Port or starboard?
Cabin side is a decision you make weeks ahead and cannot undo, which is why people ask strangers on forums about it. Pick the itinerary and the direction and get an answer for your sailing rather than someone else's.
Times are UTC. Working out a local offset needs a timezone database with historical daylight-saving rules, and getting it subtly wrong would give you a confidently incorrect answer.
Book a cabin on the port side. 1 of the 1 one-sided views you pass are on that side. 3 more are visible from both sides.
Northbound the land is on one side almost the whole way. Southbound it is on the other, which is why half the advice online contradicts the other half.
What you pass
- portVancouver Island coastabout 10h 29m in · 21 km off the route
Forested and unbroken for most of the first day.
- both sidesWrangell Narrowsabout 73h 6m in
Barely wider than the ship in places, with markers on both banks.
- both sidesGlacier Bayabout 107h 57m in
The ship turns in the bay, so both sides get a view of the face at some point.
- both sidesHubbard Glacierabout 120h 10m in
Ten kilometres wide at the face. The ship usually rotates here too.
Why the forums disagree
Ask which side to book for Alaska and you will get both answers, both stated with total confidence. Both are right. Northbound and southbound sailings see the same coast from opposite beams, and nobody says which they took.
The second thing the threads miss is that scenery is not always the deciding factor. In a fjord, both sides see rock. What differs is which side gets sun, and a balcony in permanent shadow is a different holiday from one in the light.
And some of it genuinely does not matter. Ships rotate at glacier faces precisely so that everyone gets a view. This tool says so rather than inventing a preference, because a tool that always picks a side is not telling you anything.
Common questions
- Which side of the ship is best for an Alaska cruise?
- It depends entirely on which way you are sailing, which is why the forums contradict each other. Northbound through the Inside Passage the land is mostly on the starboard side; southbound it is mostly to port. Glacier Bay and Hubbard Glacier are the exceptions, because the ship usually rotates at the face so both sides get a look.
- Port or starboard for the Norwegian fjords?
- Fjords are narrow enough that both sides see the walls, so scenery is rarely the deciding factor. Sun is. In a deep fjord one side is lit all day and the other sits in shadow, which matters a great deal if you are paying for a balcony.
- Which side for a Panama Canal transit?
- Mostly both. You are inside the locks, so the walls are on each beam, and the interesting view is usually whichever chamber has another ship in it. The Miraflores visitor centre crowd is genuinely one-sided, and the tool will tell you which.
- Does it know my specific ship or cabin number?
- No. It works from the itinerary and the direction, not from a deck plan. Combine it with your line's deck plan to pick the actual cabin: this tells you which side, that tells you which room.
- Is it worth paying extra for a particular side?
- On a one-way coastal sailing, often yes, because you spend days with land on one side and open water on the other. On a round-trip that turns repeatedly, much less so, since both sides get a turn.
There is also a version for scenic trains and one for flights. More under tools.