Glacier Bay Lodge & Tours

We enjoyed a one night stay here. The main lodge is very nice and the food was very good. The property is very pretty and hiking trails are nice. The room was very nice for the most part. The bathroom in our unit could use some updating, but they have a very short tourist season so it didn't bother us. We really appreciated being able to leave our luggage next to the front desk because we arrived prior to check in time, and we took the boat tour after checking out. If we would have had to keep our luggage with us it would have been a huge pain. The luggage area next to the front desk is not secured, but it didn't bother us, we just kept our valuables with us. The day boat tour was awesome! We saw so much wildlife!! The captain did an awesome job getting us really close to the shoreline to see mountain goats, a bear, a wolf, sea lions, etc, and we also got super close to Johns Hopkins Glacier. It was a very memorable experience.

A late review, but I spent the summer of 22 working here at the lodge and it was the best summer of my life. It’s a wonderful historic lodge with great views, accommodations and good food. The rooms are average, but you are really here for the views and all the park and area have to offer. So many people only come for one night and a trip on the day boat, but there is so much more than that to experience here. Come see for yourself!

Beautiful location right on the bay. We were lucky enough to get a room overlooking the bay. Beautiful views. Two very beautiful trails have been developed from the lodge, one by the bay and the other through the moss-laden woods. ||Our room was large and comfortable and had all the basics. It was a little dark. Since the hotel is isolated in the national park, there’s nothing but nature around and you need a bus or cab to go elsewhere, although there are only two other restaurants in town (with limited hours) and not very much else to do. The lodge has a restaurant on site. Food there was fine. ||A special part of the experience of being in the lodge is the native lodge and totem poles and the wood carver working on new totem poles nearby. Go when someone is in the lodge to explain and show you a film on some of the history of the park and its relation to the native population. ||Finally, we took a lovely glacier tour from the harbor at the Lodge. You don’t have to stay at the Lodge to take the tour, but it’s convenient from there.

My party of 5 got caught up in the cancellation thing as well. Unfortunately, no one actually contacted us. So when we showed up, the nice girl handing out the keys to everyone getting off the shuttle had nothing for us and a panicked look on her face. Clearly this had happened before. Long story short, somehow the Lodge came up with our two rooms and we went ahead with our visit. I feel horrible for those who got cancelled and weren't as lucky as us. But in a VERY remote location like Glacier Bay, when there are structural failures - like plumbing I believe in this case - it's going to take time to fix. Parts and labor are not readily available.|Otherwise, this was a wonderful experience, in a beautiful location. The boat trip was amazing and the entire staff incredibly friendly and helpful.|*** NPS / Aramark *** I have one complaint and that is prior to leaving Juneau for Gustavus, I tried to telephone the lodge to make sure everything was a go and confirm the pickup at the airport. Despite trying a couple of numbers, I was never able to get to a person. That's bad business. GBL is an expensive place to stay, and some basic customer service around the booking would go a long way. This is NOT a reflection on the on-site staff!

We truly enjoyed our stay at Glacier Bay Lodge. The bus was waiting for us when our plane arrived and the driver stopped at the park sign on the way to the lodge for pictures. The rooms were comfortable and clean. Wifi is available in the lodge but it's not the best. The boat tour was amazing. Our captain was excellent and we were able to get close to bears and the glacier! Scenery was spectacular. Glad we opted for this route over a cruise ship as they could not get very close to the glacier at all. The restaurant was decent with good food - service was a bit slow but we didn't really have anywhere else to go in the evening - lol. Take note that the visitor center and the boat provide a stamp for your passport book. However, it is not the official circular stamp. You have to go to the ranger station at the boat ramp for the official stamp.

**NPS-- please read this when considering contract performance of Aramark***||First the good: the bus transport from the airport is convenient and included, and the location is great right there in the park. The day boat tour of the glaciers was amazing and we saw all sorts of wildlife and the gorgeous glaciers. Staff on the boat were great too. Overall the boat tour was a 5-star experience. ||We had several issues at the lodge though. Our room did not have hot water and we had to complain 4 times over 3 days about this and we didn't particularly enjoy cold showers and having to expend time and energy dealing with the front desk about this problem. They were not able to fix it either. There was poor communication from the front desk to the maintenance crew and the front desk just told us that it was "due to too many people showering at once", which wasn't true since our parents 2 doors down had hot water at the same time. Nobody checked our room to see if the water was actually hot after they "fixed the boiler". To his credit, the manager did make it right in the end though with some money back. The room was old, musty and very poorly lit, with a mildewy shower curtain that was too long and pooled in the shower. The beds were comfortable though. As for the restaurant, the food was decent and fairly reasonably priced but the service was awful. They were completely understaffed and ran out of food early. You had to wait a long time for drinks or other things and hardly ever saw your server. Sometimes we would have to get up and find them to order something or hunt them down to tell them that there is hardly any food left on the breakfast buffet. Aramark needs to ensure that all of their staff stay until the last day the lodge is open as it isn't fair to the customers who pay a lot to stay and eat there. There is no other choice for dining so everyone is stuck using that restaurant. Staff need basic customer service training too.

I did not expect glamour from this lodge, however, I did not expect it to give me an allergic reaction! The first room they put us in did not have heat and it was quite cold out (in July-it's alaska!). The front desk was super helpful in trying to put us in a room where we would not have to move after one night but still stay closeby to where our luggage was. The room next to ours (connected building) also did not have heat, and the tiny space heater given would not do much at all for the large space with high vaulted ceiling. The receptionist ended up moving another party that was checking in the next day to a different area so that we could move across the way where there was heat, thankfully. The rooms we were in were very large, with an exceptionally large loft area that is inaccessible and unused. When I looked up there, it created a fog effect, which we found was due to the immense amount of dust up there and the light coming in a window there. The room was otherwise fairly clean, but both myself and my boyfriend are so allergic to dust that he was having a reaction while we were there, and my reaction was delayed and caused me a day of feeling like I was getting a bad cold, but turned out to just be a reaction to the dust that cleared up after a day of not being there. The rooms are extremely dated, which in this case is okay but they badly need to clean out the heater vents or replace them (tons of dirt and dust in there too), and deep clean the upper unused lofts (which is also such a shame that they go unused!). Something else that was frustrating was the lack of light in the room. It was hard to pack and see our things with the few provided floor lamps and no overhead light or direct sun. This probably also hides some of the cleanliness issues. Everyone is very friendly and it was awesome to be staying in the lodge where the tour went out of, but we were unimpressed with the dinner service (took over two hours, making us miss the native center event we wanted to go to), and ended up not going there for any other meals once we got our rental car. They could easily offer wifi in the rooms it seemed, or even charge more for it, but it seems to purposefully not reach the rooms (our room was within about 50 feet of the lodge, the closest!). There is no cell service here either so it would be super nice to offer, though I understand maybe part of the experience to unplug. The bed was also super small for the two of us, they could definitely fit a king or true queen in there, even in the room that had bunk beds too.

This place is a great value and in one of the most beautiful places in the world. The rooms are comfortable enough and the restaurant staff is very friendly. They were out of a couple things every night on the menu, but being a remote location, this is somewhat understandable. They do not have a place at the main lodge to fill a water bottle and the gift shop is lacking snacks and beverages. Pack your own snacks if you come here. Overall a great place.