks in the area—each with majestic, multi-colored Tlingit and Haida totems amid a spectacular, rural setting.

Shopping
Shopping is conveniently available at sites adjacent to the dock or within a short walking distance. Steeped in Native American tradition, jewelry and fur shops offer unique paintings, prints, sculptures and glassware. Galleries sell totem carvings, masks, hand-painted drums, cedar bark baskets and jade carvings. Additionally, there are locally canned and smoked seafood delicacies for sale.

Creek Street
Stroll back through time along this historic city boardwalk. Today, the colorful houses that remain are homes to a museum, eclectic shops and a restaurant. During the summer months, the Creek Street Footbridge offers fantastic views of spawning salmon.

Totem Heritage Center
Established in 1976, this facility houses and displays original, salvaged totem poles from abandoned Tlingit and Haida village sites, in addition to other Native Alaskan relics. Offering guided tours and a video about preservation efforts, the center includes totems that are over 100 years old.

Deer Mountain Tribal Hatchery and Eagle Center
Overlooking Ketchikan Creek, this hatchery—considered by some to be the best in the state—boasts salmon by the thousands, and includes observation platforms where you can watch natural spawning. Owned by the Ketchikan Indian Corporation, the center also features illuminating exhibits on native fishing and offers an up-close encounter with 2 magnificent nesting bald eagles.

Saxman Totem Park
This picturesque park includes approximately 26 beautifully sculpted, multi-colored totems, a tribal house where authentic dance performances can be enjoyed, a carving center, a culture hall and a gift shop.

Totem Bight State Park
Overlooking the captivating Tongass Narrows, this serene state park is located approximately 10 miles north of Ketchikan and is home to both majestic 60-year-old totem poles (restored and re-carved) and a native tribal house.

Misty Fjords National Monument
Escape to this awe-inspiring jewel amidst Alaska’s natural wonders. Misty Fjords National Monument is 2.2 million protected acres of Tongass National Forest, located approximately 20 air miles from Ketchikan. Only accessible by floatplane or boat, this incomparable natural masterpiece is nature at its most dramatic, boasting towering mountaintops, rushing waterfalls, fjords, glaciers and lakes that have to be seen to be believed.

Looking through the activities offered, I noticed a few that included a crab feast. While the girls aren’t seafood lovers, I was drawn like butter to a chance to dine on fresh-caught Dungeness crab. Once we confirmed there were non-seafood options being served, it wasn’t as tough a sell.

Wilderness Exploration and Crab Feast Excursion

This shore excursion is described as:

Take a boat tour up the George Inlet to for great scenery and a visit to a crab estuary, finishing with a crab feast.

On this adventure you will…

• • Leave downtown behind on an approximate 30-minute narrated coastal drive past canneries, an old sawmill, totem poles and waterfalls.
  • Arrive at the George Inlet Lodge and board your boat destined for the crab fishing grounds. Cruise up the inlet on a 7-mile journey (for approximately 90 minutes) on which you will admire the history and natural beauty of the region.
  • Pass the George Inlet Cannery and learn about the fish traps and fish pirates from before Alaska’s statehood. View the Mahoney Glacial Cirque site of an old gold mine, snowcapped mountains and 2,000-foot waterfalls. A river at the bottom of the valley is host to bears, eagles, salmon, killer whales, sea lions and seals who make frequent visits to the area in search of food. After crossing the fjord to a remote crab estuary, volunteers are recruited to help pull crab pots. These crabs will be set free, but you’ll have the opportunity to see them up close and learn about their anatomy and life cycle.

• • Once the pots are reset return to the lodge to relax over a delicious Dungeness crab feast. Your meal comes complete with salad and cheesecake with blueberry topping and coffee, tea, soft drinks, house white wine and George Inlet Lodge Red Ale (Guests 21 and older only). Everyone will have fun with our crab shell stacking contest! Note: Alternate meals available (grilled chicken and a vegetarian entrée).

The cost for this excursion is $229.00 (ages 10 and up), $144.00 (ages 3 to 9), and $144.00 (ages 0 to 2).

As usual, it starts off with checking in at the designated meeting location on board. From there you’re led off the ship and handed off to the shoreside tour company and loaded onto a bus. Starting off through downtown, we got a peek at some of the shopping and dining locations before passing the harbor and heading along the bay. Our driver spent the time discussing points of interest along the route and some history of the town and island. While it’s one of the largest cities in Alaska, it can only be reached by plane or boat – no bridges connect it to the mainland.

Here are a few of the details shared throughout the drive:

• There are as many boats as cars on the island.
• Salmon capital of the world, featuring five species: Chum, Silver, Pink, Sockeye, and King.
• It rains 230 days per year – they measure it in feet, not inches.
• The terrain is a rocky substrate with an average of six inches of soil.
• They had to import dirt to create enough depth for a cemetery.
• There’s a boat dock at the school bus stop for children from neighboring islands to park – most local kids learn to drive a boat long before a car.

Once we reached the George Inlet Lodge, we were handed off to our next set of guides. Heading directly down to board a boat, we began phase two of the tour. As we pushed away from the dock and began the journey through the inlet, we received some background and history of the lodge and Lillie’s Cannery, now nothing more than a shell of a building that looks like it could fall into the water at any moment.

The history and stories were solid and tied the trip together. What didn’t was our guide, Morgan. As much as I liked Patrick on the way to the Mushers Camp in Skagway, this was the opposite. The young Morgan brought an energy and vernacular that would be best suited for a boatload of elementary schoolers. Whether she was trying too hard or just couldn’t read the room, she was straddling the line between annoying and obnoxious. I could tell the rest of the guests were having similar thoughts, as the side-eye glances were many. It wasn’t what she said so much as the delivery that bordered on fingernails on a chalkboard.

The boat pulled up alongside a marker buoy and she enlisted the help of one of the guests to pull the attached crab trap up and into the boat. Inside were a half dozen good-sized crabs that she demonstrated different methods of handling while talking about how they were harvested.

After releasing the crabs back into the water, we started the voyage back towards the Lodge for our feast. En route, we spotted a few seals sunning themselves on a bank and a bald eagle perched high atop a tree scanning the water for his lunch. Once again the views were impressive, including Mahoney Falls – a 2,000-foot waterfall cascading down the side of a mountain.

Back at the Lodge, we were led into the dining room and the servers took over. It was a rather dated and nondescript mom-and-pop style diner. The TV mounted in the corner played a video on loop showing a documentary-style history of the lodge and its founders. Becca noted that the TV looked really old. I had to explain that the TV itself wasn’t, but the video playing was of 1980s VHS quality with a grainy picture and flickering horizontal lines. That was pretty much the vibe here.

At least the crab was delicious. The servers gave a brief demonstration of how to extract the meat from the shell, then began to fill our plates. As they did, they mentioned there’d be a friendly competition among tables to see who could finish with the tallest pile of empty shells. As Barney Stinson would say — challenge accepted! The first round of measurements had our table coming in a tad behind the leaders. Thus began the game of crab shell Jenga. While one of my tablemates tapped out, two of us soldiered on and gave it our all. Ultimately we came up short. I lost track of how many I ate, but I can assure you I didn’t leave the table hungry.

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With full bellies, we reloaded onto a bus for the trek back to the ship. A bit more history and stories along the same route we’d arrived on.

This is a hard one to put a grade on. The entirety of it felt disjointed. We had one bus driver for the trip to the lodge, then Morgan and a boat captain, then the servers, and finally a different bus driver on the way back. There was an overall lack of continuity of presentation. With a better guide on the boat, maybe it would have tied together more fluidly, but you could tell the bus drivers were a separate tour company working with the Lodge staff, not a part of them. The crab was hard to beat, but the rest of the dining experience was mundane. Was it worth the price? I’m going to say no. We could have paid a lot less and still had a tremendous meal at any number of local restaurants. The tour had potential, but due to the aspects listed, it just didn’t gel in a manner that you’d expect.

We returned to the ship with about a half hour to make a quick run through a few of the shops directly adjacent to the dock. Since we saw there was a long line to get back on, we figured there wasn’t much risk of becoming pier runners.

Here are some of the sights from along the bus ride and the area along the pier, including a spectacular shot one of our shipmates got flying overhead in a seaplane:

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This is a port I would have loved to have more time in. With only a five-hour window that our excursion took most of, there wasn’t nearly enough time to really enjoy it.

Dinner and Entertainment

Lumiere's Dinner Menu B

This Beauty and the Beast–inspired restaurant channels full fairy-tale energy, with elegant touches that make dinner feel like a scene from the movie. Between the French-inspired dishes and polished American favorites, it’s one of those meals that feels a little magical from start to finish. Updated for 2026!

Available on: Disney Magic

Lumiere’s – Small Plates +

Choux-Dux Marrow Soup

Celeriac, apple, Meyer lemon crème fraîche, toasted fennel seeds, micro celery

Sliced Prosciutto, Coppa, Sopressata

Modena balsamic grape tomatoes, rosemary-sea salt crisp, Parmigiano-Reggiano

Braised Oxtail Soup

Roasted sweet carrots, celery, pickled thyme, porcini tortellini

Baby Iceberg Salad

Red and yellow cherry tomatoes, scallions, crisp spiced chickpeas, sumac-tahini ranch dressing

Lumiere’s – Regional Inspirations +

Huntsman Appetizer

Chicken and pistachio terrine, rosemary ham, goat cheese, celery, berries, sweet pickle

Sauteed Cremini and Oyster Mushrooms

Sesame artichoke purée, baby spinach, yuzu vinaigrette

White Onion Soup

Smoked Alaskan salmon, toasted caraway seeds

Roasted Carrot, Red Beet and Parsnip Salad

Arugula, endive, sour cream, walnut vinaigrette

Juniper-Marinated Venison Medallions

Tupelo honey-parsnip purée, roasted shallots, heirloom carrots, game chips, port wine jus

Roasted Bering Sea Halibut Fillet

Minted smashed green peas, shredded potato cake, chive-cream sauce

Bulgur Wheat and Honey-Roasted Root Vegetables

Carrots, parsnips, turnip, celeriac, dill yogurt

Lumiere’s – Bread Service +

Spring Onion Cheese, Soft White, Whole Wheat Rolls

Lumiere’s – Entrees +

Roasted Green Chile Chicken Breast

Tagliatelle, crimini mushrooms, tarragon cream, green asparagus, Parmigiano-Reggiano

Pan-Seared Barramundi Fillet

Fennel, cannellini beans, Cerignola olives, sweet pepper, Yukon gold potato, saffron broth

Grilled Grain-fed Sirloin Steak

Oven-baked potato, asparagus

Ratatouille Phyllolette

Pan-roasted eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, pistou, basil Provençale

Lemon-Butter Oven-Baked Lobster Tail

Sun-dried tomato lemon-peel mash, roasted asparagus

Soy and Miso Glazed Duck Breast Salad

Napa cabbage, cilantro, spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, radish, pomegranate arils, soybeans, toasted sesame seeds, crisp vermicelli, yuzu dressing

Lumiere’s – Desserts +

Orange-Almond Cake

Guava gel, lychee yogurt crème

Chocolate Lava Cake

Double chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream

Alaskan Strawberry Romanoff Bread Pudding

Toasted brioche, fresh strawberries, vanilla cream cheese

Lumiere’s – Sundae +

The Captain’s Table Sundae

Vanilla ice cream, strawberry compote, shortcake, whipped cream

Lumiere’s – No Sugar Added Dessert +

Chocolate Cheesecake

Baked cheesecake, chocolate chiffon sponge base

📄 View Menu as PDF or Image

On the bus ride back to the ship, we faced a dilemma. Having the late dining time meant an early showtime for the spotlight show in the Walt Disney Theater. Tonight’s feature was Jessica Jane doing her family performance. Not arriving back to the ship until 6:30 meant we’d already missed the beginning. The alternative was to watch the later showing at 8:30, meaning we’d miss our dinner. One of us was still stuffed with crab while the other two weren’t very hungry either, so we decided to – GASP – skip dinner!

With tonight’s menu offering lobster, this was not a decision I made lightly. I stopped in to let Cristiano know we’d be skipping out on him. While some friendly chiding ensued, he understood when I told him where we’d just come from. I figured we could at least place an order for dessert, as the show would be getting out just about when the final course would be served. In true form, he asked if we’d just like it waiting in our room afterwards so we didn’t need to rush back to the dining room. With a plan in place, it was off to see the magic happen.

Jessica Jane Magic – Redux

Amazing once again. There’s not much more to say here. As it was Becca’s first time seeing her, it was agreed she’s at the top of the list of performers we’ve seen on DCL. The show itself was the same routine she did for families in February, and that was fine with me as it was spectacular both times. The pinnacle recreation of Houdini’s straitjacket escape while hanging upside down above the stage made me dizzy just watching. Capping it off with a rendition of “Tightrope” from The Greatest Showman not only highlights her range of talent but brings the show full circle to the opening line of “Life is being on the wire, the rest is just waiting” by Karl Wallenda.

After the show, as we made our way back to the stateroom, we found Cristiano just as he was heading to deliver our desserts, as promised. A strawberry bread pudding for me and molten lava cakes for Becca and Angie. He even brought an extra bowl of ice cream on the side so it didn’t melt on top if he arrived too early. It was then he realized he’d forgotten a set of silverware and offered to run back and grab them quickly. We insisted that wasn’t necessary, as we could run up to the lounge and grab a spoon. Moments later he returned anyway with not only another set of utensils but a bonus lava cake! I really want to adopt him!

Intuitions and Dueling Pianos

With a nice little sugar rush, the night was still young. Tonight in Fathoms was another of the adult game show style activities: time to test your Intuition! The room was divided down the middle to form teams, then three participants from each team were brought onstage to see how in sync they were. Similar to Majority Minds, the host asked a question and each of the players wrote down an answer on a whiteboard. Instead of trying to guess what the majority answer was, though, the object was to answer the same as your teammates. It didn’t even matter if you had the correct answer! For each match, your team received a point.

To get things started, they went with what should have been an easy one: “What 90s TV show reportedly went through 100 bottles of sunscreen per episode?” The obvious answer, at least to anyone older than 25, is Baywatch. One team went 3 for 3. On the other side, a few of the young adults showed their age as the only 90s TV show they could think of was Friends. As most of the audience did a simultaneous head slap, the two Friends responses, while grossly inaccurate, received two points, and the third teammate who gave the correct answer was sent back to his seat as he wasn’t in sync with the other two. Accuracy was not the goal here. They could have all written down “pizza” and been awarded points. As teammates were eliminated, they selected another member of the crowd to take their place.

Solid entertainment and a nice way to get the room energized for the main event: Dueling Pianos.

A 90-minute, all-request, nonstop music fest. Two talented musicians showcasing the range of genres in their arsenal. They didn’t do much of an introduction, but I figured since I’d missed the first round of this show earlier in the week, they’d simply picked up where they left off. It was a bit obscure to start, as out of the first five songs they played I only recognized one. I was beginning to wonder if I’m that out of touch when some familiar tunes started rolling out. The night turned into a group karaoke fest when the bangers started playing. Who can sit quiet with “Sweet Caroline” or “Piano Man” romping? The kicker was when they threatened to stop playing if we didn’t crush “Bohemian Rhapsody” with them.

A good time was had by all. After around an hour, I decided the next song I didn’t know I’d slip out and head to bed. I’m glad I left when I did, as it was pretty loud and I had the beginnings of a headache. I guess I’m officially at the “turn the music down” age.

We cap the trip with a day at sea tomorrow on the return trip to Vancouver. I’ll use that to cover a few of the new policies DCL rolled out this week and some of the popular questions that seem to come up often regarding Alaskan cruises.

For now, thanks again for joining us on this journey. I’m off to dream about piles of crab shells.

Disney Magic Day 6 Daily Program

Personal Day-By-Day Disney Magic Alaska Cruise Review: