Saturday – Cruise Ship “Dockrepping” 101 and Native Alaskans

Greetings readers! Many thanks for the email requests to provide updated news on Alaska. Between getting acclimated to my two new jobs at ATA and trying to find reliable Internet access, it's made posting regularly a challenge. I'll try to catch up on postings this week and hopefully I'll be able to return to my "ahem" prolific self soon! Cheers and thanks for reading! Best, Carla

Note: This belated posting is from around May 17.

Today is Saturday which means it’s a light tourist day with only 1-2 ships in town. Our other dock reps have Saturdays off so that means I’m operating solo today, with the help of the bus driver of course who transports the guests to the starting location of their tour after I collect them, and then also returns them to the ship later.

Cruise ships at Broadway and Ore dock in Skagway shown in background. The dock reps and passengers shown in the foreground are from another cruise ship at railroad dock. These docks are where we dock reps spend much of our day communicating with shore excursion managers from the ships and picking up passengers for their shore excursions in Skagway.

If you wonder what a dock rep is anyway, here’s what we do: Passengers on cruise ships sign up onboard for their shore excursions (tours at the stops the ship makes along the way). The ships contact local tour operators at each port (I work for a local tour operator in Skagway) and arranges those excursions for their passengers. When the ship arrives, dock reps show up at the designated “pickup time” for each tour just outside the security area where the ships have a little booth where their shore excursions managers work while in port. After checking in with the shore excursion manager for each ship about the number of passengers taking our tour, we stand there with our signs for each excursion to collect our passengers for that trip.

Gretchen, our newest dock rep (there are 3 of us now) collects passengers for our Salmon Bake and show at Liarsville.

The jeep tours are more complicated to collect for because the tour goes into Canada, so we ensure all passengers have passports and have signed risk waivers before sending them to the coaches. But other than that, it’s mainly a matter of collecting tickets and ensuring they have the ticket for the correct tour (you’d be surprised how many train passengers would wind up at the horseback riding tour unless someone checked their tickets), and then escorting them to the buses.

We check in again with the shorex (shore excursion manager) before leaving the dock to be sure we don’t leave any late arrivals behind, and then we send the passengers on their way on our coaches. Later in the day we “settle” with the cruise ships by turning in the tickets we collected in exchange for payment. Most settling is done either right at the docks after that ship's passengers depart for the last tour of the day, or sometimes in an office in town. For NCL ships we actually settle right on board the ships if we're on "the list" to go onboard (only 2 people per tour operator can be on the list).

These little "booths" are where the shore excursion managers sit throughout the day as their passengers depart on day trips. Dock reps check in with shorex's there throughout the day to double-check the expected number of passengers for the next tour since sometimes ships sell tickets very close to departure time.

We are constantly “checking the numbers” of expected passengers with the shorex’s (shore excursion manager) throughout the day or until they have “closed” that tour on board, because if the numbers increase significantly we need to radio our bases so the jeep guides can have more jeeps washed and gassed up to go, the salmon bakes have enough food prepared, and the bus drivers have enough buses to get everyone there and back. Nothing makes passengers (and cruise lines) more unhappy then having 50 passengers show up for a jeep tour and having only enough jeeps for 40. Yikes. Obviously, we make every effort to avoid that scenario.

Seven days a week finds we dock reps at the "rail road" dock, one of four docks in Skagway where ships arrive. This area is where we collect passengers disembarking the ship to shuttle them to their buses for their shore excursions. The little caboose at the edge of the dock is actually a little coffee shop and gift shop. The shore excursions managers sit in the little booths shown on the left and we check in with them to verify our numbers, then wait with our signs to collect passengers and escort them to their coaches.

I think “dock repping” is an interesting job if you like working with people, because we meet both passengers and other tour operators. Each day while I hold my signs for Yukon Jeep Tours or Liarsville Salmon Bakes, I stand and chat with staff from the White Pass Railway, Husky Mushing Camp, Chilkoot Trail Hike and Float, Tempsco Glacier Helicopter tours, Skagway Trolley Cars, Klondike Gold Dredge, Sockey Cycle Tours, Yukon Horseback Tours, and of course the famous (or infamous?) Red Onion Saloon Historic Brothel Tours. It’s a hoot.

One of the perks of the job is that tour operators offer “comp” tours for other tour operators. So I can typically go on most of the tours for free, and the more expensive tours (like the helicopter tours) for half-price. So far I’ve been able to take our own jeep tour but nothing else so far. With our hectic work schedules finding the time to take the tours is going to be a challenge, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that on some of my days off.

Leona, our Liarsville bartender and Native Alaskan, at Spirit Lake near Carcross (Caribou Crossing).

I work at Liarsville with two native Alaskans: Leona and Maykea, and Vaughn who is not native but has lived here for a number of years. Vaughn is one of the performers – he plays the washboard with thimbles (and in real life he plays base and is a professional mime). Leona is the bartender at Liarsville, and even though she doesn’t perform she has a lovely voice and could be one if she was so inclined. Maykea works in the cookhouse and helps prepare and serve food for the salmon bakes. It is very interesting to hear Vaughn and Leono talk about tribal events. Vaughn is from Haines (30 minutes away via the fast ferry on the Lynn Channel), and he recently attended and performed in the opening of a new tribal center in Haines when he went home for the weekend. He was describing the Raven Dance which is preformed in full ceremonial costume.

Leona and Maykea are the only native Alaskans working with us that I am aware of; and they seem to know the “real Alaska” that most of us don’t have a clue about. Vaughn commented once that living in Alaska year-round teaches responsibility, and I can see that, because here if you don’t work then you probably don’t eat; and for about 6 months out of the year many people don’t work because there just aren’t any paying jobs during that time since so many things close once the cruise ships stop in September and don’t return again until May. It seems many people put enough back for the winters by July, just to be sure they are covered until the jobs begin again. That is so different from the life most of us live. Perhaps that’s part of what it means to say the “real Alaska”.

Vaughn (left) is another native Alaskan who hails from Haines which is near Skagway.