Following a familiar "repositioning" seasonal pattern, a very large cruise ship carrying over 3,000 people, the Celebrity Millennium, spent a day in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor last week, while crossing the Pacific Ocean from Vancouver, B.C., to Japan.

Standing on the dock at the Unalaska Marine Center, Cruise Director Steve Gayda said the ship carried about 2,100 passengers and 1,000 crew members. After four days at sea, the ship wouldn't stop again for another five days when it would visit the Japanese ports of Otoru, Hakodate, Tokyo, for a 15-day trip since leaving Canada.

Typically, Unalaska sees about a half-dozen cruise ships, bookended by large vessels on repositioning voyages, when the ships move between summer seasons in Southeast Alaska and winter in Asia. Gayda said the trips attract bargain hunters, attracted to discount rates in exchange for days and days of seeing a whole lot of water and little else.

The lowest daily rate was $100, and still provides a good time, with a wide variety of entertainment including Las Vegas-style shows and comedy acts, all included in the basic fare. Shipboard Internet service costs extra, though, at $20 per hour or $350 for the whole trip, he said.

Gayda said he visited Unalaska last fall on the Millennium, and said it was a little smoother this time, due to an earlier arrival. "It's been great. The sun's coming out, which is a bonus." And the big boat might return in May on its eastbound repositioning voyage, he said.

In between the big repositioning megaships in spring and fall, a few smaller eco-cruise ships visit Unalaska, not always using local docks but instead coming ashore in inflated skiffs. This year was a little different, as the late season saw two big cruise ships. The 1,000-passenger Crystal Serenity called in August on a historic trip across the Northwest Passage from Seward to New York City.

At last week's Unalaska City Council meeting, Mayor Shirley Marquardt and council member Yudelka Leclere said the visit went very well, and praised the Unalaska/Dutch Harbor Convention and Visitors Bureau for coordinating the local response.

Local businesses welcomed the influx of new customers. Outside the Norwegian Rat, Kelly Elam, dressed in a costume as the eponymous rodent, invited cruise ship visitors to a crab dinner inside the bar and restaurant.

For visitors interested in hiking tundra paths, the Ounalashka Corporation sold $5 daily land use permits at the dock, for access to village Native Corporation lands. In the early afternoon, O.C. employee Maricel Tungul said she'd sold about $130 worth of passes.

School buses from DH Transit ferried the passengers and crew to the Safeway parking lot for shopping and dining nearby, or for bus trips to other parts of town. The Museum of the Aleutians was a popular destination, along with the World War II Visitors Center.

Taxis were unusually busy with cruise ship riders, said driver Duong Pham of Swan Taxi. At 1 p.m., Pham said he'd been going "nonstop" since 10 a.m., with about nine trips and an average of three cruise ship passengers. He said popular destinations were the museum, Memorial Park, and the Russian Orthodox church.

All three Swan taxis were on the road and busy, when usually just one was in operation, he said. This was the season's fifth cruise ship, and while they don't normally provide much business, the Celebrity Millennium was a major exception, Pham said.

The passengers and crew came from all over the world, according to Gayda, with passengers from 32 countries: 1,100 Americans, 500 Canadians, 175 Australians, 100 from the United Kingdom, plus various other Europeans and Asians. The crew was even more diverse, typically between 45 and 50 nationalities, he said.

Jim Paulin can be reached at jpaulin@reportalaska.com.